Michelle Airey, Recruitment & Logistics Manager at the Hertfordshire Care Providers Association

Job interviews are fraught with danger on both sides as the basic foundation of an interview is based on the idea that during it candidates are acting normally and openly. This is unlikely because most candidates are scared to death before, during, and after interviews. The interview situation is by definition “unreal” and therefore what happens during the interview might not be representative of what someone would actually be like in the job.

This is particularly relevant to the Health and Social Care sector as the impact of making the wrong recruitment decision can have serious consequences on real peoples’ lives. Having to take information as accurate, literally at face value, is a concern for many employers but an area where Profiles4Care is making a significant and positive impact.

Profiles4Care client Hertfordshire Care Providers Association (HCPA) is a members’ association offering advice and guidance to over 600 care providers in Hertfordshire. It helps care organisations raise their standards of quality and anyone who provides adult social care in Hertfordshire is a member. This includes residential care homes, home care, day services, voluntary organisations, social enterprises and charitable bodies.

“Part of our work is to help our members in their recruitment strategies and we provide them with content from the Profiles4Care reports for their candidate interviews,” explained Michelle Airey, Recruitment & Logistics Manager at the Hertfordshire Care Providers Association. “This additional information has been beneficial for them in interviews as it opens up areas of conversation that you perhaps wouldn’t have normally asked about. The level of detail in the reports is impressive too and offers the chance to delve deeper into someone’s values and have a realistic conversation.”

HCPA also makes use of the Profiles4Care tool in its own recruitment processes. “While we don’t deliver care directly as our members do, we find it very useful to recruit for the same values as our members. The report’s suggested interview questions, which specifically relate to the values of the individual candidate, provides us with an insight which is has been described as ‘scarily’ accurate.”

These findings are backed up by the recently published ‘Study into the impact of a values based approach to recruitment and retention’ by Skills for Care which states that; 75% of 83 employers polled agreed that staff recruited for their core values have a greater understanding of social care values, including empathy and dignity.

Profiles4Care makes the interview process more “real” and relevant for people on both sides of the table, helping to mitigate the risks involved in recruiting for the Health and Social Care sector.