James Cox, Chief Executive Officer, West House

“Having learned about the Profiles4Care pilot we were very interested to find out how this might help us recruit social care staff and managers. We recognised that our traditional approach did not always yield the results we need and we were particularly interested by the notion of assessing personality and traits through the recruitment process. We found that our existing processes often didn’t tell us much about the person we were assessing and that this was clearly not good enough when recruiting staff and managers to work with vulnerable people.

“We tested the profile questionnaire on members of our existing management team prior to using on a live recruitment process and were satisfied that the resulting reports were accurate. We didn’t always like what the report said about us, but in almost all cases we could recognise that both our key strengths and weaknesses were highlighted. Our recruitment panel reported that they found the suggested questions contained in the report very useful, one of the panel stated;

I found that the questions took the candidates out of their comfort zone and made them think about their individual answers rather than the answer they presumed you wanted to hear.

“We also received feedback from candidates who said that they found the interview challenging and revealing. All the members of our panel reported that they found it very useful to have some insight in to the personality traits of the candidates prior to the interview and that this enabled a more targeted discussion, which in turn provided rich information upon which to base their decision. All of the panel members stated that they would like to use the process again and that they are interested in using the profiles in recruitment for staff at different levels within the organisation.“West House are very keen to continue to work with Profiles4Care. We believe this process has great potential in helping us improve our recruitment process and in turn help us recruit and retain high quality staff able to undertake the import work we do with vulnerable people.”