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And then the interview process is important, because even if you meet the eligibility criteria,
we do interview all candidates. And the reason for this, is that this is not
like working at a chicken factory or a nuts and bolts factory, you are dealing with very
vulnerable populations and therefore we want people who holistically demonstrate themselves
to be fairly rounded individuals, fairly mature, with a degree of insight reflexivity and also
people who have some basic skills already in interpersonal, face to face work with people
in client groups. Now, again, it doesn't mean that they're experienced
therapists, but it does mean you would know how to behave if you were sent out to knock
on somebody's door, because they've had a problem.
You would have some idea about how to behave and interview people if they were in the clinic
setting or possibly a voluntary sector setting, that you already actually have some baseline,
we would call them clinical skills; other people might call them professional interpersonal
skills. So, when we interview people, we are partly
looking for those sorts of elements and the ability to reflect on your own ability to
perform, and to, I suppose, respond to constructive feedback from other people but also to recognise
flaws in your own practice yourself, and think I won't do that again, because that didn't
go very well. So all candidates are interviewed and the
interview process currently involves you applying mostly online, and then you will be either
invited for interview if you meet the eligibility criteria.
If your background suggests that you need KSA routing, you will be sent the KSA, which
we will talk about in a minute, and given a month, I think it is at the moment, to fill
the portfolio in. We might extend that period, and then when
that KSA is okay and all of the requirements are met, then you will be invited in for interview,
and the current interview process can last up to a whole day and it involves asking applicants
to do a ten minute assessment role play, which one of the interviewers will actually effectively
assess while you're doing it, the quality of it, then you're asked to create a formulation
from that; it can be diagrammatic or narrative and the formulation just needs an explanation
of what you think the problem is, how it developed and what's maintaining it.
You do that, you know and you can do it in a diagrammatic or by writing down answers
to those three questions. Then we ask the candidates to actually give
us feedback on how well they think they did, what were the strengths and weaknesses of
it, and we give them mirrored feedback on the same issues.
In fact, I'll just chip in there, because it's my experience, because although I run
the online programmes, sometimes I am also fortunate to be part of the interviewing and
selection process for the Masters programme, and that was quite interesting for me, because
sometimes, although people have done the online programme, so they've actually looked very
carefully at what skills and what formulation is and these sorts of things and they don't
seem to connect it that well with the actual interview process, so I think this is a good
point and a good time to say what you are learning now will actually really influence
your ability to demonstrate these skills in an interview situation, so thanks for that.
Absolutely, and of course, in an interview situation, even people who are sometimes very
experienced don't do particularly well, partly because it's a forced situation, partly because
a ten minute assessment is actually an extraordinarily difficult thing; much more difficult than
a forty minute assessment, and partly because of the conditions which are a bit like exam
conditions, well not exam, but might feel to somebody as an applicant that you're under
pressure to perform on the hoof as it were, which you are, so it isn't the easiest process.
On the other hand, of course, we're used to doing this year in; year out and we have that
kind of reasonable idea in our head of what a reasonable performance looks like, and we
are almost as interested in people's ability to calibrate and reflect on their performance.
And I think if the applicant actually gives a fairly poor performance but is able to say,
"But I was really nervous and I should've made eye contact but I didn't, and I realise
I looked at my knees quite a lot and lost my place a few times," if the candidate could
spot what they did wrong, that is almost a strength, so that can counterbalance even
quite a poor performance. Yes, and the ability to accept feedback as
well. If people sort of say, and it's happened when
I've been part of the process, where you've said to someone, you know, they've given feedback
and say "Well I don't think I did very well on this," and you said "Yes, it wasn't very
good." For them to be able to take that in the spirit
that it's meant and not become defensive is also quite important, and particularly with
CBT, because that's going to be part of their role for a long time to come isn't it?
Because often the skills are watched either live or recorded, so it's quite a skill to
develop isn't it really? Yes, I mean eventually people who are coming
on the CBP courses need to get used, I suppose, to the idea that various people will be looking
at their practice. This is an intrical part of the learning process
and those 2 elements. We get feedback from other people, and those
other people can be clinical supervisors, academic staff and of course guidance, and
they also are able to reflect on their own practice with the help of those external comments,
but also sometimes on their own, think well what did I do and what could I have done better?
Why did this happen and how can I manage it differently in the future?
So that's more or less the process, and then really the candidate is told on the day whether
they've got a place. They could do a formal interview at the time?
Yes, sorry, there's a formal interview after all that; there is twenty minutes.
Right, so the process is finished off with a formal interview which lasts about twenty
minutes, where we ask candidates a few questions about, I don't know, there's a number of different
questions which we are able to choose from and the candidate is of course allowed to,
and I'd encourage them to ask us questions. Of course we might decide that the candidate
is not ready for the course or maybe needs to do something additional, or maybe there's
something problematic about their presentation nature.
But equally, the candidate might decide that the course is not for me, and we want the
ability to have that sort of negotiation with the candidate, and then, generally at the
end of this rather lengthy process of interviewing, the candidate is told the outcome, which will
be a conditional offer, and that might be on producing an extra reference or because
there's some problem with their paper work, or they're waiting for a qualification or
an accreditation to come through. Or an unconditional offer, which is what it
sounds like, and occasionally we will say to candidates we don't really think you're
ready, but if you wanted to apply in the future, these are the things you would need to do.
Now the children's programme is very similar, but when we have a lot of children's applicants,
they can arrange for them all to be seen on one day, which is actually quite difficult;
doesn't happen that often. We sometimes use a children's and young people's
panel, and that would substitute for the short role play and the elements that go with that.
And how that works is the children's panel have devised a set of questions, and they
run a twenty minute interview with the candidates and using the questions they've devised, and
they give us feedback afterwards on how they think the candidate has responded and whether
they think they would be good people to work with children and young people.
And although the programme staff have the final veto and final decision, we obviously
do take quite a lot of notice of what the young people say, and also offer that feedback
back to the candidates for them to reflect on.
And this is a really good process but it has certain practical limitations, because it's
only practical to bring the young people in when we've got maybe eight children as candidates
to interview on the day, so that only happens sporadically.
But there is that other process which I think is a better process for the children's course,
but we don't always run it. So it will be one or the other of these 2
processes. Right, okay.
And then of course, on top of that, paperwork; there's a need for a criminal record bureau
check, which I suppose is probably cognitive to most people these days.
It's not transferable; you have to have it done wherever you move to, and references.
Yes, and with both courses where candidates can apply, they are also asked to submit a
handwritten essay about CBP, and this goes back to something I mentioned earlier about
people needing basically the need to demonstrate that they can work at a degree level and to
be able to write in grammatical English. We ask people to handwrite the essay; one
so we know they haven't got dyslexia and might need support, because we need them to go through
support services because candidates will do better with support if they've got a problem.
And this is easier to tell if things are handwritten, and also it's to try and stop people plagiarising
material from the internet. And the other thing is, the essay gives us
the opportunity to see if the students understand some basic academic requirements that you'd
have at degree level, like being able to reference a piece of work.
Again, it's not marked in any formal sense, we just see how the candidates manage the
task, and then if there's an issue with something about this essay, that would be discussed
at interview. So, I should take the most complicated and
make it quite clear it's very much a negotiated process.
Although we have all these guidelines, there is a degree of flexibility in the way that
we operate. Yes, and I think from the outside looking
in, when I've been part of it, what I've been struck by is it actually does mirror the collaborative
nature of CBP, and I thought that it is collaborative and that candidates do know what's going to
happen, when and why, and hopefully by the end of the day when they leave, they why the
outcome has been decided. And the outcome may well offer some very direct
advice, so for instance if we had one of these essays in and it was poorly referenced, we
might talk to the person about do you know how to do academic referencing?
And if that was, you know, quite a small flaw, and the candidate had written quite a good
essay but it was badly referenced, I might suggest to them that they go and actually
read some guidelines for referencing and maybe submit another little piece.
So it's not just an open and shut. These decisions, they have quite a lot of
discretion and negotiation, and obviously we want to encourage candidates to demonstrate
themselves in the best light, and to offer support where they need it, because it's better
to support a candidate who's highly motivated and wants to do the course.
As long as they have the basic requirements, then just turn people away; that's not really
what we want to do. But there have to be some guidance and guidelines
because it is a very, very demanding course and not really for the faint hearted.
So I suppose partly the interview process is very thorough, but it's also designed,
in a way, to say to people if you want to do this course, this is almost a metaphor
for how the course is. The course is demanding and arduous, and looks
at a lot of different aspects of the way the candidate is going to perform in various ways,
and the interview process mirrors that.