Moving to values-based recruitment

Background

The Warner Report in 1992 was established to review the selection, development, and management of staff working in children’s homes, and highlighted recruitment as a particular concern. Since the report’s publication, ‘Warner interviews’ have been developed for use within all settings working with children and young people. The Academy in the last academic year has seen staff retention increasingly become an issue, so we decided we had outgrown the outdated skills-based interview model and must now move to a new model that reflects the belief that we are a values-based organisation; we adopted Warner interviews in order to ensure that our new hires share our values.

A values-based interview is a structured interview that can stand alone or sit as part of a wider multiple interview process.  A values based interview will ask applicants to provide examples of behaviour they have demonstrated to respond to a particular situation. However, the questions must also be probing to elicit evidence of learning and reflection, and it is these questions that provide an insight into an applicant’s values and what they consider to be important.

You can ask competency-based questions alongside values-based ones; however, in some cases it may be more appropriate to separate the two components out into two distinct interviews conducted by different assessors. This is the model we have found most effective, with a skills interview panel and a separate values interview panel.

What we can learn from a values-based interview

We know we need to identify the relevant knowledge, skills, attributes, and values associated with successful performance for any role in the Academy – which means conducting a role analysis. Each criterion that emerges as important for a role must then be developed into specific indicators describing positive and negative demonstrations of behaviour. We then use these to evaluate the responses provided by applicants to questions about the knowledge, skills, attributes, and particularly the values they need in order to succeed in the role. This ensures a fair interview process, as all applicants applying for the same role are assessed against the same standards and relevant criteria. As an additional safeguard of fairness, we regularly review the interview question bank and work according to a process that clearly lays out the number of questions/tasks and key criteria that should be used. There must be lead questions and associated probe questions for each criterion, allowing us to see both what values a candidate explicitly holds, and how they apply those in thinking further about a question.

When conducting the interviews, we encourage our interviewers to apply the best practice principles of FORCE:

F – familiarise yourself with the process/materials

O – observe; be sure to observe but not to make judgements which may be affected by unconscious bias

R – record the responses and behaviour

C-  classify the evidence of the required competences

E - evaluate the evidence against the scoring indicators and relevance to each criterion.

You can see examples of Warner-style questions we have used at BCA at the end of this blog.

Impact

The Academy has found that applicants have responded very well to the values-based interviews, and this in turn has enabled both the skills panel and the values panel to work collaboratively to ensure the successful applicant is the right fit for the Academy. We believe you can upskill staff, but you cannot necessarily change someone’s core values. As a values-based organisation, the negative impact on staff and students from appointing someone who does not align with our values brings resentment to teams, can lead to time-consuming HR meetings, and ultimately will impact the learners’ experience. The confidence in how managers recruit is reflected in new staff clearly understanding what values they will be held accountable to, and that everyone works collectively as a team to uphold them. We have recognised that for some applicants the process can trigger some emotional responses, so have included information at interview about what a Warner interview is and why we use it. We also reassure candidates that there is no wrong or right answer. Having staff trained in the process is integral and we have ensured the entire management team are skilled in this kind of interview process. Moving forward, we want to measure staff retention against those new staff who been through the process and those that haven’t, to see if a focus on values proves to be a better fit for the Academy and member of staff and improves staff retention. 

Sacha Corcoran MBE is principal of Big Creative Academy, a 16-19 free school in London specialising in the arts and media. Read the intro to this short series on creative responses to recruitment challenges here.

Examples of Warner-style questions

Each of these questions looks at a specific aspect of a candidate’s values.

1. Tell us about yourself, what made you who you are today?
2. What experiences either in childhood or adult life led you to want to work with young people in an education setting? (understanding one’s motivation to work with children)
3. Can you tell us how your childhood experience of education has informed your approach to life/ work with children negatively or positively? (encourages reflection)
4. We all have influences in our lives, can you tell us who or what has influenced your life and why? (values they look for in others)
5. Can you tell us about a situation (personal or work related) where you have responded in a way you were not proud of? (reflecting and analysing one’s own actions)
6. Can you tell us about a time when you or someone you know has been discriminated against, how did it make you feel? (awareness of others’ feelings and behaviour)
7. Can you tell us about a time you were made to feel you were not in control of a situation by a person, how did you respond? (explores feelings and attitudes to authority)
8. How do you feel with being asked to do something you totally disagree with, describe a situation this has happened? (demonstrates emotional resilience, capacity to challenge)
9. What do you do in your spare time, what are the positive benefits of this in your life?

Behavioural questions

These questions are more familiar competency-based interview questions, but focus on values and behaviour and how these are expressed in the workplace.

1. Tell me about a time you had to deliver bad news, how did you do it?
2. Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult colleague, how did you communicate effectively?
3. Tell me about a time you didn’t meet a goal, how did you tell your team and your manager?
4. How have a managed tasks assigned to you you’re not familiar with? How did you handle it, did you ask for help or look for a solution? 

Questions focusing on specific values

Each of the values below is a common one a company or college would be interested in probing for.

Integrity

1. Have you ever faced an ethical dilemma at work? If so what was the issue and what did you do?
2. What would you do if saw a colleague acting against the organisation’s values?

Collaboration

1. Describe a time your team failed to complete a project or task on time, what would you do differently now? 
2. What would you do if you had to work with a person you didn’t get along with?

Accountability

1. Describe a successful team project you worked on, what was your contribution?
2. How would you react if your team received negative feedback about a part of a project that was assigned to you?

Social responsibility

1. How do you a balance between meeting external quality controls but not compromising on the needs of the students?
2. What polices would you suggest creating to make our operations more environmentally friendly?

Innovation

1. Describe a situation where you faced a technical issue and your normal trouble shooting response did not work, what did you do?
2. Can you give an example of a well-designed product, what makes it unique?

Student-focused

1. Describe a time you had to calm down an angry student, how did you maintain your professionalism and address their issue?
2. How would you reply to a student who comes into the office at 5pm or calls as you are leaving?

 Finally, some red flags we look for

1. A candidate cannot support their argument - when in an interview, a candidate can claim to be a good team player or have a strong work ethic. Can they give you example that proves these values or are they just using buzzwords?
2. Their values don’t match the position’s requirements. Out of the box thinking might work for a marketing role, but does it align with a process-driven role? 
3. They seem inflexible. Do they have very strong opinions that don’t match our core values? Will this affect collaboration?
4. Signs of arrogance. Are they negative towards criticism, demonstrating a bossy attitude, or do they prioritise their own values over others’?
5. Canned answers with no specific details.
6. Hypothetical responses. You want to gauge how people actually acted in a real situation, not describe an ideal reaction.
7. Great personality but lacks substance. Interviewers should focus on results and relate past behaviours to performance and achievement of goals.

 "Values are like fingerprints, nobody’s are the same but you leave them over everything that you do"

- Attributed to Elvis Presley