Detention officer job interview help

Xoxsarahxox

Hi everyone, I have an interview for a detention officer job working in my local custody unit next Friday. I received an email confirming my interview and it also says that the interview will last for around 3 hours and during the interview they will be asking me to draw on my work experiences And provide examples of how I have previously dealt with particular situations. I am only 20 and don't really have much life experience, I have only ever had one job as a care worker for the elderly but i left after 4 mnths due to health issues. I guess they will be asking questions such as provide an example of when you have been in blah blah situation and how you dealt with this situation..... I'm not good with questions especially when i am out on the spot so i am trying to prepare myself. Has anyone been for an interview for this sort of job before or anyone currently work in this sort of job role??? I am just after a bit of advice really about what they may ask and what they will be looking for during the interview

Owain_Moneysaver

You will probably get questions on things like:

- dealing with multiple demands on your time, prioritising demands
- dealing with aggressive or threatening behaviour
- "give an example where you worked as a team to deliver good customer service" (think: who are the customers)
- equality and diversity and treating other people with respect
- handling confidential information

newmumincov

You will hopefully have seen a copy of the person specification and/or competency framework for the job. If you haven't, then you probably have time to get a copy emailed to you by HR.

The questions for competency based interviews usually take their topics from the BEHAVIOURS section of the above documents (it'll say things like teamworking, resilience, organisation, negotiation etc). If it's written well, this section will give examples of the kind of things that demonstrate these behaviours. I can virtually guarantee it will have something about conflict management, given the role you are going for.

If you are preparing examples to demonstrate these behaviours, it's useful to frame them in the following way:

STAR

Situation/Task = briefly describe the issue/problem and what needed to be done

Action = describe what YOU did (on your own or as a member of a wider team - not "we"), in a reasonable level of detail, to deal with the situation and/or carry out the task

Result = did it work? if not, why? what did you learn from the situation and would/did you do it differently next time?

Don't worry about the lack of formal work experience - look for examples across your work/family/study/social situations. Ideally you want to prepare about 6 or 7 examples. If you can think about how they can meet more than one behaviour, this helps in case you use an example up (though don't be afraid to refer back and revisit an example you used for something else).

If you get stuck, don't sweat - you will usually be getting scored on communication skills as part of the interview and in many ways poise is more important than an immediate/correct answer - let yourself take a couple of minutes to think, or even say "can I come back to that later?" if you get stuck, and don't be afraid to come back to something later if you realise you could have phrased it better or given more information.

edited to add - you WILL get a diversity question. There are now 9 strands of diversity following the Equality Act 2010

sex,
race,
disability,
sexual orientation,
religion or belief
age

plus three new ones
marriage and civil partnership
gender reassignment
pregnancy and maternity

in looking for a diversity example, a very important point to remember is that diversity is about meeting people's needs. Do you have examples where factors like age, disablity, culture/race or religion has influenced a client's care needs, for example?