Interview

[Guest]

hi

got interview on friday for this position can anyopne help with what questions they will ask, or tasks i might have to do. I Hate the question about weaknesses and strengths as you don't want to come across as lacking in anything or been to boastful, so any tips on answers would be great.

 

 

or if you are a support worker, what do you do in a typical day

 

any info would be greatly apprieciated.

 

 

thanks

 

alison

[Guest]

Hi Alison,

I hope it all goes well for you on Friday. I have been trying to get into children's centre work since the new year and have had lots of different interviews as children's centre teacher, outreach worker and children's centre worker - I'm not sure which of these is the same as family support worker. I have just got a job as a children's centre worker and the best thing I did was to do voluntary work at my local centre as then I could talk about what I had done there rather than my past roles.

 

At each interview they asked different questions based on their requirements and also some the same but worded differently!!

 

I was usually asked about safeguarding in some format

How I would engage with parents

Some times about EYFS and ECM but not always (although I always made sure I mentioned them in answer to a question!!)

How I would get hard to reach parents into the centre

How my past experiences would help me in this post

Team work

What I would do before , during and after an outreach visit to a family

 

I tried to research the local area as much as possible so I knew the catchment and how that might have implications on the centre eg if there was an army base or travellers site locally etc

 

For each interview I had to do some sort of task usually given at the interview and I had about 20mins to prepare it and then had to talk about it during the interview.

These were:

Talking about how you would get hard to reach families into the setting

Planning a session both continuous provision and adult focussed task in a made up setting which had SEN children, EAL etc

Given a family scenario and what you would do as an outreach worker

What services you would introduce for made up centre and how you'd go about it

 

For the two interviews where I was given the task before the interview I had to plan an activity for one and for the other I had to talk about what things I would consider when running a drop in session in a satellite centre

 

I hope this helps

[Guest]

thanks for your reply, im so nervous.

 

any good answers for the following question:

 

 

Planning a session both continuous provision and adult focussed task in a made up setting which had SEN children, EAL etc

 

 

 

 

alison

[Guest]

Planning a session both continuous provision and adult focussed task in a made up setting which had SEN children, EAL etc

 

The scenario was this:

0-3 year olds attend this drop in session. Some Asian families have no English, a group of travellers attend sporadically. one child who comes is on the autistic spectrum and doesn't like loud noises or physical contact. one father is having a contact session at the drop in - his 1 year old daughter likes role play. Recent CI play has been around large scale construction and the local school has low scores in PSED, PSRN and CLL.

you have a large room with access to outside area. you have 2 water trays, 2 tables, etc. There will be no other EY staff.

 

I was given this question at the interview and had 30 minutes to complete these 3 tasks:

- plan a focussed activity to engage parents and children

- plan activities that will be available in the setting

- prepare a 3 min presentation of your plans and anyone you would like to speak to in the future to build on your plans

 

You can really only do the very basics within 30 mins - I just tried to make sure I'd covered all the families needs in the scenario. I planned a cooking activity for the focussed session to try to engage as many as possible and then just went with my first thoughts for the rest of it as there was so little time.

I would suggest you try not to think about what might come up and just got with your heart on the day. I've found over the interviews I've had that anything I looked into or thought about never came up!!!

What have you been told about the interview, does it say you will be given a task?