The Caretakers' Forum

Evening all

I’ve an interview on Monday for a part time primary school caretaker - any tips would be appreciated!

Think about what you have to offer…. What’s your background, could any past and previous jobs be beneficial to the job role.
Think about how you would priorities jobs in an emergency situation, what is first as this is quite often a favourite question… generally anything which could or has caused immediate harm would be first etc etc.
Safeguarding, this is a must and would most likely be touched upon in a interview. Read up on the school safeguarding policy on their website. Most are fairly generic but read up on basic child protection, the main do’s and don't when working in schools.

The very best of luck to you

Cheers good advice thank you

Have a look in our guides section for advice on interviews, good luck.

Safeguarding and H&S is a big thing. Also think about the old why do you want to work for us question. My advice to that question is don't blow smoke up the proverbial. Telling them its a great school etc is nothing that they won't have heard a million times before.

The main thing is to be yourself. As others have said check up on Safeguarding and H&S as they are the biggies. Don't be afraid to ask them reasonable questions either

Over the years and last three positions, I've winged it at interviews and always tried "to be myself". I found outr recently by extensive research that when applying for Maintenance Officer with West Mercia Police, that "be yourself" won't cut it. Many employers now will throw questions at you along the lines of "tell me a time when you had to deal with an emergency". There are many other examples but you need to be prepared and you may get asked to cover several "tell me a time when...." scenarios.

I was so keen to work for West Mercia that I joined a FB group for Police Staff where you could discuss how and what to do at interview. There was one accronym that kept coming up - SAARL. This has replaced "STAR", (Situation, Task, Action, Result), another well used accronym. When asked at interview about a situation, take a few seconds to mentally break down the question into:

S - What was a suitable situation you've experienced in relation to the question.
A - Aim, what did you want to achieve.
A - Action. Not what you did but more importantly HOW you did it, either on your own or as part of a team. This section should represent 75% or the bulk of your overall answer.
R - Result. The outcome of what you did. Were you happy with how things turned out?
L - Learn. Could you have done things differently that could help next time with the same or a similar situation.

I used SAARL with West Mercia but didn't get the job as I got marked down on other aspects of the lengthy two hour interview. The panel did say that my SAARL approach was the best out of six candidates, so it does work. SAARL can be applied to any type of interview, no matter what the role or industry.

I now look forward to future interviews as I feel my confidence is higher just by using SAARL.

Well, it's Wednesday afternoon now. How did the interview go?

Well it's Wednesday afternoon now. How did the interview go?

Rushfan wrote: ↑10th Apr 2024 at 5:29pm Well it's Wednesday afternoon now. How did the interview go?

Next Monday surely, otherwise they asked for interview advice after they attended?

As to advice, I haven't heard of the exact acronyms stated by Pebble, but this is they way interviews seem to be done these days. I had a lengthy interview a couple of weeks ago and a lot of the questions were to describe how I dealt with a difficult member of the public, a situation where I had to prioritise tasks, an emergency situation etc. They might also give hypothetical situation or situations about safeguarding, what would you do if a parent wanted to disclose a serious allegation about someone with you, how would you handle it if a child came into a room where you are working, closed the door and began to tell you about something. The school's safeguarding policy should help you with these questions.