Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 52: How to get

an assistant psychologist post – Contextual admissions, with Dr

Alistair Teager and Anna Lee

Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. How to get an assistant psychologist post is one of the most common questions I am asked.

I am so excited about this very modern way that one trust are going about recruiting their assistant psychologists and wanted to share it with you.

In this episode I am joined by Dr Alistair Teager and Anna Lee.

I hope you find the episode useful.

The Highlights:

• • (00:28): Welcome and intro to the episode
• • (01:49): Intro to my guests
• • (02:45): Anna’s background
• • (05:08): Anna’s day to day duties
• • (06:09): Dr Alistair’s background
• • (10:18): The wonderful diversity of this career
• • (11:34): Traditional Assistant Psychologist recruitment processes
• • (12:30): Moving towards contextual applications
• • (12:59): Health Education England’s initiative
• • (14:01): More information on the Salford applications process
• • (15:43): How long does change take in the NHS?
• • (17:31): What’s it like to see a job like this advertised?
• • (20:00): Reflecting on Anna’s application
• • (20:29): The importance of self-reflection in this career
• • (21:08): The application process by itself is still useful
• • (22:03): A cringe worthy story from Marianne
• • (23:30): Each job advert should be different and bespoke
• • (27:23): Adding humanity, reducing ambiguity and reducing anxiety.
• • (30:57): Aiming for long-term employees
• • (34:45): The actual interview process
• • (39:35): Recruitment from the hiring manager’s perspective
• • (43:23): Top tips for any other recruiters wanting to include more contextual admissions
• • (47:54): How to contact Alistair
• • (49:11): Summary and close

Links:

Dr Alistair Teager is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajteager

Dr Alistair’s email address: Alistair.Teager@nca.nhs.uk

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(Singing).

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, hope you are okay and enjoying the festive season so far, if you're listening to this in December. So I think that it is fair to say it can feel pretty tricky to get relevant experience, especially what many consider the golden nugget of assistance psychologist experience in this day and age. It was certainly tricky even in my day, let alone now.

So when I was on socials recently, it really took my attention that one employer is doing something that seems a little bit different in terms of the way they recruit and the way they interview people for these posts. And we're talking about contextual admissions, which is something big and important in the world of psychology right now, so it's lovely to see it coming out in assistant non-qualified positions, as well as in training places and beyond. So it's a guest episode today, it's our first trio episode, so I hope you find it really useful. I'll look forward to catching you on the other side.

Welcome along to today's episode of the Aspiring Podcast, I really want to welcome and introduce you to Dr. Alistair Teager and Anna Lee. Hi guys.

Hi.

Hi there.

Thank you so much for coming along, and as I've mentioned in the intro already, there's a couple of reasons why I wanted to bring you both along here. So Alistair caught my attention, on Twitter, actually, because you were part of what looks like quite a pioneering recruitment process in your trust, and that's a recruitment process for assistant psychologists that Anna has gone through, so I thought it'd be really, really interesting to have a chat about that, and potentially the future of recruitment in psychology would be a really nice idea, but also it's always lovely to hear a little bit about both of you and your journeys to being where you are at right now. So if we could start with that, initially, that would be brilliant. So Anna, let's go with you first, if that's okay. Could you tell us a little bit about how you got to be where you're at right now?

Yeah, absolutely. So I did my undergraduate degree in straight psychology at the University of Liverpool. In my gap just before I did my undergrad I went out into Nepal and did some volunteer work, working in schools and orphanages, so that was very much... Before I'd probably realised it was obviously a very psychological focus. So then within my undergrad I had a broad range of modules, but forensic psychology was the one I was most interested by, so I went on to do a master's in that. Which I then began working in a secure psychiatric unit for about a year and a half, I think. So I did bank work, so I was able to do work on the medium secure, the low secure, and the psychiatric intensive care unit, which I think is, it was a really, really good choice, actually, in the end, doing bank work, because you get such more of a broad experience.

And then I started making the jump to applying for assistant posts, and having worked in a very forensic field for about a year and a half I'd basically just decided I wanted to try something a little bit different. And neuropsychology was something that I was very interested in in my undergrad, but I'd always maybe thought it was a little bit further out of my reach. But actually, when it of came down to it, and reading the job spec, and then going through the interview process, and then being successful and getting a job as an assistant psychologist in neuropsychology, the support that you actually get once you're there, and suddenly that barrier wasn't really as much of a barrier anymore. Yeah, so I went through a very forensic route, but ended up in neuro at the moment, which I'm really, really enjoying.

Oh, thank you so much for sharing. Could you tell us a little bit about what you do within your day-to-day role, if that's okay, Anna?

Yeah, absolutely. So currently I'm in an outpatient service, so I'm working in the non-epileptic attack disorder team. So it's essentially for individuals who experience seizures or momentary loss of consciousness, or involuntary movements that aren't caused by any neurological deficit in the brain, so it can be from past experiences, trauma, physical elements. So it's essentially a big pressure build up over time, so it's providing psychological therapy to those individuals. At the moment I'm currently facilitating an online course, so it's a psychoeducational course, basically just reviewing need management strategies for them to try and help manage their seizures and just educating them a bit more about the condition.

It sounds amazing, and I'm sure you're such a useful resource for the team, but also for the clients you serve. Thank you so much for sharing. Alistair, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to be where you are, please?

Yeah, yeah, of course. So yeah, I suppose I didn't fall into clinical psychology until relatively late on, similarly I did an undergrad at Liverpool, fair while before Anna did. And I was interested in the crowd behaviour side of things, I was also a bit of forensic, I was interested in there, but I just didn't really know what I wanted to do at that stage. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford to do a master's, I sold my car and my family were able to support me to a degree. So I ended up doing performance psychology at Edinburgh. I play a fair bit of sport, I'm considering sport psychology, considering PE teaching, I thought I wanted something quite broad.

It was only really when I was up there that I met a lot of different people doing different things, I had people from business, people from the arts, people from sport, and a good friend of mine, Sophie, she was going down the clinical route, and it was only as we were talking a bit more about that I was like, well actually I could go down that route, and the sports psychology side seems quite hard, the clinical psychology side seems quite hard too, but I might get paid to do it, and it seems a bit easier to, I suppose, get the placement. So I suppose big thanks to Sophie for pointing me in the right direction, really.

And then yeah, then I was on the treadmill, trying to find AP posts. As a teenager going into my early 20s I'd done a fair bit of data entry, I'd done some reception work and administrative work in the NHS, my mom was a nurse in the NHS and worked her way up to management, so I was quite privileged in terms of being able to be a bit of an NHS brat and find my way into bank jobs. I also worked for Sure Start, so the labour initiative, which became First Steps, and that was my in.

So I only had one AP interview before getting my first post, and that was in First Step Psychological Service. That was in Stoke, it was outside where I lived, so they didn't know me, but I was really fortunate to know the service and the type of people that I'd be working with. That temporary contract ended, couldn't get another AP post, did an audit for a homelessness team for a couple of months, and then I suppose found myself applying for a neuropsychology job down in Oxford. And that's when I found a bit more of a mix of what I liked. I didn't realise that psychological and medical model and how that worked together, or sometimes trying to pull them together. Yeah, and it was from there that I really felt, this is definitely where I want to go, because even that point I was like, is this for me? I wasn't sure.

I got on at Manchester, trained at Manchester, really enjoyed that. Did an older adult placement at Salford Royal, and then never really left, ended up doing the specialist placement there. And since that time I've worked a bit in community neuro rehab, I've worked within the epilepsy service, and also non-epileptic attack disorders, and then I spent a good couple of years working in major trauma, so major physical trauma, including spinal injuries, brain injuries. And then following on from that, I got a consultant neuropsychologist post working mainly in acute neuro rehab, doing a little bit of outpatients, but then I suppose overseeing people working in stroke rehab, major trauma.

And then just as an aside, as a result of, I suppose, my experience in neuropsychology and spinal, as of next week I'm going out to Ukraine with the World Health Organisation and helping set up a spinal cord injury and brain injury unit in Rivne. So I suppose that's going to be a bit of short term work, I'm going to do a few stints out there. But I suppose it's just for the pod, really, that there's a number of different experiences that I've got over the years that have led me to where I am and what I'm going to do in the next six months that I feel really grateful for, really, so hopefully that gives a bit of, hopefully, a snapshot of some of the things I've done.

Yeah, it really does, and it really shows the diversity of this career of ours, but also the privilege to be able to go out to the Ukraine and help people, specifically at this time. Not an easy thing to do, but I'm sure it'll be richly rewarding for you and for the people that you'll be working with as well.

Yeah, I think so. At this moment in time it's a bit of an unknown quantity, there's a lot of work to be done. I'm looking forward to just getting my feet on the ground and getting an understanding of it, and then from that point, I think going into January, February, and March, I've got a bit more of an idea of what needs to be done and what we could recommend.

Brilliant. Do you know how long you'll be there for?

I'm contracted until the end of March, but I'm doing a week before Christmas, and then two weeks in January, two weeks in February, two weeks in March, and then doing my NHS job in between.

Okay, so you're flying back and forth?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay. Well, I hope it goes brilliantly well.

Thank you, yes, appreciate that.

And we'll be all really hoping that great things are able to happen due to your work. So yeah, recruitment processes in psychology, could you give us a little bit of an overview of what they were like before, if that's okay?

Yeah, I suppose from my side, from a manager side, we not change what we do, particularly. The job description, in person spec, was usually pretty standard, but the more you look at it, it feels a bit more exclusive when you see it through a different lens, there's often an onus on achieve this in your undergrad, oh, have you done a master's? That's more points, have you got this experience? And as an assistant in psychology, that's more points. So it felt quite academic based, and I suppose didn't take into account contextual factors, which I think more and more in clinical psychology we're talking about, and I think that's where, on social media and with some colleagues who are driving the forefront of that stuff, we really wanted to think about changing that.

In addition to that, in the last couple of years, myself and a couple of my colleagues, Georgia Dunning in particular, and Nadine Merzer, we've been looking at ethnicity in neuropsychology referrals, but also staffing. And we recognise that our staffing at Salford was not representative of the population we were serving, and actually that's really important to do. So that was, I suppose, some of the setting conditions for us to evaluate it.

And then I was made aware that Health Education England had been given, or worked towards getting, a pot of money, and that was explicitly aimed at improving access for aspiring clinical sites, from perhaps underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds, to get paid experience, because again, the dilemma is there's a lot of honorary posts, and some of them exploitative, some of them aren't AP posts at all, and then how do you get experience without getting experience? So I suppose what we did is tried to whack in an application, see how it went, and then fallowing on from that it really gave us a bit of an incentive and legitimised us trying to change what we were doing for the better.

Thank you, that's a really useful overview. So how has it been going for you, and how long have you been doing it for?

Yeah, so I think we've got two strands to this, really. We offer undergrad placements to a local university, and I think that was a nice little trial run, to start asking them to not talk about what grades they got at A level, to not talk about how they've been doing in their first year and second year, but to talk about their contextual factors, personal or secondhand experience of stuff, their values, things that make them them, rather than what the person spec says, or what they think the job should be. So we've probably been doing that, and increasing that over 2, 3, 4 years.

And then since, I think we got the funding for the post-honours in maybe last September, and so from that point myself and my colleague Selena Makin really got on the case of it. It took quite a while to pull the various elements to the recruitment process together, but again, because we'd been given new funding, it legitimised it, and we were then able to engage with our equality, diversity, and inclusion team, with the recruitment team itself, with a few other people, to try and, I suppose, provide a bit more of a rounded perspective, due the hard yards, to make it easier further down the line. Because sometimes you just don't have the time to change processes, so I think for us it was really useful to do, and now we're trying to see how it cascades out. Most of our assistant posts are adopted in a very similar process, and we're trying to think about things in a different way when it comes to qualified posts as well.

When we're trying to make changes specifically in the NHS there can be a lot of additional paperwork and meetings, and meetings to have meetings, and it can all be quite stressful, and even knowing the right people to call can be really difficult. How did HR and recruitment respond to your requests to think about changing things?

Yeah, it was a bit slow at times. Anyone who's worked in the NHS knows that there's a lot of bureaucracy at times, and a lot of processes. But I think because Salford were quite keen to improve diversity across the board, and we're quite, I suppose, trend setters in a number of ways, management we're on board, so as soon as management were on board we were like, well actually let's run with this. So yeah, I think it was a bit slow at times, and arranging meetings and gathering information took time, and for myself and Selena in particular, finding time in our diary to do this, or getting permission to move things, or do different things, was also a bit of a challenge, but I suppose what we are seeing now is people are starting, like yourself, hearing about what we're doing, getting in touch via email, and we've done quite a lot of the work already so they don't have to, they just go, here's the precedent, can we try and replicate this? Which is great for us, we're changing practise.

Incredible, it's very inspirational as well, so well done to you and to the people that are in your team as well. How was it for you then, Anna, spotting this application, this job advert that probably looked a little bit different than the ones that you'd been seeing beforehand?

Yeah, absolutely that's it. I think initially, I'm not sure I'd realised about the following stages, but first if I was to think just about the written application, firstly giving emphasis on drawing on your personal experiences and how that informs your own psychological skills and knowledge, I think that... Actually a night of quite a hot topic, of psychologists and therapists not having their own personal challenges, but actually how these things can actually make how you approach situations more effective. So that stigma around it, I think it was really good to see something that was a bit more representative of actually drawing on your personal experiences and how you can use that to inform your practise.

So yeah, I think with other posts I hadn't really, I just focused on my skills I knew I had, and positives and relating them to the job spec, but I'd never really thought about drawing on my personal experiences, when obviously there's so many rich skills that you obtain outside of work and outside of clinical settings that you can absolutely transfer into clinical settings and use these real life experiences to inform your approach. I also think it made me massively think outside the box in terms of how I responded. So I think I spoke about things that had it not asked me to explicitly draw on these experiences, I definitely wouldn't have mentioned in an application.

So for example, something to do with the interdependence between health and mental health, so physical health and mental health, so I think I drew on secondary experiences of supporting individuals with physical disabilities, and how you witness the process of being passed around, and issues with diagnosis and medical gas lighting, and things like that, and that completely, what I realise now, has massively informed how I approach the role I'm in at the moment, where the process of getting a diagnosis of non-epileptic attack disorder is so long, and often individuals are gone through a completely long medical route of it potentially being epilepsy, and lots of other things.

So thinking, reflecting back to my application, drawing on that experience of my own personal experience in my family, and things like that, of seeing the process of medical gaslighting, and long term diagnosis, and what that does to an individual, yeah, massively, I definitely draw on that now, so that's one major thing that I think, probably the first thing that I noticed about the application that was different.

Brilliant. And it's just so important, isn't it? In terms of this career of ours, reflecting doesn't suddenly happen when you are on training, or when you are qualified, you need to be able to be doing it and practising it, and honing your skills in that, and your self awareness, and your inter-dynamics between even your team, it's really important stuff. And I think that's coming across loud and clear is that you're really, in Salford, you're asking for the skills that are, I think, key to being effective in a psychology role.

I think, from my perspective as well, from Anna coming through, and from subsequent rounds of AP interviews, people have actually fed back that they've found it really useful to take the time to reflect on what their values are and where they've come from, because even if they didn't get this particular job, or that particular job, it's informed what they do further down the line, and I say encouraging that was really powerful for us, because we had not done that before, we'd focused on skillset and academics. So yeah, I think for us as well, from a interviewers or recruiter side, it felt a bit more inclusive, but it felt like a nicer process, rather than just starting off with that Q&A, it is more of a, right, we've got a sense of them, we can use that as a jumping off point now, rather than, oh they answered that question okay. You know what I mean?

Yeah, definitely, and it's definitely making me think about my experience of applying for qualified roles in psychology as well, and seeing them across the same trust, it literally is just copied and pasted, there's not even anything bespoke about that particular role, which rather embarrassingly led to me going to an interview thinking that the service was one type of thing, I thought it was an inpatient unit, because it said IPU, because nowhere in any of the literature had it discussed what an IPU was, it's actually an integrated practise unit. But because I wasn't already in that trust, how was I to know that?

So I went along thinking I was going, really embarrassing, thinking I was going for an interview for an inpatient unit for 10 to 17 year olds, which I thought, oh that's quite cool, because I was working in a cam service at the time, but thankfully I'd gone in for a chat before, a couple of days before the interview, and I just thought, this doesn't seem quite right, I'm sure this isn't children. And I asked the question, "Where are the inpatient units?" And they gave me some, "Oh, a few miles away," and I was like, what? What Is this job? So it made me look awful, but actually it's the recruitment processes, because it was the copy and paste job description, which told you nothing about the role.

And I think that's something we wanted to speak to as well, particularly people like Anna without the AP experience before, what's an AP? What does that job look like? What's reflection? What's an application supposed to look like? So that's where, I suppose, when we're thinking about our novel recruiting, we're not the first to do some of these things, we've pulled on other job descriptions, we pulled on other ideas, particularly from the likes of the class clinical psych on Twitter, and Will Curvis from up at Lancs, Lancs has done a lot of interesting stuff around that.

But we thought, well actually let's put a supplementary document on here which talks about the department, let's get one of our APs to write a few paragraphs as to what her day looks like, let's tell them what we want for our process so they can write it in that way, rather than dipping your toe in the water and going, oh I don't know, but I'm just going to send this. Or I've recruited a lot of people, cut and paste the application from one into another. It's trying to how do we, I suppose, guide people to what we want without them thinking oh, I need to get this application in ASAP, because they'll close it.

So yeah, I think, like I say, the big first up stuff was trying to change our job description in person spec, so we dropped the MSC as being desirable criteria, we dropped two one. We appreciate that a lot of say D clins says two, one minimum, but we're like, well actually, unless you know why people got a two two, or a two one, it's still a high level of academic functioning. We don't care about A levels, A levels are a long time ago. We also want to, I suppose, speak up the fact that you don't need to have had clinical experience to have relevant experience.

So changing that wasn't, for us in our trust that wasn't that hard, we were able to do that with support. Adding the supplementary document was relatively easy once we talked about, well, it was easy once we got the terminology signed off, that was probably the hardest thing, thinking about what's okay to say, what's not okay to say, what's too leading, what's not leading enough. We don't get it right every time, and people might not think that's appropriate, but we've tried to be as good as possible at this moment in time, and I suppose you will have seen on social media as well, we wanted to put names to faces, so we've run webinars in the middle, once the job's out we've offered a webinar that people can dial to for free and, again, hear about our department, but also the people who are going to be working with, what's their journey like, what do they do?

Make it a bit more personable and accessible, because, I suppose as a part of this, everyone wants to talk about their journey, because everyone's is different. People might see me in my position and hear my accent and think, oh well, he's a privileged white male. Well, that may be true right now, but my family might have worked very hard to put me in a position, I'm still a first generation university attender, but you wouldn't see that from meeting me, but if you asked me about my values, you'll probably find out a bit more.

So yeah, they are just a few of the things, I suppose, I might have deviated massively for what we're talking about initially, but I think we feel, I suppose, comfortable in the fact that we feel more like we're doing the right thing now, and bringing three people in a nicely rounded way, rather than getting AP one, who's just like AP two, who's just like AP three.

Yeah, and I think you're adding the humanity, the compassion, reducing the ambiguity and the anxiety as well. You're saying, this is the kind of people that we think might potentially be able to be great psychologists, but it might not be the kind of criteria that you're used to measuring yourself up against. And you've touched on application numbers as well. I definitely was in the camp where you'd see on NHS jobs, perhaps on your way to work, or you'd get an email, I was quite old, so I'd get an email before I went to work that there was an alert, and you'd think, oh brilliant, I'll get home tonight and I'll do that. But then I was competing against people who haven't got jobs and had applied while I was at work, and so by the time I got home to be able to apply, the job had closed within a few hours. Have you increased your quota of applicants?

Yeah, we've tried to speak to that really, we left the job open for two weeks, pretty standard, we didn't cap it at a certain number. But I suppose what we did need to do is make sure that, for the health education England post, that there was some screening that people were eligible. So OnTrack, which is, I suppose, the platform that you use a lot in the NHS, you could put a few questions at that point. So yeah, when we put it OnTrack, there's the option to do some screening questions, so we had a few in there that were very relevant to the post, and that was have you had any previous experience? Have you graduated? Have you got graduate basis for registration? Because if you don't have those, we could have got hundreds and hundreds.

Similarly, we were also trying to make sure that people took the time to read the job advert, read the supplementary information, because we wanted them to write the application as we've asked. And I know it sounds daft but we don't want someone to just press send straight away, we want them to get to know us, and get to know what we want. So we did do some things that might have reduced the numbers overall, God forbid what we'd have got if we'd have just not done anything. It's a difficult thing to say, but we had 130 applicants for one post, and they were the ones that we'd screened. So it was the right thing to do, it took more time when it came to the other side of things, but I think it just feels appropriate for the profession we're in, and the ethos of, I suppose, bringing people up. So yeah, it can be longer winded, but we're invested in it, so that's okay.

Yeah, and I think having sometimes been in trainee roles, and assistant roles, and even qualified roles, sometimes you can just feel like another donut on the production line, whereas you saying, I'm actually okay with giving a day to screen and look at these 100 applications, because I want to make sure that we're a good fit for you, and that you're a good fit for us, that's just about respect, and treating each employee as really important, because you don't want someone to be in a role six months and disappear, you want them to love the job, but you also want to love them in the job, and so that they can stay for a longer period of time and get the best for themselves, but the best for you guys too.

Yeah, I'll quickly speak to that, because I'd like to get Anna's opinion on this as well, but yeah, I think we're wanting to pull people through into neuropsychology, and neuropsychology sometimes people think, well it's all about testing and numbers, I suppose you wanted to put a bit more of a human side on our profession as well. But we've got a really good record itself, bringing people through as APs who maybe come back to us as trainees, but if trainees come in they often come back to us as qualified, and we really like that, I suppose, that loyalty and that culture within our department, so hopefully this just adds to something we've got already. But yeah, it'd be interested to hear Anna's opinion, because I'm very biassed, because I've been in that department since I qualified.

Yeah, no definitely, and just to add as well on what you just said before, Alistair, I hadn't actually thought about the brochure that you'd put together, the team had put together, for the application, but actually that section in there about the day in the life of an AP was really, really insightful, and obviously something that we'd never really seen before. I'm in loads of different Facebook groups of assistant psychologists sharing what their job does, and giving each other advice on interviews, and things like that. But to actually see it written out, to see if it was a role you'd be interested in yourself.

And I think that was reflected in the webinar as well, because when you're at this point, as both of you have mentioned, trying to get into your first assistant post, and making lots of different applications, you forget as much is actually, is this a job that I want to do? Rather than it just being, this is an AP position, this is experience I need, so I think having those stages, and having that webinar explaining the trust values, and the department, and seeing who you'd be working with, and things like that, it's as much about understanding whether you'd want to work for that team, just as much as do I absolutely want this job?

But as far as once you're actually in the department, yeah, it's what I touched on before, it's not as much about, yeah, it just wasn't as much of a jump as what I'd expected. It obviously is neuropsychology, and while I'm not doing testing, and things like that, as much at the moment, the support from supervision is amazing. There's lots of clinicians, even if outside of your supervision, it's a very close knit department, and there's lots of opportunity to work with and consult other clinicians about things. And as well the peer supervision, I think, is a massive thing in the department, there's lots of assistants. And I think definitely peer reflection and peer supervision is one thing that I potentially hadn't really thought about as much before, but I'm not sure I could... Yeah, it definitely makes the role a lot easier having that support there from other people who are going through your experiences.

It really does, I was fortunate to also be part of a very large team of assistant psychologists, and it was just incredible. Even being able to have really informal chats over lunch was just really, really powerful stuff. And then I then went to a role where I was the only assistant psychologist, I just felt so lonely in comparison, didn't even have a desk or a chair, it was really, really difficult. So yeah, it's absolutely a lot to be gained from peer supervision and just companionship at the same level of journey that you are at as well. Could you tell us briefly whether the interview was any different to ones you'd been to before, Anna?

Yeah, definitely. So in between actually the written application and the interview there was a video submission, so I'll just touch on that briefly as well, because that was completely novel to me, I'd never done that before, and probably if I was to reflect on how I felt at the time, it was maybe a bit awkward about having to do that. As well I think, when you are an aspiring clinician, or when you are a clinician, you'd like to think that you hold a lot of values, so trying to refine it just to a select few that really means something to you, but also you think would fit well within the team that you might be working in, and the trust, that was really interesting, I think, as well.

There's only so much you can put in words, so it gave you the opportunity to get across some more nonverbal skills, so showing your enthusiasm, and giving a bit more of your personality across, I think, was really valuable about having that stage as well, and even common factor skills, so body language and tone of voice, and even down to thinking about your background, if you're doing virtual sessions, and things like that. So yeah, that video stage was another good one.

And then the interview stage. So they went, I think you referred to it as a selection event, Alistair, didn't you? Yeah, I'm getting a nod. Yeah, so the selection event, it's nothing I'd ever experienced before. I'd had a few different interviews for psychology jobs and non-psychology jobs, and I think in more of the business career you hear about assessments centre days, and things like that, but interviews had always been a one-on-one experience for me, I'd never sort been able to see essentially who you're up against in that situation.

So going into that group, so I'll explain how they did it. So it was two groups, I think, of maybe five applicants, and one clinician in each call, maybe an assistant as well, it's all a bit of a blur now, but yeah, and they asked one question, basically put it up for debate in the first group, and gave the floor to us have a discussion about it, and then in the next group it was a different question. So thinking about the questions themselves, they definitely mimicked the inclusive process, because I'd prepared, I think, so much about neuropsychology, and was quite worried, maybe, that it was going to be very, very neuro. I do have neuro experience from what I've done in my undergrad, but that was the most recent thing.

But actually they were based around ethical dilemmas, and I think as well the other one was more of a contemporary issue, so it was something that you could absolutely answer if you're a person who's gone through this process and who doesn't have prior experience in neuropsychology, or a prior assistant post. So yeah, even just the questions were a good learning experience, but also they fell in line with what was expected.

But then the actual process of being in these group situations I actually really enjoyed. I think you're so eager in an interview to show off all your knowledge and think about all of your previous experiences, and things like that, but actually this is similar to the video stage where it just gave you more of an opportunity to show off a whole other range of skills. So it was as much about answering the question and demonstrating your knowledge, and demonstrating how you come to your answer, and different things like that, but I think actually it was just as much about demonstrating your interpersonal skills, and your nonverbal feedback, and active listening skills. And it was interesting to see actually how it was, I feel, just as much about letting others speak. So as I said, you want to show off everything you know, but equally you're in a group situation, so yeah, I think it's an opportunity where you can really show compassion for others, and allowing other people to demonstrate their skills as well, and give their opinions.

Most definitely. I'm sorry, carry on.

No, I was just going to say validating other people's thoughts and adding on them if you had anything else to add.

Sorry, it's really nice to hear from my side. Yeah, is it okay if I just... I suppose what you've got here is Anna's perspective, and what's really nice for me is Anna and I haven't really spoken about this, but how it works in parallel with what we wanted to do, the asking the applicants to submit a short three-minute video, talk about their values, with also a link to an online resource where you can do a value source and exercise in line with acceptance and commitment therapy, it's in line with therapeutic approaches, it's in line with theories, and we got a sense of seeing, what do they look like? How do they talk about this? What's their experience? So that was really useful. We used that actually as, we'd long listed, and this was our shortlisting way of going about it, so getting people down to that last 10, 12, it was something like that, I know it wasn't a massive group.

But that was a really useful thing for us, because we were able to send it to them, so it was pre-prepared, it wasn't as... Well, it was probably anxiety-provoking in a very different way. But it was something that we wanted to try, because we never tried it before. It gave us a chance to think about it over time and confer with each other about what we wanted. But I think we wouldn't have been able to do it without using the, again, I referenced it previously, the Lancs D clin psy competency framework, which is publicly available, so it's not something that's a secret. But we wanted to use something from a course that's quite inclusive already, so it just enabled us to, I suppose, start thinking about things in terms of competencies, not experiences and skills explicitly.

And then similarly we wanted to go down the line of, [inaudible 00:41:28] call it interview, we didn't want to call it assessment centre, so selection event became our terminology. So we had one qualified and one assistant in each group, so we've almost got someone at a peer level, who's... I'm a fair way away from being an AP, I don't know as much as what it's like, it's good to have someone else's perspective on that. And then almost swapping and then re-rating based on the competencies. And then I think we had just a very brief interview in the afternoon, and that was, interestingly, I think that was me and Selena going, "We've got to do some sort of one-on-one, because that's what we always do." And I think in hindsight it was relatively useful, but I don't think it added as much as we'd thought, because we'd actually got more than enough from the other two. So I think in this next round of this funding we're not going to do that, we're going to perhaps just add a little bit to the video rather than having another interview element.

But yeah, it's really nice to hear Anna talking about the group discussions, because we didn't know how that was going to go. We wanted something that would be supportive, so not he who shouts loudest, but actually how do people interact? How do they work in a group situation? Because again, a lot of things I always think about with this process is, we want people to go to the D clin, so they need to show D clin competencies, and if they've already got some of that naturally from their context, then we can go and work towards that. So I think it was really nice, I'd been to D clin interviews where they'd done group tasks and I thought they did a really good job. And actually I'd done a good job at answering the question, but had I done a job of including other people? Perhaps not. So I think for me, that was a really nice adjunct to what we've done and I will do that, well we're going to do that this time around, we won't tell you what the ethical dilemmas are yet, because there might be people listening that have applied.

Yeah, thank you so much for helping illuminate some of those processes, and yeah, I've definitely done a group task as part of a couple of my D clin psy interviews, actually, but definitely got a sense of it's not the ones who speak up the most who are the ones that are going to necessarily be invited to be part of a cohort, so yeah, I think it's very interesting food for thought. Just a little bit conscious of the time, and I wonder if either or both of you could just offer a few top tips for any organisations or trusts who might be looking to try and implement some more modern inclusive recruitment processes.

I suppose Anna, I'm probably putting you on the spot here, but I suppose you'll be the type of person that's applying for these jobs. What sort of things would you want to see that would make you want to work for that trust, that firm, or apply for that course?

I think I do value a lot speaking to current assistants, if they have them in their service, and understanding what it is about their job that they do, what it is about their job that they enjoy, and reflecting that maybe a little bit in the recruitment process. Just trying to think of some other things. I think as well having different options, so like with this process, not just basing it all on written, whether it's a video, or whether it's, I think anything else, even a presentation, I think, can be valuable, so just having some sort of other aspect that's more of a verbal form. But yeah, that's what I'd say.

I suppose, I know you're a little bit biassed because you went through this and did well out of it, but that's really nice to hear, from my side. I think my top tips would be perhaps, I suppose, be less worried about doing something different. I think what we're trying to do is make this a bit of a new norm, rather than something that's novel and lesser seen. So we've done a lot of hard work, but we've based that on other people's hard work as well. I mean, what we're doing we're sharing, it's not something we're protective about, we're not trying to get the best of the best, we're just trying to do things in a right way. So thinking more about what's important in clinical psychology rather than what skills and experiences do you need, what sort of person do you want is going to be important, draw on that act stuff.

I think we've tried to speak to video submissions, or sometimes asking them, giving the APs a question or two, or letting them know, "We want you to present on your values for two minutes in the interview," that helps because I'm sure, as Anna spoke about, she prepped, she prepped for perhaps questions she thought might come up. But if we tell you what the question is, it gives you something a bit more focused. There will still be some things that we want to test you on, but I think giving some nods to the fact that you guys should know something, should get a bit of a heads-up, it can help people feel less anxious, for people perhaps on the autistic spectrum, it reduces some of the stress from that side of things because it's something that's not as uncertain as it once was.

So yeah, I would definitely try and engage with, I suppose, the EDI team. I try and link it to trust values, if you're trying to sell it to your managers, because there's usually something about inclusion and diversity at this moment in time. But yeah, just share, share, share, it feels to me like good practise at this moment. I think Anna and myself, and a couple of colleagues, might try and write this up as a bit more of a practise based example, so again, in the future people can say, "Well here's the research on it," rather than just, "This guy's done a pod."

Incredible, and that's going to be so fascinating to read. If people, until it's published, did want to get hold of the steps you've been through, how's the best way for them to do that, Alistair?

Yeah, so Twitter's reasonable, I'm @AJTeager. I've also got, I'm not protective of my work email address, it's Alistair.Teager@nca.nhs.uk. So if any professionals who wanted to change recruitment processes are interested, I appreciate some starring clinical sites might start getting in contact, so I'll be prepared for that. But yeah, feel free to ask a question, we've got some stuff we can just send out without, I suppose, as long as there's an acknowledgement that we've done some work on it, that's fine, we're not going to be precious.

Brilliant, thank you so much, and I'll make sure I pop all those details in the show notes so that people can readily and easily get hold of them. Thank you so much for your time and for all of the work that's gone into all of these processes for helping aspiring psychologists have a different journey that feels more humane, that feels more like part of the career they want to be part of, rather than just a faceless number. So yeah, it's incredible work, really inspiring, and it's definitely an AP role I would've wanted along my journey too. Thank you so much for your time, both of you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you for having us.

Welcome back, thank you for watching, hope you found that to be as invigorating and interesting as I did to film it. Thank you very much for the time, to Dr. Alistair and Anna, and for helping us get the word out there about these important ways of recruiting in going forward in 2023. So I hope that helps you in terms of thinking about contextual admissions, and if you're an employer, then please do think about how you might be able to use the principles of contextual admissions for your next recruitment, whether that's for qualified or non-qualified staff.

If you're listening and you'd like to come along and join the free Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent, please do so. Also, don't forget there's the membership, and of course the Clinical Psychologist Collective book, and the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book. And if you've read any of those I'd love it if you'd leave us a review on Amazon, and if you have a few more moments, whether you'd be able to leave me an audio testimonial for use in the podcast, would be absolutely lovely. Thank you very much for your time and for being part of my world, take care and I'll catch you very soon.

(Singing).