- Why do you think Personal Assistants in Care are important?
- Why do you enjoy working as a Personal Assistant in Care?
- What tasks did you do for your last employer?
- Are there any caregiving tasks that you feel uncomfortable doing?
- What do you believe the most important qualities are for a Personal Assistant to have?
- What do you think you could bring to this role?
You are here:
- Home
- Employment Process
Step 3: Prepare for interviews
Choose who to interview
Once you have received responses from PAs, you should review their applications or CVs and shortlist the candidates that meet your criteria, deciding who you want to interview. To help you do this, you could use the job description and person specification to rate the applications.
You must ensure that you do not discriminate against anyone on the grounds of protected characteristics – these include age, race, gender or sexual orientation. If you need any further information around this, you can contact ACAS who can offer free and confidential advice.
When you have decided which PAs you would like to interview, you should contact them and arrange for them to meet you for an interview.
What to ask candidates
To make sure you are prepared for the interview and can make it as worthwhile as possible, you should prepare a list of questions that you want to ask the candidates.
These questions could be a mix of general questions about the PA’s own skills and values, and more specific questions such as setting a scenario and asking the PA how they would deal with it.
Example questions to ask at interviews
- Do you have any hobbies?
- What are your core values?
- How would previous clients describe you as a Personal Assistant?
- Have you ever worked with a difficult client? How did you deal with this?
- Recall a time you were saddened by your client’s condition. How did you deal with this?
- Give an example of when you faced a difficult problem and describe how you dealt with it
- What would be your approach if your employer showed signs of low mood?
- What would be your reaction if you found out a colleague behaved badly towards an employer?
- If an employer became seriously ill while with you, what would you do?
- Do you have any experience with...?