The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - How to get an Assistant Psychologist job - contextual admissions - with Dr Alistair Teager and Anna Lee

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. episode. Without a memory and dread Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:33 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 a relevant experience, especially what many consider the golden nugget of assistant 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.

Starting point is 00:02:39 So it's a guest episode today. It's our first trio episode. So I hope you find it really useful. And 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 Teague and Anna Lee. Hi, guys. Hi. Hi there. Thank you so much for coming along. and as I've mentioned in the intro

Starting point is 00:03:07 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're at right now so if we could start with that um initially that would be brilliant so um Anna

Starting point is 00:03:53 let's go with you first if that's okay could you tell us a little bit about how you know how you got to be where you're at right now yeah so absolutely so I did my undergraduate degree in straight psychology at the University of Liverpool in my sort of 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 realized it was obviously a very sort of psychological focus um so then within my undergrad I had sort of a broad range of um modules but forensic psychology was the one I was most interested by so um I went on to do a master's in that um 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

Starting point is 00:04:53 psychiatric intensive care unit um which I think is it was really really good choice actually in the end doing bank work because you get such more of a broad experience and then I started sort of 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 sort of came down to it and reading the job spec and then going sort of through the interview process and then sort of getting and being successful and getting a job as an assistant psychologist in neuropsychology the support that you actually get once you're there um suddenly that barrier wasn't really um as yeah as much of a barrier in these anymore so yeah so I sort of went through a very forensic

Starting point is 00:05:55 route but um 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 any neurological deficit in the brain. So it can be from past experiences, trauma, physical ailments. So it's essentially a big sort of 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 sort of 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.

Starting point is 00:07:04 Thank you so much for sharing um 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 um so yeah I suppose I I didn't fall into clinical psychology till relatively late on I similarly I did an undergrad at Liverpool um a fair while before and I did um and I was I was interested in the crowd behaviour side of things. There was also a bit of forensics I was interested in there. 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.

Starting point is 00:07:37 I saw my car and my family were able to support me to a degree. So I ended up doing performance psychology at Edinburgh. I played a fair bit of sport, I'm considering sports psychology, considering PE teaching and I sort of 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 you know 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.

Starting point is 00:08:16 The clinical psychology side seems quite hard, too, but I might get paid to do it. And it seems a bit easier to 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. Sort of 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 you know my mum was a nurse in the 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

Starting point is 00:08:58 Sure Start sort of the labour initiative which became First Steps and that was my in um so i only had one ap interview uh for my 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 um i suppose found myself in uh applying for a neuropsychology job down in oxford and that's when i found a bit more of a mix of what i liked you know um i didn't realize sort of that psychological and medical model and how that worked together or sometimes

Starting point is 00:09:44 trying to pull them together um yeah and it was from there that i really sort of 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 sort of felt this is definitely where I want to go. Cause even that point I was like, is this for me? You know, I wasn't sure. I got on at Manchester, trained at Manchester, really enjoyed that. Did, did an older adult placement at Salford Royal um and then never really left um end 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

Starting point is 00:10:20 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, I suppose, as an an aside as a result of i suppose my experience in neuropsychology and spinal um as of next week um i'm going out to ukraine with the world health organization and helping set up um a spinal cord injury and brain injury unit in in reavener 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

Starting point is 00:11:03 i suppose it's just for for the pod really that there's a number of different experiences 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 a 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 you know the privilege to be able to go out to the Ukraine and help people specifically at this time. You know, not not an easy thing to do, but I'm sure it will be richly rewarding for you and for the people that you'll be working with as well. Yeah, I think so. You know, at this moment in time it's a bit of an unknown quantity um there's a lot of work to be done I'm looking forward to just getting my feet on the

Starting point is 00:11:50 ground and getting 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 you know brilliant do you know how long you'll be there for? I'm contracted till the end of March, but I'm doing like a week before Christmas and then two weeks in January, two weeks in February, two weeks in March and then do my NHS job in between. OK, so you're flying back and forth? Yeah. Yeah. OK, well, I hope it goes brilliantly well. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, really hoping that great things are able to happen due to your work so um yeah

Starting point is 00:12:27 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 from from my side from a manager side you know we not change what we do particularly you know um the job description and person spec was usually pretty standard but as the more you look at it it feels a bit more exclusive when you see it with through a different lens you know there's often an onus on achieve this in your undergrad oh have you done a master's that's more points um have you got this experience as an assistant in psychology well that's more points um so it it felt it felt quite academic based and i suppose didn't take into um into account contextual factors which are you know i think more and more

Starting point is 00:13:19 in clinical psychology we're talking about and i think that's where you know in on social media and with some colleagues who are sort of driving the forefront of that sort of stuff we really wanted to think about changing that um in addition to that in the last couple of years myself and uh 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 you know we recognize that our staffing at Salford was not representative of the population we were serving and actually that's 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 kind of made aware that Health Education England had been given or worked towards

Starting point is 00:14:09 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, that's 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 try to whack in an application, see how it went, and then following on from that, it really gave us a bit of an incentive and legitimized us trying to change what we were doing for the better

Starting point is 00:14:52 thank you it's a really useful overview um so how how has it been going for you and how long have you been doing it for um yeah so I think we've got two strands to this really like we've got we often undergrad 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 second-hand experience of stuff their values you know sort of things that make them them rather than what the person spec says or what they think the job should be um so we've probably been doing that and increasing that over two three four years and then since i think we got the funding for the post-anazine um maybe last

Starting point is 00:15:46 september um and so from that point myself and my colleague selena making um really got on the case of it um it took quite a while to to pull the various elements to the uh the recruitment process together but again because we've been given new funding it legitimized it and we were then able to engage with our equality diversity and inclusion team with the recruitment team itself with a few a few other people to try and i suppose provide a bit more of a rounded perspective do the hard yards to make it easier further down the line because sometimes you just don't have the time to change processes um so i think for us it was it was really useful to do and now we're trying to see how it cascades out you know most of our assistant posts are adopting 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

Starting point is 00:16:49 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 you know HR and recruitment respond to your requests to think about changing things? Yeah, it's 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 were quite, I suppose suppose trendsetters in a number of ways management were on board so as soon as management were on board we were like well actually

Starting point is 00:17:31 well let's run with this um so yeah i think it was a bit slow at times and you know arranging meetings and gathering information took took time and for myself and Selina 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're seeing now is people are starting like yourself hearing about what we're doing getting in touch via email and we've kind of done quite a lot of the work already so they don't have to they've kind of got here's the precedent can we try and replicate this which is which is great for us you know we're we're changing practice incredible it's very inspirational as well so

Starting point is 00:18:17 well done to you and to the people that are in your team as well um how was it for you then Anna spotting this application this um 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 um initially I'm not sure I'd realized about the following stages but first if I was to think just about the written written application firstly sort of giving emphasis on drawing on your personal experiences and how that sort of informs your own psychological skills and knowledge I think that actually a night of quite like a hot topic of psychologists and sort of therapists not having

Starting point is 00:19:06 their own personal challenges um but actually how these things can actually make how you approach situations more effective um so that sort of stigma around it i think it was really good to to see something that was sort of a bit more representative of actually drawing on your personal experiences and how you can use that to inform your practice um so yeah i think with um other posts i hadn't really i'd sort of focused on my skills i knew i had um 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 much 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 sort of real life experiences to inform your approach so

Starting point is 00:19:56 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, like, the interdependence between health and mental health, so physical health and mental health. So I think I drew on secondary experiences of of supporting individuals with um physical disabilities and in and how you sort of witness

Starting point is 00:20:35 the process of being passed around and and issues with diagnosis and medical gaslighting and things like that um and that completely what I realize now has massively informed how I approach the role I'm in at the moment where the diagnosis the process of getting a diagnosis of non-epileptic attack disorder is so long and often individuals are sort of gone through a completely long and medical route of it potentially being epilepsy and lots of other things so thinking sort of reflecting back to my application drawing on that experience of of my own personal experience in um in my family and things like that of seeing um the process of medical gas slicing and and long long-term diagnosis and what that does to an individual yeah massively I I definitely draw on that now so that's that's one major thing that I think

Starting point is 00:21:26 probably the first thing that I noticed about um the application that was different. Brilliant and it's just so important isn't it you know in terms of this career of ours reflecting doesn't suddenly happen you know when you're on training or when you're qualified you need to be able to be doing it and practicing it and, you know, honing your skills in that and your self-awareness and your, you know, your interdynamics between even your team. It's really important stuff. And, you know, I think that's what'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

Starting point is 00:22:16 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'd not done that before we'd focused on skill set you know and academics and so yeah I think I think for us as well from a from a interview as a recruiter side um it felt a bit more inclusive but it felt like a nicer process rather than just starting off with that Q&A you know it is more of a right we've got a sense of

Starting point is 00:22:59 them we can use that as a jumping off point now rather than oh they answered that question okay do 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 you know seeing them across the same trust 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 practice unit. But because I wasn't already in that trust, how was I to know that?

Starting point is 00:23:47 So I went along thinking I was going for an interview for an inpatient unit for 10 to 17 year olds, which I thought was 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 you know this isn't I'm sure this isn't children and I asked the question you know where are the inpatient units and they gave me some sort of oh like oh you know yeah 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 you know people like anna without

Starting point is 00:24:37 the ap experience before what's an ap you know 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 we're not the first to do some of these things we've pulled on other job descriptions and pulled on other ideas uh particularly from the likes of the i suppose class clinical psych on on on twitter and will curvis from up at lanks lx have 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

Starting point is 00:25:17 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 you know it's trying to how do we 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

Starting point is 00:25:45 i think like say the the the big first up stuff was trying to change our job description and person specs so we we dropped the msc as being desirable um desirable criteria we dropped sort of two one we appreciate that a lot of declines say 2.1 minimum but we're like well actually unless you know why people got a 2.2 or 2.1 it's 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 wanted to i suppose speak up the fact that you don't need to have had clinical experience to have relevant experience um so changing that wasn't for us in our trust that wasn't that hard we were able to do that with support um adding the supplementary document was relatively easy once we sort of talked about well it was easy once we got the

Starting point is 00:26:45 terminology uh i suppose signed off that was probably the hardest thing think about what's what's okay to say what's not okay to say what's sort of too leading what's um not leading enough you know so hopefully 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 um and i suppose you will have seen on on social media as well we we kind of wanted to put names to faces so we we've run webinars to um in the middle once the job's out we've offered a webinar that people can dial into 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 um making a bit more personable

Starting point is 00:27:33 and accessible um because i suppose as a part of this everyone wants to talk about their journey because everyone's is different you know 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 uh i'm still a first generation university attender but you wouldn't see that from from meeting me but if you ask me about my values you'll probably find out a bit more you know um so yeah there were 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 sort of thing now and bringing through people in a nicely rounded way rather than getting AP1 who's just like AP2, who's just like AP3, you know. Yeah, and I think you're adding the humanity, the compassion, reducing the ambiguity and the anxiety as well. You know, you're saying this is,

Starting point is 00:28:32 this is, you know, the kind of people that we think might potentially be able to be great psychologists, but it might not be the, you know, the kind of criteria that you're used to measuring yourself up against. And you touched on application numbers as well. I definitely was in the camp where you'd be, you know, you'd see on NHS jobs, perhaps on your way to work, where you get an email. I was quite old. So it's like, I get an email before I went to work that there was an alert, you know, and you 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 you know within a few hours. Have you increased your quota of applicants uh yeah we we've tried to uh speak to that really we we left

Starting point is 00:29:28 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 sort of screening that people were eligible so on on track which is the i suppose the platform that you use a lot in the nhs you put a few questions at that point um um so yeah when we put it on track 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

Starting point is 00:30:16 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 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 you know we had a 130 applicants for one post and they were the ones that we'd screened you know so it was it was the right thing to do it 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 try and in the ethos of of uh i suppose bringing people up um so yeah it was it can be longer winded but we're invested in it so that's okay yeah and i think

Starting point is 00:31:14 having sometimes been in trainee roles and assistant roles and even qualified roles sometimes you can just feel like you know another donut on the production line. Whereas you saying, you know, 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, you know, treating each employee is 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

Starting point is 00:32:05 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 freedom inside on our profession as well but we've got a really good record at Salford of 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 we really like that I suppose that loyalty and that culture within our department um so hopefully this just adds to something we've got already but yeah it'd be interesting to hear Anna's opinion because I'm very biased because I've been in that department since I qualified yeah no definitely and just to add as well on what you

Starting point is 00:32:42 just said before Alistair I hadn't actually thought about the brochure that you'd put together um the team had put together for the application um but actually that section in there about the sort of day in the life of an AP was really really insightful and obviously nothing something that we'd never really seen before um I think I'm in loads of different Facebook groups of all assistant psychologists sharing for sort of 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, sort of trying to get into your first assistant post and making lots of different applications, you forget as much as actually, is this a job experience I need so I think having those stages and having that sort of

Starting point is 00:33:45 webinar explaining sort of 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 so yeah but as far as once you're actually in the department yeah it's what i said about touched on before just it's not um 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 um while i'm not sort of doing testing and things like that as much at the moment, the support is there from supervision is amazing. There's lots of clinicians, even if outside of your supervision,

Starting point is 00:34:37 it's a very close-knit department and there's lots of opportunity to work with and sort of consult other clinicians about things. And as well, the peer supervision, I think is a massive thing um in the department there's lots of assistance and um yeah I think definitely sort of peer reflection and peer supervision is one thing that I potentially hadn't really thought about as much before um but I'm not sure I could um yeah it definitely makes the role a lot easier having that support there from 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 you know even being able to have really informal chats over lunch was just really really powerful stuff

Starting point is 00:35:21 and then I then went to a role where I was the only assistant psychologist I just felt so lonely in comparison I didn't even have a desk or like a chair like it was really really difficult so yeah absolutely a lot to be gained from peer supervision and just companionship at the same level of journey that you're at as well could you tell us briefly whether the interview was any different to ones you 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 um that was completely novel to me I'd never done that before um and probably if I was to reflect on how I felt at the time it

Starting point is 00:36:05 was maybe a bit awkward about having to do that um but and as well I think when you are sort of 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 mean something to you but also you think um would fit well within the the team that you might be working in and the trust um that was really interesting i think as well there's only so many so much you can put in words um so it was able sort of gave you the opportunity to get across some more non-verbal skills so showing um your enthusiasm and giving a bit more of your personality across I think was really valuable about having that stage as well um and even sort of like common factor

Starting point is 00:36:51 skills so like body language and and tone of voice and um even down to sort of thinking about your background if you're doing um virtual sessions and things like that so yeah that that video stage was another um another good one and then the interview stage so they went I think you refer to it um as a selection event Alistair didn't you yeah I'm guessing a lot um yeah so yeah so the selection event um in it's nothing I'd ever experienced before I'd had a few different interviews for um psychology jobs and non-psychology jobs um and I think in more of the business career you hear about um assessment center days and things like that but I interviews had always been a one one-on-one um experience for me I'd never sort of been able to see essentially who you're up against in that situation um so going into that group so I'll explain how they did it um so it

Starting point is 00:37:53 was two groups I think of maybe five um applicants and one clinician um in each call maybe an assistant as well it's a bit of a blur now. But yeah, and they asked one question, basically put it up for debate in the first group and sort of gave the floor to us to have a discussion about it. And then in the next group, it was a different question. So I think 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'd done in my undergrad, but that was the most recent thing. But actually, they were sort of based around ethical dilemmas. And I think as well, the other one was more of like a contemporary issue. So it was something that you could absolutely answer if you're a person who's gone through this process

Starting point is 00:39:00 and who doesn't have prior experience in neuropsychology or a prior assistant post so yeah even just the questions um were a good good um learning experience but also not they kind of fell in line with what was expected um but then the actual process of of being in these group situations um I actually really enjoyed I think you're so eager in an interview to show off all your knowledge and um think about all of your previous experiences and things like that but actually this is kind of similar to the um 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

Starting point is 00:39:46 showing like demonstrating your knowledge and and demonstrating sort of how you come to your answer and different things like that but I think actually it was just as much about demonstrating sort of your interpersonal skills and your non-verbal feedback and sort of 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 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 um yeah now I was just gonna say sort of um validating um validating other people's thoughts and adding

Starting point is 00:40:34 on them if you had anything else to add sorry it's really nice here from my side yeah it's okay if I just um 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. You know, the asking the applicants to submit a short three minute video, talk about values with also a link to an online resource where you can do a value sorting exercise in line with acceptance and commitment therapy it's kind of in line with therapeutic approaches it's kind of line with sort of theories and we got a sense of seeing what do they look like what do they how do they talk about this what's their experience and so that was really useful we

Starting point is 00:41:22 used that actually as um we'd long listed and this was our short listing uh way of going about it so getting people down to that last sort of 10 12 it was something like that wasn't i know it wasn't a massive group but that was a really useful thing for us because we 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 pre-prepared it wasn't as well it was probably anxiety provoking in a very different way but it was um 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 be able to do it without using the again i referenced it previously

Starting point is 00:42:02 the langsteeinton sci 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 um so it just enabled us to i suppose uh start thinking about things in terms of competencies not experiences and skills explicitly um yeah and then similarly we wanted to go down the line of perhaps what to call an interview we didn't want to call it assessment center so selection event became our terminology and yeah so we had like um one qualified and and one assistant in each group so we've almost got someone at a peer level who sort of you know i'm a fair way away from being an ap i don't know

Starting point is 00:42:45 as much as what it's like it's good to have someone else's perspective on that and then almost like swapping and then sort of 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 um but yeah i'm really it's really nice to hear

Starting point is 00:43:30 anna talking about the group discussions because we didn't know how that was going to go we wanted something um 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 was thinking about with this process is we want people to go to the declan so they need to show declan competencies and if they work 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 declan interviews where they'd done group tasks and I thought I'd done a really good job.

Starting point is 00:44:07 And actually, I'd done a good job at answering the question, but had I done a good job of including other people? Perhaps not. So I think for me, that was a really nice adjunct to what we've done and we'll 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

Starting point is 00:44:28 um and yeah i've definitely done a group task um as part of a couple of my declines i interviews actually but definitely got a sense if it's not the ones who speak up the most who are the ones that are going to necessarily be invited um to be part of the cohort so yeah i think it's very interesting food for thought um just a little bit conscious of the 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 top a few top tips for any organizations or trusts who might be looking to try and implement some more modern inclusive recruitment processes. I suppose Anna and 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

Starting point is 00:45:12 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 sort of 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 um and sort of reflecting that maybe a little bit in in the recruitment process um just trying to think of some other things um i think as well yeah having having different options so like with this process not just basing it all on written um whether it's a video or whether it's i think anything else um even like a presentation i think can be valuable so just having some sort of other aspect that's that's more of like a verbal verbal form but yeah that's that's what I'd say

Starting point is 00:46:12 I suppose I know you're a little bit biased because you went through this and did well out of it but that's really nice to hear from from my side i think i think i suppose my my top tips would be to perhaps um i suppose be less worried about being doing something different um i think what we're trying to do is make this a bit of a new norm rather than uh something that's novel and lesser seen so you know we we've done a lot of hard work but we've based that on other people's hard work as well so i mean what we're doing we're sharing it's not something we're protective about we're not we're not sort of trying to get the best of the best we're just trying to do things in a right way so i think thinking more about what's important in clinical psychology rather than i

Starting point is 00:47:07 suppose what skills and experiences do you need what sort of person do you want is going to be important you know draw on that act stuff um i think i think what we've tried to speak to video submissions or sometimes asking them giving um the as a question or two or letting them know we want you to present on your values for two minutes in the interview that that helps because I'm sure as Anna spoke about she prepped she prepped for perhaps questions she thought might come up well if we tell you what the question is it gives you something a bit more focused there will still be some things that we kind of want to test you on but i think giving some nod to the fact that you guys should know something um should give a bit of a heads up it can help people feel less anxious uh for people

Starting point is 00:47:57 uh perhaps on the autistic spectrum it it 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, I just share, share, share. I think it's it feels to me like good practice at this moment I think uh Anna and myself and a couple of colleagues might try and write this up as a bit more of a practice-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 you know incredible and that's going to be so fascinating to read um if people until it's

Starting point is 00:48:47 published um did want to get hold of your um of the steps you've been through how's the best way for them to do that alistair uh yeahiger at nca.nhs.uk. So if any, I suppose, professionals wanting to change recruitment processes are interested, I appreciate some star and clinical sites might start getting in contact. So I'll be prepared for that um but yeah feel free to ask a question we've got some stuff we can just send out um without i suppose as long as there's an acknowledgement we've done some work on it that's fine we're not going to be precious you know brilliant thank you so much and i'll make sure i pop all those details in the show

Starting point is 00:49:41 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 you know a faceless number um so yeah it's incredible work really inspiring and it's definitely an ap role i would have 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.

Starting point is 00:50:59 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.

Starting point is 00:51:35 Take care and I'll catch you very soon. Thank you. Psychologist Collective The Aspiring Psychologist Collective If you're looking to become a psychologist Then let this be your guide. With this podcast at your side, you'll be on your way to being qualified. It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent. My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no

Starting point is 00:53:12 perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me of confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - How to get an Assistant Psychologist job - contextual admissions - with Dr Alistair Teager and Anna Lee

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