Auditors Jobs Interview Series Quality Assurance Framework
Preparing for an interview series Tips and Hints
We are continuing our articles of informative Tips that helps candidates with their preparation for interviews.
In our previous blog post on improvement roles we outlined some of the reasons why you would like to take up the role of an Auditor in a Quality Assurance Team. If you haven't had a change to read that yet please take some time to now by going to Gardner Recruitment Tips for QA Auditors jobs
There are quite a lot of these types of jobs around because the need for skilled and able social workers who can aid the local authority with this vital task is increasing. The Job descriptions for auditors in Adult and Children & Families Services may not appear familiar to what you might be used to seeing when applying for a front line social work locum practitioner position. That doesn’t mean that you should not apply for the for the job, it just means you need to think about the wording of the job description and your transferable skills.
In this article, we will look at how you would incorporate Quality Assurance Framework and Quality Management Systems (QA/QMS) into your answers at interview
When you describe your experience, or skills of knowledge of Quality Assurance and Quality Management Systems you may want to clarify what you mean by them, which is important as this is an improvement role. We would suggest you do your own research and you can start by looking at the definitions and examples we provide.
A great place to start to understand Quality Assurance and specifically the quality standards that support them is NICE - the National Institute for Care and Health Excellence. This is a go to place for social work Adult standards, in fact they set the quality standards which CQC the Care Quality Commission uses for their benchmarking and registration processes.
When answering a question about improvement processes you might begin with the standards that underpin a Quality Assurance Framework, and at NICE they list the following you could prepare with:
“Quality standards help you improve the quality of care you provide or commission. Use them to:
• identify gaps and areas for improvement
• understand how to improve care
• demonstrate you provide quality care
• commission high-quality services.”
When thinking about your transferrable skills and how you have used or applied quality standards in your work try to incorporate simple examples. Make sure the examples you give are to the point and appropriate to the service areas you have worked in. Show how your practice has been informed by the QA framework and standards. Give examples of changes in team culture, practice and ways of working. Link how your use of standards has shown improvement for service users and give examples of customer feedback or performance data that supports this.
As social workers, we are trained to be analytical and when being interviewed we sometimes forget this skill. It is actually important that you are analytical in interviews, be curious, tease out what is being asked by doing what you do best, relationship based practice.
These are some tips and suggestions, please do your own research to gather information for your interview and let us know how you get on. If you need more help with coaching in interviewing skills get in touch.
For those of you who would like to know more about CQC and their standards why not take our free 5 hours video training workshop on Setting up a Supported Living Scheme Business where we go through all of the CQC regulations for care providers and registered managers.