REF IRC Only Online applications will be accepted Completed online application forms must be submitted by 12 noon (UK time)

Transcription

1 SURVEY INTERVIEWERS INFORMATION BOOKLET REF IRC Only Online applications will be accepted Completed online application forms must be submitted by 12 noon (UK time) 1 on Friday 14 th November 2014

2 CONTENTS Page 1. About us and the role 3 2. Location of posts 4 3. Am I suitable to be an interviewer? 5 4. Availability of work / working hours 6 5. Training 7 6. Pay and holidays 8 7. How to apply Recruitment process Interview Guidance Further information Nationality information 17 2

3 ABOUT US AND THE ROLE Who we are and what we do: The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) is the principle source of official information on Northern Ireland s population and socioeconomic conditions. The statistics produced by the Agency inform the policy process within Government, academic research and contribute to debate in the wider community. Survey interviewers work for NISRA s Central Survey Unit (CSU). The CSU is an integral part of NISRA and carries out social and economic surveys commissioned by Government Departments and other public bodies. It provides customers with information on which public policy is shaped, and which helps to evaluate the progress made in developing public services to meet the needs of the population. Central Survey Unit carries out both continuous (all year round) and ad hoc (one off) surveys. For further information on CSU please visit our website at What does a Survey Interviewer do? As a survey interviewer you visit addresses and make contact with the people that live there and gain their co-operation to participate in surveys. You will ask questions about their personal and family circumstances and behaviour and attitudes in relation to health, employment, education and other important issues. Nearly all of CSU surveys use the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) technique. Interviewers are provided with a small tablet computer and the information collected from respondents is recorded directly onto the tablet at the time of interview. What addresses will I visit? The addresses that interviewers visit are pre-selected and are a representative sample of the population, or some specific population (e.g. people with a disability) depending on the requirements of the specific survey. An advance letter is sent to each selected address before the interviewer calls in person. The advance letter explains the nature of the survey, how the address was selected and gives a commitment on confidentiality. 3

4 LOCATION OF POSTS Please note that this is a readvertisement of IRC which previously advertised during March and April 2014 This recruitment competition will be used to fill posts in the following locations: Antrim Armagh Ballycastle Ballymena Ballymoney Banbridge Bangor Carrickfergus Castlereagh Coleraine Cookstown Craigavon Downpatrick Dungannon Enniskillen Larne Lisburn Limavady Londonderry Magherafelt Newry Newtownabbey Newtownards Omagh Strabane Belfast North Belfast West Belfast South Belfast East On your application form you will be asked to identify which location(s) you wish to apply for. You may apply for more than one location, however you must reside within the mileage restrictions of all the locations you apply for. If you apply for more than one location, you will only be required to attend a single interview. If successful you will only be offered a post in one of your selected locations and your name will be removed from the list of successful applicants for your other chosen locations. Applicants must reside within the following mileage restrictions for their chosen locations: For Enniskillen you must live within a 30 mile radius of the Town Centre. In all other areas, you must live within a 20 mile radius of the City/Town centre. If you are successful we will use an online map to measure the distance from your home post code to the City/Town centre of location(s) that you have selected. If you live outside the mileage restrictions for any location that you selected you will be withdrawn from the area. Applications received will be held on file until demand for new interviewers arises in any City / Town. Applications will only be considered as and when demand arises, therefore you may not be invited to interview if demand does not arise in your chosen City / Town area. 4

5 AM I SUITABLE TO BE AN INTERVIEWER? Do you have a full driving licence and a car, or access to a form of transport that will allow you to travel up to 30 miles around your local area? The radius of the area that you will cover will depend on whether it is a city/town or rural location. Are you flexible in regards to the hours you can work? Are you comfortable talking to people that you do not know and calling at their homes? Would you be able to persuade reluctant people to complete surveys? Are you organised and comfortable working on your own? If you answered yes to these questions then interviewing may be the job for you. 5

6 AVAILABILITY FOR WORK / WORKING HOURS Interviewers are a unique group of employees recruited by NISRA specifically for survey work and are employed on a fee-paid basis. To assist in the planning and allocation of work, you are required to make yourself available for consideration for survey work at least 8 weeks out of each quarter. Given the nature of the work and the business conditions that CSU operates under, there is no guarantee of work being offered for any period, there is no fixed hours of work, nor are there any fixed number of weeks in which work will be offered. The offer of work is also conditional on it being completed to certain performance standards. The work is assignment-based. There are no set or fixed hours of work. You are given an allocation or quota of addresses and you are expected to manage your own time to complete each assignment within the fixed fieldwork period, usually four weeks. You must visit each address to try and achieve an interview with members of the household living at that address. To ensure that results are reliable and representative, a high level of co-operation is required (at least 65% of valid households). If you are unable to complete the interview when you first call at the address you can arrange a suitable time with the members of the household to return and complete the survey. Whilst to a large extent your hours of work will be dictated by the people you are interviewing and the areas where you work, there is flexibility in how you work and how your time is spent. The times that you plan your calls to addresses should be heavily influenced by the times when people are most likely to be available to be interviewed. For example, it will be more productive to call with people who are out at work during the day in the late afternoon/evening time. In order to achieve maximum response and meet survey deadlines, you will be required to be fully flexible when you work to fit in with times when people are available to be interviewed. This will involve you being available to work at various times of the day and evening, Monday to Saturday. The nature of the job means that your normal routine may be disrupted by the requirement to be flexible. Please consider this before you submit an application form. 6

7 TRAINING Candidates do not require specific knowledge or experience of interviewing as extensive training in this area is provided to successful candidates. Successful candidates will be required to attend induction training, at our Belfast Headquarters, in standard interviewing techniques. Approximately 40 hours training is provided spread over a four week period. The Training Programme includes the following: Induction to CSU - Introduction to the work of Central Survey Unit (1 day). Shadow Fieldwork - Accompanying and observing one of our experienced interviewers as they interview members of the public (2 days). Interviewer Skills/Computer Assisted Interviewing Training Course - This will contain lectures, discussions and practice role-play. Applicants will also be shown how to complete practice questionnaires on the laptop (5 days). Practice allocations - Each trainee interviewer is given a small allocation of addresses to complete a practice survey with members of the public. They are expected to put into practice all the training that they have received (1 week). Following the induction training, each interviewer is assigned to a Field Trainer who provides ongoing training, advice and support. You will also occasionally be required to attend mandatory briefing sessions for surveys at our Belfast Headquarters. These are usually held between the hours of 9.30 am 4.00 pm. 7

8 PAY AND HOLIDAYS Interviewers are paid at an hourly rate for all time necessarily spent on official interviewing business. The current basic hourly rate of pay is The starting rate for trainees during the probation period is 7.52 per hour. Following successful completion of the probation period, interviewers move to the basic rate of pay. Beyond the basic hourly rate of pay, there are three merit additions known as merit 1, 2 and 3 which are performance related. An interviewer s merit rating is reviewed annually and is determined by performance in the previous twelve months. The outcome of that review then determines whether or not the interviewer receives merit additions for the next twelve months. The current rates of pay including the merit additions, are as follows: Trainee rate 7.52 Basic rate 7.84 Basic rate + merit Basic rate + merit Basic rate + merit Interviewers are paid for time spent travelling to and from the working area and for time spent calling on people and interviewing. Study and other forms of administration time are also paid. Payment is made for attendance at training courses. All necessary expenses, incurred in the course of training and fieldwork, are reimbursed. An extra allowance, calculated at hourly rate +15%, is also payable for interviewing time (and associated travelling time) carried out on Saturday and after 17:00 and before 08:00 Monday-Friday. When the extra allowance is payable the hourly rates of pay increase and are as follows: Trainee rate + 15% 8.65 Basic rate + 15% 9.02 Basic rate + merit % 9.86 Basic rate + merit 2 +15% Basic rate + merit % Leave Interviewers are entitled to 28 days paid annual leave over each 12 month period. Statutory Payments Interviewers are entitled to Statutory Sick Pay, Statutory Maternity Pay or Statutory Paternity Pay providing they have met the qualifying conditions laid down by HM Revenue & Customs. No payment, other than any which may be due under statutory entitlement, will be made for any period of non-working. 8

9 Pension These posts are non-pensionable and therefore interviewers are not eligible for any of the Principal Civil Service Pension Schemes (NI). Under the Provisions of the Pensions (No.2) Act (Northern Ireland) 2008, all interviewers who are eligible must be automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme. NISRA s workplace pension scheme for automatic enrolment is the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST). The normal retirement age for the position of survey interviewer is 65, although interviewers can work beyond this age with the agreement of CSU. Probation Period The first 120 hours of interviewing constitute the probationary period, during which an interviewer s performance will be assessed over a number of different areas. Your continued employment as an interviewer is dependent on satisfactory performance during the probationary period. 9

10 HOW TO APPLY If Survey Interviewing looks like the role for you, please complete and submit an online application. Online applications can be submitted via our website: Please refer to the Candidate Information Booklet before completing an application. All parts of the application form must be completed by the applicant before an application can be considered. Failure to do so may result in disqualification. Only applications submitted via the Northern Ireland Civil Service recruitment website ( will be considered. We will not accept CVs, letters, additional pages or any other supplementary material in place of, or in addition to completed online application forms; and Information in support of your application will not be accepted after you have submitted your application form. All applications must be submitted by the advertised closing date and time. Late applications will not be accepted. When completing the online application, your information is saved as you move through the pages. You may leave the application at any time, providing you have clicked on the 'Save & Continue' button. Once your application has been submitted the option to edit will no longer be available. Please note - the session timeout for the online application is 40 minutes, if you do not save or change page within this time you will automatically be logged out and any unsaved work will be lost. Only one application will be accepted per applicant for this competition. 10

11 RECRUITMENT PROCESS Stage 1: From the information available in this booklet and on our website, applicants should decide if the job is right for them and it will fit in with their lifestyle. Stage 2: Submit an application on the Northern Ireland Civil Service Recruitment Website Stage 3: Following the closing date for applications, applicants will be sent an with details of a questionnaire that must be completed. The questionnaire will ask how you intend to travel around your local area (up to a 30 mile radius) and your availability to work. You will also be asked some questions to determine if you are suitable to be a survey interviewer. Your responses to this questionnaire will determine if you are invited to interview. The requirements for each location may vary, therefore the minimum requirements to be invited to interview may vary for each location. Stage 4: If you meet the minimum requirements in the questionnaire to proceed to interview, we will check that you reside within the mileage restrictions of your chosen location(s) as detailed on page 4. Stage 5: Interview. At interview you will be asked questions to test your knowledge and experience in each of the following areas. Communication and People Skills Tailors message to suit audience Listens and responds constructively to the views and concerns of others Communicates clearly and concisely Demonstrates empathy Uses well thought through argument to achieve a positive outcome Understands the importance of presentation to create a positive first impression Ability to build and maintain trust with others Deals effectively with difficult situations Ability to understand and follow briefing material or instructions and to use or convey the information to achieve a positive outcome Ability to successfully interact with a wide range of people from different backgrounds 11

12 Service Delivery Seeks and accepts responsibility and takes personal responsibility to make sure results are achieved Prioritises work appropriately and delivers results to time and budget Shows commitment to the success of each task, and strives to successfully overcome setbacks Searches for ways to improve on standards and results Understands the importance of effective work planning and preparation to achieve a positive outcome Prior to the interview applicants will be provided with information relating to one of the surveys carried out by Central Survey Unit. Applicants should ensure that they familiarise themselves with this information in advance of their interview as you will be asked about it at the interview. All candidates invited to attend for interview must bring sufficient documentation to satisfy the Nationality and Vetting requirements. Further details regarding acceptable documentation will be issued with an invitation to attend for interview. You should ensure that these documents are readily available. Interview guidance is located on page 14. In preparation for interview you should consider the bullet points listed under the competency headings above and think about situations and examples where these link to your past experience and be prepared to talk through these at interview. Stage 6: Pre-appointment checks. As part of the vetting process HRConnect will ask you to provide the following: a) Photographic ID. b) Nationality verification. You must provide your passport or A document verifying your permanent National Insurance number (e.g. P45, P60 or National Insurance card) AND your birth certificate which includes the names of your parents (long version). Other acceptable documents are listed on c) A specimen signature must be provided at interview. This signature will be validated against your passport, driving licence, application form etc. d) Proof of address. This may be an official document such as a bank statement or utility bill. e) Driving licence (If you indicated on your questionnaire that that you hold one). We will organise a Criminal Record Check on all successful applicants which will be carried out by AccessNI. The category of AccessNI check required for this post is a Basic Disclosure Certificate. You should not put off applying for a post because you have a conviction. We deal with all criminal record information in a confidential manner, and information relating to convictions is destroyed after a decision is made. For more information about AccessNI you may visit their website Criminal Record information is subject to the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NI) Order

13 Nationality Requirements HRConnect must ensure that you are legally entitled to work in the United Kingdom. The Survey Interviewer posts are classified as Non-Public Service, therefore certain nationality requirements apply. Applicants must be either: (i) A UK national; or (ii) A Commonwealth citizen; or (iii) A British Protected Person; or (iv) An EEA national; or (v) A Swiss National; or (vi) A person who is not an EEA or Swiss national, but is a family member of an EEA national who has moved to the UK from another EEA Member State for an approved purpose. For further guidance on Nationality requirements please see Annex A. Advice on Nationality for (i), (ii) and (iii) above may be obtained from the Home Office website, 13

14 INTERVIEW GUIDANCE If this is your first experience of a competence-based interview, bear in mind that it does not require you to: Talk through previous jobs or appointments from start to finish; Provide generalised information as to your background and experience; or Provide information that is not specifically relevant to the competence the question is designed to test. A competence-based interview does however require you to: Focus exclusively, in your responses, on your ability to fulfill the competences required for effective performance in the role; and Provide specific examples of your experience in relation to the required competence areas. In preparation for the interview you may wish to think about having a clear structure for each of your examples, such as: Situation briefly outline the situation; Task what was your objective, what were you trying to achieve; Action what did you actually do, what was your unique contribution; Result what happened, what was the outcome, what did you learn. The panel will ask you to provide specific examples from your past experience in relation to each of the competences. You should therefore come to the interview prepared to discuss in detail a range of examples which best illustrate your skills and abilities in each competence area. You may draw examples from any area of your work / life experiences. 14

15 The Merit Principle FURTHER INFORMATION In accordance with the Office of the Civil Service Commissioners Recruitment Code, appointments to NISRA are made under the merit principle, where the best person for any given post is selected in fair and open competition. Further information on the Civil Service Commissioners can be found at Order of Merit The Selection Panel will only assess applicants based on performance at interview. Those who pass the interview will be placed on an order of merit based on their interview score. A separate order of merit will be formed and held for each location once interviewing in each area(s) has taken place. If you have applied for more than one location you will only be interviewed once and your score will be held against all your chosen locations. Your merit position for each location may vary as it will depend on the number of applicants interviewed for each location. Once an order of merit has been formed for a particular location, there will be no further interviews for that area until the list has been exhausted. The order of merit will be valid for 12 months from the date it is created. Changes in personal circumstances Please ensure HRConnect are informed immediately of any changes in personal circumstances. Communication between HRConnect and you During the competition HRConnect will issue as much correspondence as possible via . You are responsible for ensuring that the address you provide is correct and kept up-to-date. If your address changes throughout the lifetime of this competition please ensure you notify HRConnect as soon as possible. You should check your account (and junk mail folders) to make sure that you don t miss any important communications in relation to this competition. There may, however, still be a necessity to issue some correspondence by hard copy mail. Disability Requirements We will ask on the application form if you require any reasonable adjustments, due to disability, to enable you to attend interview. Details of any disability are only used for this purpose and do not form any part of the selection process. If you have indicated on your application that you have a disability and are successful in the selection process and are being considered for appointment, you may be 15

16 required to outline any adjustments you consider necessary in order for you to take up an appointment. If you wish to discuss your disability requirements further, please contact HRConnect. Equal Opportunity Monitoring Form Please note, this form is regarded as part of your application and failure to complete it will result in disqualification. For guidance on completing the Monitoring Form and to read the NICS Equal Opportunities Policy Statement please visit: The Northern Ireland Civil Service is an Equal Opportunities Employer. All applications for employment are considered strictly on the basis of merit Feedback The Northern Ireland Civil Service is committed to ensuring that the processes used to recruit and select staff are fair and in accordance with the principles of the Civil Service Commissioners Code. We are consequently committed to providing feedback in respect of decisions taken in determining eligibility as well as at interview. All requests for feedback are welcome. THIS INFORMATION PACK DOES NOT FORM PART OF CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT Contact Details: If you have any queries regarding the competition process please contact HRConnect at the address below or by: Tel: Fax: Address: HRConnect PO Box nd Floor The Metro Building 6-9 Donegall Square South Belfast BT1 9EW 16

17 NATIONALITY (i) UK National means a person who is a British citizen (including persons from the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man), a British subject under Part IV of the British Nationality Act 1981 having the right of abode in the UK or a British Dependent Territories citizen acquiring his/her citizenship from connection with Gibraltar. (ii) Commonwealth Citizen means any person who has the status of a Commonwealth citizen under the British Nationality Act 1981, not covered by the UK Nationality definition above. This includes British Dependent Territories citizens (other than Gibraltarians), British Overseas citizens, and from 1986 those persons in the category British National (Overseas). (iii) British Protected Person means a member of any class of persons declared to be British Protected Persons by Order in Council under the British Nationality Act 1981, or by virtue of the Solomon Islands Act (iv) EEA National means a national of one of the following countries: Austria Finland Latvia Portugal Belgium France Liechtenstein Romania Bulgaria Germany Lithuania Slovakia **Croatia Greece Luxembourg Slovenia Cyprus Hungary Malta Spain Czech Republic Iceland Netherlands Sweden Denmark Ireland Norway United Kingdom Estonia Italy Poland N.B. nationals from Switzerland also have the same free movement and employment rights. Family member of an EEA or swiss national means: (i) (ii) (iii) That national s spouse*; or A direct descendant (child, grandchild etc.) of that national or his/her spouse who is under 21 years of age or is their dependent; or A dependent relative in the ascending line (parent, grandparent etc) of the EEA national or his/her spouse. *Note: Spouse does not include a party to a marriage of convenience and in the case of EEA national vocational students; family members are restricted to spouses and dependent children only. **Croatian nationals who want to work in the UK must obtain authorisation prior to commencing employment. They require a certificate of sponsorship and must also apply for an accession worker card before they can commence employment. There are no provisions for Croatian nationals to take up low-skilled work. Further guidance on nationality can be obtained at 17