Strawberries, emails and interview paperwork!

Posted by: Rachel Coldbeck - Posted on:

It’s been a busy few weeks since I have last blogged. I’ve moved house, restarted my MSc unit, presented for my flexi placement, interviewed and shortlisted for jobs. I thought in this blog I’d discuss some important things that have happened and I’ve learnt over the last few weeks!


Interview Paperwork

I’ve had lots of interview preparation over the last few weeks, and I have worked closely with the psychology team to formulate some questions for our post. It was a very challenging and interesting set of questions which were able to really challenge the candidates. We use a values based interviewing process and I think it really is able to identify the best candidates in the interview.

Interviews create a lot of paperwork and I seem to have been almost consistently recruiting since I started this role. I enjoy interviewing and I enjoy being part of the interview challenge. I always spend time giving valuable feedback to both successful and unsuccessful candidates at the end as I want candidates to re-apply for my organisation in the future. It was nice this time to receive a thank you email from one of the candidates telling me how useful this was.


Emails

Recently I’ve been getting into a really poor habit of checking my emails when I get home from work. I have an hour and a half drive back when I relax and de-stress, but then immediately log back on! It’s interesting to hear how many of the team also do this – I wonder whether emails have really helped the workplace? I really encourage staff not to log on at home, or to claim back TOIL if they spend a long time doing work from home. If not, you end up with a lot of ‘hidden’ work happening in people’s own time. Do you expect your team to pick up emails when they’re at home?


Strawberries

Work life balance is really important, as is taking your breaks when you’re at work. I support my staff taking breaks and as they’re all on the step challenge at the moment, people are enjoying going on walks at lunch! My work/life balance has gone a little bit to pot at the moment and I’ve put a lot of work into improving it. The other day, I and some of the team went strawberry picking in the lunch break – a very relaxing task, and brilliant with it being right next the hospital! It was fab to break up the two meetings we had, and I had strawberries to nibble on through the next meeting. Persuading anyone to Lincolnshire yet?!

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