Recruiting and managing an apprentice

[Stoneagemum]

My company is restructuring roles to redistribute workload in a more manageable fashion. The result of this is we need to take on someone to do basic admin and reception. I suggested that this role would suit an apprentice as the tasks that they would be doing are part of what I currently do and years ago I started as an apprentice and have worked my way up. (The restructure entails me taking on other duties)

Although I'm an office manager I have always worked in small business so OM has always been the admin/reception too so I have no experience of managing people, let a known training a school leaver!

I have found an apprenticeship provider who do the recruitment and give me a shortlist from which to select for interview. Which brings me to my second point, the only recruitment experience I have had was last year, doing the first cull of cv's and being the 2nd person on shortlisting and interviewing for an admin assistant for a colleague.

If anyone has any advice, tips or pointers for me it would be most appreciated.

it's ALL about attitude in my experience. At their age, they know absolutely bugger all that's useful :) So look out for signs of proactivity (hobbies in cv); and for how they manage being told what to do - after all, a huge amount at first will be them being told to do basic things. Ask about their attitude to basic tasks and how these contribute to the smooth running of the organisation.

Ask about their travel arrangements - some haven't thought how they will get to you.

When we got apprentices they usually sent pretty good candidates. So your recruitment experience will be okay -

To be an equal opps employer you need to use Key Skills and Attitudes in the person spec and recruit to them. So say, attention to detail is one. At interview, ask THE SAME question to each candidate, about this, eg 'tell me about a time when getting a little detail wrong, caused problems and what you learned to do differently a a result'.

It's important to ask every candidate the same question and score them numerically rather than qualitiatively so you can see that candidate x scored 20/30 and Y scored 15/30 rather than just thinking oh we liked candidate X more.

It's important to set them at ease these are v young kids usually terrified - so heaps of informality and a bit of humour helps them relax.

If you can get them to do a short test that's really useful - like a bit of typing, or give them a short list of 4 tasks with some details and get them to prioritise the tasks and say why they've done it, eg

1. You ask them to do some shredding
2. Yesterday Jane asked them to phone the photocopier company and get new ink
3. There's a bundle of photocopying that needs doing for tomorrow's meeting
4. They have an email from an angry customer that came in this morning
5. The chief exec/big boss has asked if they would wipe around in the kitchen

hope that helps and good luck we love our apprentices!

Thanks bucking, we have an interview assessment procedure to score candidates, I need to right a list of questions to keep it a fair process.