Child Welfare Worker Performance Starts with a Good Interview

Everyone wants to hire high-performing workers, but how do you find the candidates who are likely to do well in the job? The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD) analyzed a variety of workforce meta-analyses (performance-related factors can be found in a searchable catalog which links to a variety of Umbrella Summaries) and found that highly structured employment interviews are strongly related to job performance. A structured interview is not the only factor that can contribute to job performance, but it is a good place to start.

Interview processes in child welfare often vary wildly, based on the agency, the job, and the interviewer among other things. The Employment Interviews Umbrella Summary written by the QIC-WD describes the dozens of ways in which an interview can be conducted and highlights the value in having trained interviewers conducting structured interviews that have been created based on a job analysis. In Oklahoma, the QIC-WD worked with the child welfare agency to develop competency-based hiring tools, including a structured interview. The evaluation of that effort found that higher scores on the competency-based hiring tools were predictive of better employee performance.

It takes time to develop high-quality, effective interview questions that get at the important factors related to one’s ability to perform a job well. But there is value in investing the time in creating structured employment interviews and training interviewers to hire high-performing child welfare workers.