Recruitment and selection

Welcome to the Workforce Capability Framework tutorial for the Recruitment and Selection Resources. In this tutorial, we will take a walk through the Recruitment and Selection Resources and provide some tips on how they can help providers and participants in hiring workers.

These resources provide suggestions on how to conduct a recruitment process using the capabilities, the attitudes and the skills described in the NDIS Workforce Capability Framework.

It gives step-by-step guidance and has downloadable templates to help you through the process. There are two versions: one for providers and one for participants who hire their own workers.

Throughout the pages you will find information, templates and materials for each stage of the recruitment process.

Templates are on the sidebar or in drop down sections. And you can download any of these as you need.

Here, we have the provider resources as a download.

First thing you will do is choose if you're a provider or a participant. In this instance we will select provider.

You can now see several options at the top of the page. These are the different stages of the recruitment process, from identifying a role vacancy, through to welcoming your new worker. Let's take a quick look through each stage.

Identifying a role vacancy

This highlights the importance of checking that you have the right vacancy or vacancies and role description that your organisation needs to fill your workforce needs.

For this process you can make use of the NDIS Workforce Management and Planning Tool to plan your workforce needs and the Position Description Tool to create the position descriptions you need or that need updating.

Planning the process

This section takes you through the importance of planning how you will conduct the hiring process.

You can utilise the Workforce Capability Framework to look at particular skills and capabilities that you might focus on in your assessment depending on the role.

'For example, you might consider 'communicating effectively' and 'building trusted relationships as areas you want to assess, as the roles involve supporting participants with a team of workers in their home.

There is information about individual assessment and group assessment as ways to conduct the assessment of potential workers.

Both ways of assessing can include people with disabilities as part of assessment panels, and we strongly encourage involvement of those participants who will be supported by the workers you're recruiting.

Choosing the assessment methods

Here you will see the resources referenced using the Framework looking at a capability-based approach in how you assess potential workers and different assessment methods. In this section you can go deeper into understanding structured interviews, work simulation activities, psychosocial metric testing and reference checking and worker screening.

You'll also find tips for managing interviews and assessments, as well as some example interview questions.

A handy tip is that you could ask potential workers to do the job readiness self-assessment quiz when applying to provide them with some guidance on working the disability sector and how their skills might fit. Here's the self-assessment for checking job readiness.

The next section is advertising

This section speaks about advertising for your vacant role as well as what you can provide as an information pack for applicants.

You can then navigate through what you can put in your advertisement, additional tips for advertising and attracting applicants and where to advertise.

There's also a job advertisement template for download on this page.

Shortlisting and conducting the assessment. This next section takes you through shortlisting against your criteria and conducting assessments that you've worked out in the planning stage.

This is where you can decide on how you will approach assessing candidates and involving participants.

There is a shortlisting candidate’s scorecard and interview and practical assessment scorecard available for download on this page.

Once you've completed assessment, you'll move to making an offer.

The make an offer page goes through the process of making an offer to a new worker.

You can also access a letter of offer template as well as a letter for those who are unsuccessful. There are some handy tips on managing this process.

Welcoming your new worker

Effective on boarding for workers is key, and this section references the NDIS Commission induction resources, including the workforce orientation module: quality, safety and you.

Here you can see a range of induction modules that we have available for new workers.

This is from the NDIS Commission website page.

You can also find essential points to cover when welcoming your new worker, such as their responsibilities, skills, they need to have, any policies and procedures to follow and ongoing support available.

Congratulations, you've now reached the end of your recruitment process. You can revisit any of these stages or downloads at any time.

Having access to templates and 'how to' guidance for each step of the recruitment process is valuable for providers or participants hiring support workers. The templates and examples really show how to recruit for capabilities.

Good luck with your new workers.

The Workforce Capability Framework, or simply the framework, can guide you in recruiting support workers. The framework as a whole describes the attitudes skills and knowledge expected of all work of funded under the NDIS. It establishes a shared language of ‘what good looks like’ for participants.

Recruiting and interviewing workers can be complex. That's where the Recruitment and Selection resources can help.  

Take Tyrone. He's an NDIS participant who employs his own support workers with a self-managed NDIS package. He found resources on self-management on the NDIA website. The resource ‘Directly engaging your own staff’ had really helpful information on employing workers and using his plan. Now that Tyrone is ready to engage his own workers, the Framework and the recruitment selection resources help him through each step of the hiring process to find quality supports.  

Tyrone was looking for a general support worker who could, as a Framework outlines, ‘be responsive to a culturally diverse identity’. He used the Position Description Tool and included information about why his cultural identity was important to him. This became the basis for his job advertisement where he could clear about the capabilities and experience he needed from workers.  

The Recruitment and Selection resources guided Tyrone on mapping out how and when to conduct individual interviews. As applications came in he used the Shortlisting Candidate Scorecard to choose the best candidate to interview. The resources gave Tyrone advice about issues he hadn’t considered, such as interviewing candidates at a cafe instead of his own home to protect his privacy. And asking a friend to sit with him to give a second perspective on the applicants.  

The example interview questions helped Tyrone to write his own questions that were specific to his needs and interests, such as how a candidate would support him staying involved with this local football team.  

The process supported Tyrone from the first interview down to a final letter of offer template that he could adapt and send to the success candidate. Tyrone then went to the NDIA website self-management resources again for guidance on ‘Paying for your Supports’ to complete the candidate’s employment.  

Whether you're an NDIS participant or provider, the Recruitment and Selection Resources are essential to making the hiring process smooth, effective, and easy to understand. Start your recruitment journey today by visiting the Workforce Capability Framework website and exploring the Framework, its supporting tools, guides and resources.