Interviewing job candidates for any position is never easy. Job candidates perhaps don’t mean to lie, but the fact is that most do embellish something about themselves to appear more qualified for the job. In some cases the lies may be acceptable – saying you have 2 years of experience instead of 1 year but other lies can be dangerous, especially in senior care.
Have you used a gait belt before? If you say you have when you have not (or if you do not even know what a gait belt is) then you could be putting both yourself and the senior in danger if you are trying to wing-it when using a gait belt for the first time. Same thing with assisting with toileting, bathing and feeding.
Have you had training in dealing with seniors who have memory loss? Senior caregivers who have not had memory loss senior care training will not know some of the simple strategies to use to keep the day going smoothly and to respond correctly to the senior.
Finding the right caregivers for senior care takes talent and experience. This is why senior home care agencies are vital as providers of senior care and this is also why senior care is nothing at all like babysitting. Proper training for senior caregiving is required in order for the caregiving to be both safe and effective to assist in healthy aging.
Those of us who hire people regularly already know that people lie a bit in job interviews. But we have systems in place to flesh out the facts.
Senior caregiving agencies also have systems in place to properly qualify a caregiver’s skill level and then provide training which the caregiver is tested on for retention. Care Managers also introduce and train each caregiver for their new client assignments and provide ongoing management. What does the caregiver do when Sue won’t take her medications? Call the office and a Care Manager will assist. Very often a third-party person to help manage the care makes all the difference as the senior just wants and needs confirmation from a couple of people to keep their tasks moving throughout their day.
And just to confirm that the system used by licensed senior home care agencies is vital which includes an interview, a follow-up interview, reference checks, training and then a quiz to confirm the training was absorbed…….Brent Weiss and Robert S. Feldman of the University of Massachusetts are profiled in the Harvard Business Review, explaining their study which found 81% of people lied about themselves in a job interview. When the job requirement is more technical, deception increased. Participants in the study told an average of 2.19 lies per 15-minute interview.
Seniors deserve quality caregivers who can show they have been trained and can perform the necessary skills. As more and more states pass new legislation (California currently has 2 bills pending which would both require mandatory training requirements for senior caregivers), the quality of care will only improve. Caregivers should all have basic caregiver training which can be obtained online, meeting industry standards.
Caregivers may learn more about developing the right caregiver interview skills in Caregiverlist’s Career Center.
