Hiring Quality Afterschool Staff: Testing
Hiring Part 1: The Application
Hiring Part 2: Testing
Before you start hiring staff for your Afterschool program you will need to decide what you want those people to do. Is their job just to supervise while the kids play? Probably not. Most likely you want them to help with homework, lead science and art lessons, read aloud, handle basic behavior issues, and keep students safe, happy and engaged throughout the day. Now that’s great, but are you checking for any of these skills during your hiring process or are you just asking a few basic questions and giving them the job?
For now, I’m just going to address the homework part of that wish list – I’ll get to the rest later. So, if you want your staff to help students with their homework, you need to make sure they can do the assignments, too. How do you figure this out? You need to set up a test. Ask every applicant you are considering to complete this test before they even get to the interview. Remember, the corporate world tests applicants all the time. Afterschool can, too.
To create the test, get one page of math that includes addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Have about four or five problems of each type of increasing difficulty but not so hard that the page can’t be worked out by hand in about 15 minutes. We used a review page from “Math Facts.” Then add a mid-level (4th grade) reading assignment. Use one where they read the passage and answer vocabulary and comprehension questions. We used a lesson from a “Scholastic Reading Kit.”
Take the test yourself to see how long it takes. Have a few other people at your level (site coordinators or managers) take the test as well. Then add on 10 minutes or more to that time to give your nervous applicants a reasonable amount of time to complete the test. Our test took me and the coordinators who tried it about 20 minutes. We gave each of our applicants 30 minutes to finish.
If they do not finish or do not pass the test at a level you find acceptable (maybe 70% or even 80%) DO NOT interview them. This test will save you from spending time interviewing someone who would not have worked out. It also saves you from having to fire someone later when they can’t do the job.
We found that applicants were not surprised when they were required to take a basic math and reading test and they understood perfectly when their score did not qualify them to move on to the interview. I cannot explain enough how much having a test improved our hiring process and the quality of our staff. You will just have to try it for yourself.
Good luck creating your test. Next time we’ll talk about the interview.
