Transcript

REBECCA

If I give you some examples of how I would test somebody's understanding of a sector, when I was a recruiter, it would be very simple. And for me, it's about their curiosity and their understanding of basic things like, who are our biggest competitors? What we think about our most recent products that we've launched? What do you think the biggest challenges are for our sector in the next three to five years? Those three questions would indicate to me that they have done some reading, that they understand what's happening, what current thinking is, and that they've scratched below the surface of just our website.

CHARLIE

The kinds of questions that I might ask, as a recruiter in an interview, about the sector would be, can they give me an overview of what they think the sector challenges are, what the wider environment-- how that's affecting the different things in the sector. I might I ask them to give me some specific examples of how their knowledge of the sector could influence the way that they're going approach the job. And so getting them to tell me how much they know about that sector, but also how much they've thought about that knowledge being important in the job that they're then going to do.

REBECCA

If you're in the public sector and you are looking for an understanding of the sector as a recruiter, you'd want to talk to people about policy that's affecting your area or policy that's currently being developed-- white papers, green papers, practise, guidelines that are being published by whatever standards might be applied to that particular area of public policy, but also looking at best practise within the sector, as well. So, within public sector itself, clearly there isn't competition, as such, but there are significant differences from one region or one area to another.

So, what's happening in other areas? What are the good things? And how would you apply them to our region or our area of policy? And those are exactly the type of questions I'd be asking, if I were recruiting for the public sector.