The Wrekin Housing Group interview questions

It was quite a lengthy Recruitment process. They did a telephone screening where they asked some basic questions to assess your competency. Once you get through that stage you were asked to attend a Recruitment for Attitude session. When I asked how long I would be needed for that session I was told around an hour. On the actual day it was 3.5 hours which I thought was quite a long time and in hindsight it was a lot to commit to on order to get time out of work to attend. If they could have shortened that part of the process it would have been a lot better. The interview consisted of a panel of 3 managers. The questions were fairly straight forward but I was surprised as I studied the job description and prepped and there were not many questions that seemed to be aligned with it. The panel did their best to put you at ease and were friendly but professional. In my invite letter I was told the interview would start promptly and I arrived in plenty of time but was collected for my interview 20 minutes late. Whilst waiting to be collected for my interview I did notice that there was no diversity, not one black or brown face walked in, or around the building which did concern me especially as during my research Wrekin have a 3 year EDI strategy which does not appear to have had the desired outcomes in terms of recruiting diversity from an outsider looking in. I may be wrong in my assumption here but I didn’t get the impression that Wrekin are fully committed to recruiting a diverse workforce. I have no idea what the make up of the HR Team is but I would predict that there may be a token black individual in the team if the stakeholders were lucky, but I suspect not, my prediction is all the faces in the team look the same. As much as the interview process was thorough and it seemed to be transparent, at the face to face stage I did sense some unconscious bias coming through from one member of the interviewing panel. This saddened me and I instantly knew after my interview that I would not be successful. This was further cemented when I received my feedback in terms of the reasons for why I was not selected. The feedback was very general and not particular professional as they seemed very nervous when delivering the no message as they were stuttering and stumbling over their words. They also did not provide any substance to the feedback which was disappointing. It have been less embarrassing and painful if they just sent me the generic, thanks but no thanks, email. All in all the interview experience was disappointing, mainly due to the unconscious bias I experienced but also on the face of it the values they preach are not actually demonstrated by the very people who are there to support the organisation to be fair and treat people equally and without bias. I have seen Wrekin in a different light which unfortunately is not a positive one.

Interview with two Wrekin Housing Group employees and one external specialist. This was a virtual interview but a face to face interview was also available upon request. The interview was based around transferable skills, the competency framework of the job role and the attitudes towards the role.