Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

Youth Worker Interview Questions – Part 2

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Youth worker interview questionsThis is week two in a five week series about youth worker interview questions – check out the other posts at the bottom of the page.

Q: I have a job interview coming up. What kind of youth worker interview questions can I expect to be asked?

A: You can expect to be asked questions about yourself. Here are a few possible questions you may be asked and some tips on how to answer them.

1) How long have you been a youth worker? What experience do you have – either paid or volunteering if you are new to youth work?

  • One key in any interview is to answer with honesty. Be truthful about the amount of time you’ve been working with youth. Any organization can do the research and find out from your references if you’re being honest. You may end up costing yourself the job by embellishing about your experience.
  • The other part of honesty is giving yourself credit where you do deserve it. Make sure that you share your experiences – both paid and volunteer – even if they don’t seem that important to you. You may have had a useful experience during that time the interviewer will ask about.

2) Do you have any training or qualifications? If so, how do you think these will help you in this role?

  • These may not be youth work qualifications, but they may still have given you transferrable skills to discuss that relate to youth work.
  • Think about the transferrable skills you acquired before you get to the interview. Consider youth work situations that you may encounter and how your training and qualifications prepared you for it. For example, if you have a business degree, it’s likely that you participated in group projects. This may help you explain the group development process and things that you would do the same or improve upon when doing a group project with young people based on your experiences during your degree.

3) What are your strengths when working with youth? What are your weaknesses?

  • Think about your strengths and weaknesses before the interview. Talk to your colleagues, family, friends and youth you may already be working with to find out how they might describe you. Find one or two of each that you can discuss concisely so that you don’t ramble and over share.
  • Embrace your weaknesses. Don’t just find ways to turn your weaknesses into more strengths. Think about ways you’re working to improve your weaknesses and the steps you’ve taken to develop in areas of weakness instead of just trying to explain them away as strengths. This shows that you’re a reflective practitioner who has good intrapersonal skills and a clear understanding of yourself and your developmental needs.

4) What kind of ideas do you have for this program or organization’s youth work?

  • Come up with 3-5 ideas for their organization and how it relates to their mission and vision statement. You need to do research ahead of time to make sure that you don’t suggest programs that are outside the remit of the organization you’re applying for.

These are just a few of the possible youth work questions you might be asked. Check out our other posts in this series for more ideas on how to answer interview questions:

If you’re interested in youth worker interview preparation, please contact us today to set up a virtual consultation.

Question: How do you prepare to discuss yourself in a youth work interview? We’d love to hear your tips and experiences in the comments below.

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Youth Worker Interview Questions – Part 1

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Youth Worker Interview QuestionsQ: I have a job interview coming up. What kind of youth worker interview questions can I expect to be asked?

A: I find that questions in youth work job interviews often fit into three categories:

  • Questions about you
  • Questions about how you work (with coworkers and youth)
  • Questions about the specific role they’re asking you to do

These questions are all designed to get to know you better and to judge your suitability for the role. It’s also becoming more and more common for youth to sit on the interview panel, to perform their own interview or for you to have to do an activity with some young people to see how well you engage with them.

This week we’ll offer some of the possible questions; over the next few weeks we’ll follow up with possible answers and things to consider when answering.

Here are a few youth worker interview questions you might expect from each category:

Questions about you:

  • How long have you been a youth worker? What experience do you have – either paid or volunteering if you are new to youth work?
  • Do you have any training or qualifications? If so, how do you think these will help you in this role?
  • What are your strengths when working with youth? What are your weaknesses?
  • What kind of ideas do you have for this program or organization’s youth work?

Questions about how you work:

Co-workers

  • Do you prefer to work alone or with a team?
  • Share a time when you worked with, or in the case of a supervisory role, led, a team. What worked well and what would you improve?
  • Share a time when you disagreed with your supervisor about a youth work-related decision.
  • Name three things that are important to you in a supervisor.
  • Share about your time management skills.
  • What computer skills do you have? What social media and online tools are you familiar with or proficient in?

Youth

  • Describe a time you had an angry youth to deal with.
  • What steps would you take when planning a youth trip?
  • How would you handle a youth who is vulnerable and shows an unhealthy interest in spending time with you, particularly alone?
  • What are three things you think are most important when working with youth?
  • How would you get a shy youth to open up in a group or mentoring session?
  • How would you describe your style as a youth worker?

Questions about the specific role:

  • How much experience do you have working with (insert type of youth work you are applying for here – e.g. foster care, black, Muslim, LGBTQ, refugee, Latino/a, at-risk, homeless, etc.) youth?
  • (Faith-based) What theological training do you have and how would you engage youth in the discipleship process?
  • Please create a session plan around (insert topic for type of youth work you are applying for here – e.g. youth leaving prison, youth excluded/expelled from traditional school, sexual health awareness, bible study/church small group, global youth work, etc.) and be prepared to present it with a group of youth (or to the interviewers). You have 20 minutes to plan and 10 minutes to present.
  • What are the three most important things to remember when doing _____________ activity with youth?  (This may be a question for those planning youth trips or working at youth activity centers)

Depending on the age of the youth you might be working with, the questions they ask during the interview may relate to your personal preferences (music, films, activities, video games) or they may ask what kind of plans you have for them if you were to get the job.

These are just a few of the possible youth work questions you might be asked. Check out our other posts in this series for more ideas on how to answer interview questions:

You may also find our post on how to dress for a youth work interview helpful.

Question: What youth worker interview questions have you been asked in the past? Add to our list in the comments below.

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Image credit Roland O’Daniel

 

The Mock Interview – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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Mock interview youth work unemployment
Practice makes perfect

So, you’ve helped your youth prepare their answers for a job interview and practiced dressing for success. Now, it’s time to put it into practice by giving your youth the opportunity to have mock job interviews with real managers and executives.

Contact local businesses in advance and ask whether they’d be willing to be part of your efforts to reduce youth unemployment. If possible, try to line up interviewers in fields your young people are interested in working in. It’ll be far more useful for young people interested in, say, landscape gardening, to have a mock interview with somebody in that field rather than at a software engineering company. They might even end up impressing the interviewer so much that they’re offered a job!

Give the youth a time and place to attend the interview – maybe it’s at your youth center, a local coffee shop or at a centrally located office. This will also depend on where the interviewers are able to make it to.

Ask the managers to determine whether or not they would hire a youth based on their performance in the mock interview. Ask them to provide constructive feedback for the youth – whether they would have hired them or not – so that they can work on areas they need to improve for real job interviews.

You can use the managers that you work with, but I’ve found it works best when the interviewer is someone that the youth don’t know at all, much like the situation in most interviews.

You could also hold individual and panel mock interviews to give your youth both experiences.

If you’ve found this helpful, you might like our other youth work session plan ideas.

Question: Have you held mock interviews with your youth? How did it go?

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Job Interview Attire – Youth Work Session Plan Ideas

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Youth job interview attireWe’ve recently provided some session plan ideas about preparing youth for the real world.  We even shared one idea on how to teach youth to be concise in an interview.

Job skills during the interview are important. But so is making the right first impression, which is why it’s important for youth to consider their job interview attire.

As you know, the first impression starts from when you approach the building and doesn’t finish until you’re back outside afterwards, during your first point of contact. This may be picking up an application or dropping off a resume, although often these days it’s during the interview.

Depending on your budget, time and number of young people, you may want to try one of these ideas for helping youth understand the importance of job interview attire, as well as how they can look nice on a budget.

1) Working wardrobe collage

Have the youth (boys and girls! – so many people think dressing for an interview is a ‘girl topic’ – it’s just not true) cut out pictures from magazines and make a collage of an appropriate work wardrobe and job interview attire based on different career choices.

2) Working wardrobe scavenger hunt

Have the youth do a photo scavenger hunt to find pictures of people (with their permission) or shop windows and then show the pictures off and critique their findings. Maybe even find definitely for-work and definitely not-for-work outfits. (n.b. consider these points when planning a youth outing)

3) Working wardrobe fashion show

Have some or all of your youth bring $5-$10 (or find room in your budget if your youth aren’t able to come up with the cash) and plan an outing to the thrift store or charity shop. Have them put together a job interview outfit that falls within the budget and type of job they are applying for. Then head back to your center and show off the outfits in a fashion show.

Remember to preface all of these ideas with a youth work session on proper work and job interview attire. It could be part of the same session or hold several work related sessions and end with one of the ideas above.

Question: What’s one activity you would suggest to teach youth about appropriate job interview attire? Let us know in the comments below.

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Job Interview Techniques – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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Youth work session - job interview techniques
Are your youth all a-twitter about their interview?

When preparing youth for the ‘real world’, one type of skill that cannot be overlooked is job-readiness. Not only resumés, CVs or on-the-job training, but job interview techniques and skills. How to dress, what questions might be asked and ideas to help youth stand out against many others competing for the same role.

One important skill to master for job interviews is saying just the right amount of information. It’s important to educate youth about being concise, teaching them how to find the balance between sharing too little and over-sharing.

Today’s youth work session plan is a fun and challenging activity using the idea of 140 characters from the social media site, Twitter. This resource is designed to help youth answer common interview questions in 140 characters – the amount of characters allowed in each ‘Tweet’. It helps them distill their experience, talents and passions into a few brief sentences.

While it’s unlikely that they’ll only need 140 characters worth of information in a job interview, it’s a good tool to help youth focus on the most important qualities to share about with each question.

You can download the “Retweetable Interview Resource” to use for your own youth work session – let us know how it goes!

Question: How do you help youth improve their job interview skills?  We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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