Episode 90 – My experience working as an IPS Employment Specialist

April 21, 2020 Podcast

Hello and welcome to the 90th episode of the Graduate Job Podcast.  Today is the follow up episode to episode 86 where I spoke with Martina Gibbons, recruitment lead for IPS Grow. As a reminder, IPS stands for Individual Placement and Support, and it is an NHS backed graduate scheme which is rapidly expanding and looking for graduates to join as Employment Specialists who will help to place people with mental illness in work. In that episode we explore IPS Grow and its application process in detail, have a listen at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/IPS if you haven’t already done so. In the episode today we build on the first interview and go deeper as I speak with Charlotte Knighton, who has been working as an Employment Specialist in London for the last year. Charlotte spills the beans on what it is really like to work as an Employment Specialist for a trust in London, and what it is that you can expect to be doing on a day to day basis. We explore the types of clients you will be working with and their range of mental healthcare conditions. We touch upon the skills you really need for the role, and how you can prepare yourself ahead of your application. Charlotte shares her experience as a graduate going through the application process, and her top tips so you can stand out from the crowd, including her absolute number one tip that you need to make sure you are following.  No matter where you are in your job search, if you’ve thought of applying to IPS or not even heard of them, this is an episode which you aren’t going to want to miss. Now the only link you need to remember from today is www.graduatejobpodcast.com/IPS2, as that has all of the links to everything which we discuss and a full transcript which you can download, so make sure you head on over there.

And don’t forget to check out today’s sponsor who are our friends over at CareerGym.com. Career Gym is the number one place for you to undertake all of your psychometric tests which you will face when you apply for a graduate job. No matter what graduate job you apply for you’re going to have to face some type of verbal reasoning, situational judgement, and working style tests. You can practice these at CareerGym.com. Use code GJP to get 20% off all of their tests!

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • What it is really like to work as an Employment Specialist
  • What you can expect to be doing on a day to day basis
  • The types of clients you will be working with in the role.
  • Insider secrets of what you can expect at the IPS Grow assessment centre
  • Top tips for how to impress during the presentation
  • The challenges you will face as an Employment Specialist
  • Charlotte’s experience of going through the application process and her top tips for how you can stand out from the crowd.

Don’t forget, also make sure you check out https://www.graduatejobpodcast.com/subscribe which links to how to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and by email. So, something for everyone there.

SELECTED LINKS:

My experience working as an Employment Specialist for IPS Grow – GJP 90

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James: Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each episode I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, graduate recruiters and career coaches who bring decades of experience into a byte size show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

And welcome to the 90th episode of the Graduate Job Podcast coming to you from coronavirus lockdown in Leeds. Not being able to go anywhere means I have more time for the podcast, so every cloud and all that. And today is the follow up episode to episode 86 which was a month or so ago now, with Martina Gibbons, recruitment lead for IPS Grow. As a reminder, IPS stands for Individual Placement and Support, and it is a NHS backed graduate scheme which is rapidly expanding and looking for graduates to join as Employment Specialists who will help to place people with mental illness in work. In that episode we explore IPS Grow and its application process in detail, have a listen if you haven’t already done so, the link is graduatejobpodcast.com/IPS. In the episode today we build on the first interview and go deeper as I speak with Charlotte Knighton, who has been working as an Employment Specialist in London for the last year. Charlotte spills the beans on what it is really like to work as an Employment Specialist for a trust in London, and what it is that you can expect to be doing on a day to day basis. We explore the types of clients you will be working with and their range of mental healthcare conditions. We touch upon the skills you really need for the role, and how you can prepare yourself ahead of your application. Charlotte shares her experience as a graduate going through the application process, and her top tips so you can stand out from the crowd, including her absolute number one tip that you need to make sure you are following.  No matter where you are in your job search, if you’ve thought of applying to IPS or not even heard of them, this is an episode which you aren’t going to want to miss. Now the only link you need to remember from today is www.graduatejobpodcast.com/IPS2, as that has all of the links to everything which we discuss and a full transcript which you can download, so make sure you head on over there. Right, lets crack on with the show.

Before we start a quick message from today’s sponsor who are who are our friends at CareerGym.com. There are some things in life you can’t escape, and psychometric tests when you apply for a graduate job is one of them. Career Gym is the number one place for you to undertake all of your psychometric tests which you will face when you apply for a graduate job. The bottom line is that no matter what graduate job you apply for, from the global giants to that small company around the corner from you, you’re going to have to do some type of verbal and numerical reasoning, situational judgment, and working style tests. At Career Gym.com you can practice all of these and they come with detailed explanations and you can compare yourself against your peers or do them under time pressure. And as a valued listener of the show they will give you 20% off of all of their tests if you use the code GJP. So, head over to http://www.CareerGym.com that’s CareerGym.com and use the code GJP to get 20% off all of their tests and start practicing today. Now, on with the show.

James Curran: A very warm welcome to my guest today. Charlotte Knighton, Employment Specialist in the Working Well Trust. Charlotte, thank you for joining me on the Graduate Job Podcast.

Charlotte Knighton: No problem.

James: So, two episodes ago, I explored how to get a job as an Employment Specialist. So, it’s great to have you with us here today so people can hear, first-hand, what it’s really like to work as an Employment Specialist. So, maybe to start off, would you like to tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how long you’ve been an Employment specialist?

Charlotte: Yeah, so I finished university nearly two years ago now, and I was then a head-hunter for maybe eight months, and then took some time off to go traveling, and then came back and decided that I wanted to work for a mental health charity. Looked at a lot of different ones and then Working Well Trust came up, and it really stood out to me because I’d be able to sort of use the skills that I’d learned when I’d been a head-hunter. So, I applied and got the job in November.

James: Brilliant, and what was it you studied at university? Was it directly relevant to the current role you have now?

Charlotte: No, it wasn’t actually completely relevant. I studied ancient history. So, yeah completely irrelevant to most things, to be honest, unless you’re wanting to be an academic, but enjoyable.

James: Completely understand that. And you mentioned you started as a head-hunter post-university. Did you enjoy this role, or was it always that you enjoyed bits of it and wanted to take that forward, or was it you wanted just a complete change into mental health?

Charlotte: I did. I definitely enjoyed parts of the role, and it was a lovely group of people to work with, but I think I’d always known that where I wanted to go — well, always I say. Sort of towards the end of university, I knew, though, where I wanted to go, really, was something to do with mental health. So, I think I knew that it wasn’t really a long-term thing for me, being a head-hunter. But, I can’t regret it at all because I wouldn’t have got this job without having done that. So, yeah I definitely learned useful skills that I do use a lot in my job now.

James: That’s brilliant. I mean, every job, no matter what it is, post-university, you’re going to be picking up some skills that are going to be useful to go forward with, and you’re always, for the questions at the different application stages. You need a barrel of different experiences that you can bring forward to answer the questions, so no experience is bad experience.

Charlotte: Yeah, exactly.

James: So, going into your current role now, could you tell people what it is that you do as an Employment specialist?

Charlotte: My role is, very simply, to support people who have some kind of mental illness into getting paid employment.

James: Amazing, and how many people would you be working with at any one time? Is it very individual, one-to-one, or do you have a group of people that you’re helping simultaneously?

Charlotte: All the meetings I do are individual one-to-one, but you have a case load of people that you work with at any one time. So, currently, my case load is about 25 people, which is quite standard, and you meet all of them sort of one-to-one, and some of them will be people who are actively looking to get into employment, and then some of those are people that are already in employment, and you’re supporting them through that.

James: And how long do you tend to work with people for? Is it a long-term relationship or can it be quite short, I guess, in terms of when they find a job?

Charlotte: So, it tends to be a long-term relationship because one of the principles of IPS is time-unlimited support. So, you might help someone, support someone to get into a job quite quickly, but then you would work with them once they’re in a job to support them for as long as they feel they need.

James: Brilliant, and would you say that you’ve got like a — what would a standard day look like, or are the days quite different in terms of what it is you might be doing and where you’ll be doing it?

Charlotte: It can vary a lot, but generally, my sort of standard day would be to get in at 9 and then I generally organize three to four meetings with different clients a day, and they mostly are one-hour meetings. So, sort of try and have them spaced throughout the day. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you end up with back-to-back meetings, which can be a bit difficult. So, you do the meetings with clients, and then all the admin that comes from that: so, case notes and any follow-ups from those meetings like finding roles for people to see if it’s the type of thing they’d like to apply for, researching companies, that kind of thing. And then another part of my role is to do what we call employer engagement. So, meeting local employers in some way and telling them about our service, and trying to gain information about jobs that they might have available. So, yeah that’s sort of a standard day.

James: And is it fairly a deskbound, or are you out and about quite a lot, or does it depend on the day?

Charlotte: Very much depends on the day, but I would say out and about a lot, generally. Because, when you’re doing employer engagement, you’re generally walking around your local area. So, it’s really lovely. You get to know the area that you’re working in very well, and you get to meet a lot of people, and even if you’re having a day where you’re not doing employer engagement and you’re just meeting people and doing admin. You’re always up and down, going to meeting rooms, and all that kind of stuff. So, it’s quite an active job. It’s very nice.

James: It’s always good to be away from the desk.

Charlotte: Yeah.

James: Without getting into specifics, mental health is such a broad spectrum, are you able to give listeners a bit of an insight into the type of people that you work with?

Charlotte: Yeah, of course. It sort of depends which mental service you’re attached to. So, as Employment Specialists, we’re all based in different teams. So, I personally am based with the psychological therapy service in Tower Hamlets, and from there, a lot of people that I work with, some will have depression, some will have anxiety, some will have PTSD, and you also have things like personality disorders, psychosis, things like that. We work with a huge range of people, and you don’t have to have a — your mental health condition doesn’t have to be specific, it doesn’t have to be any particular diagnosis to work with our service. So, it’s really the whole spectrum of mental health, I guess, that we work with, to be honest.

James: When you applied to IPS Grow, do you get a choice in terms of which particular service that you’re going to, or is it just something that’s allocated when you get the job?

Charlotte: It was something that was allocated when I got the job. I was actually taking over someone’s case load who had been promoted. So, I sort of filled their posts where they’d been at the psychological therapy service.

James: And as you mentioned, a really broad range of different people that you’re going to be dealing with with those different conditions.

Charlotte: Yeah, so it’s a very, very broad range of people.

James: Moving on then to the role itself, what are some of the biggest challenges that you find about the role?

Charlotte: I think one of the biggest challenges is it can obviously be quite emotional work. People can put quite a lot of trust in you, and that can be difficult if you feel like you’re — if they then say don’t get a job that they’ve interviewed for, and things like that where you get quite invested in them, and I think, then, that also sort of brings a challenge of taking the work home with you, emotionally, and it can be difficult to disconnect, I think.

James: And did IPS Grow help with that in terms of giving you training and support to help with those challenges?

Charlotte: Yeah, I mean, I think, especially the place I work in Working Well Trust, it’s a very good environment, and it’s very much encouraged that you don’t work outside of hours. We have quite strict 9 to 4:30, and we’ve got work phones, so you turn them off when you leave the office, that kind of thing. There’s not really a culture of doing work outside of hours.

James: That sounds good, and in the graduate jobs I’ve done, that’s something that not all companies take seriously, and the opposite is true in often encouraging you to take work home, and definitely to work into your free time. So, it’s good that your trust’s taking that seriously. Conversely then, what are some of the things that you really enjoy most about the role?

Charlotte: I think meetings with clients. Yeah, I think that’s just the highlight for me. It makes the day go so quickly when you have meetings with clients, because an hour goes in hardly any time, and you can — every meeting is different because everyone has different support needs. So, I think having client meetings as the focus of the role makes it a very varied and interesting role. You get that kind of nice feeling that you’re supporting someone who needs the support.

James: The coaching that I do with helping people to get graduate jobs is always so exciting when somebody texts saying that they’ve got the job that they’ve gone for. So, I can imagine the same thing when the clients you’ve been working with, especially over a long time period, getting that role must be really fulfilling.

Charlotte: Yeah, exactly. It’s a very fulfilling job to have, especially when it goes right.

James: Of course. So, what skills do you think make a good Employment Specialist?

Charlotte: I think empathy is really important. You know, you’ve got to be able to listen to someone talk about the difficulties that they’re going through and not shy away from that. I also think resilience is extremely important because things aren’t always going to go right. There are going to be things that mean your clients are disappointed, and you’ve got to be resilient in yourself to be able to support them through that. I think that’s really important.

James: Completely. And do you think there are any misconceptions that people might have about in the role and what it is that you do?

Charlotte: Yeah, I think maybe confusing, perhaps, what we do with a work coach at a job centre. So, what an Employment Specialist role is to make sure that the job search you do with your clients is very specific to what they want, it’s in line with their job preferences. We’re not forcing anyone in to work. People come to us voluntarily who would like support in getting in to work.

So, I think that’s one, and I think there’s also the idea that we’ll be helping people to get into supported placements, and sheltered work, and that kind of stuff when one of the IPS principles is getting people into competitive paid employments. So, yeah I think that’s quite key.

James: What do you wish you’d known about the role before you started?

Charlotte: I think maybe that I wouldn’t just waltz in and start getting people jobs left, right, and centre, that it’s a real process, and it’s a big learning curve starting this job, and you’ve got to give yourself time to settle into the job and work out what kind of methods work best to help people to get into jobs. So, I think maybe, for me, it would have been useful to know that I need to just give myself a bit of time when I first started the job and not expect myself to be getting people into jobs in the first month.

James: That’s really good advice, and it holds true for any graduate job that people go for is just set your expectations at the beginning. As you said, the steep learning curve. There’s always a learning curve, so just understand where you are, and as you said, go through the process of helping people. So, speaking of the process, maybe then let’s flip to the application process. Can you remember back to what it was like when you were applying for the trust you’re with? Did you apply to one specific trust or did you apply to multiple ones?

Charlotte: I applied specifically to Working Well Trust. Yeah, so the process for it was actually a fairly simple application process which was very welcome, because at the time, I was doing a lot of job applications, and sometimes, you get to the end of those application forms that are 15 pages long, and it’s horrendous, whereas this was quite a simple sort of CV and cover letter. At least, for my trust, it was. And then, I had a phone interview, which actually I nearly missed because the email for it went to my spam folder. So, that would be a piece of advice for any graduates. If you’re applying for jobs, check your spam folder.

James: That’s definitely a good piece of advice.

Charlotte: Yes, so I had an interview over the phone where they explained a bit about the IPS process to me and then asked me some sort of situational questions. You know, “How would you deal with X situation?” bearing in mind what they told me about the IPS principles. And I hadn’t quite expected that in my phone interview. So, yeah that was a bit of a surprise to me, but obviously it went okay. I didn’t completely fluff it.

And then after that, I was invited to a face-to-face interview, and they asked me to prepare a presentation about IPS for that, which initially, I was very nervous about because I think I didn’t have much time to prepare the presentation, but actually it was really useful because it meant that I did a whole load of research into IPS and the principles behind it, because you couldn’t wing an interview about IPS, because there’s a lot of research behind it, and there’s sort of the principles that you need to learn.

So, having initially been slightly horrified I was going to have to do a presentation, it was really useful to have done, and I think it made the interview go a lot more smoothly because I had definite things to prepare for. So, yeah I did that interview, did the presentation, and then they asked me some more situational questions, and then they called me later that afternoon offering me the job. So, yeah it was quite a nice process.

James: Brilliant, and it’s always good when you hear back that quickly. One of the clients I’ve been working with, it was two weeks after the assessment centre, they finally got back to him offering the job. So, naturally we assumed he hadn’t got it since it was two weeks’ later. But, yeah it’s good when you hear back the same day. When I spoke with Martina Gibbons for the first interview with IPS, she talked about the role-play during the assessment centre. Did you have a role-play situation?

Charlotte: I don’t think I had a role-play situation, but I was asked. A lot of the interview was focused on saying, “You have a client who wants X, Y, Z, how would you go about doing this?” or asking me how I deal with potential difficult situations that could come up. I don’t think I had a role-play. It would be embarrassing if I did now and I just can’t remember it.

James: Had you any previous experience working in a mental health capacity, or was this your first role?

Charlotte: So, this was my first role that was anything mental health related.

James: And you mentioned earlier about your previous role as a head-hunter. Were a lot of the question’s recruitment-focused that you were able to bring in, or was it just more the sort of general experience you were getting as a head-hunter?

Charlotte: I think it was more about the general experience that I’d gained. I think it was quite a nice interview in terms of they gave me a lot of these situations and asked how I’d deal with them so I could use my experience from being a head-hunter to answer those questions without having to do the slightly awkward, “I learned this from doing this,” blah-blah-blah. It felt like a more natural way of showing your experience.

James: That sounds true. Which parts of the application did you find most challenging?

Charlotte: I think preparing the presentation was probably the most challenging bit for me. Because, generally, I quite like presentations, to be honest, but this is obviously I was quite invested in getting this job. I’d never done a presentation for something where the outcome would have such a direct effect on me. So, I think, for me, that was the most challenging part, and because there’s quite a lot of research to do on the IPS principles and trying to memorize that so you’re not just reading off a PowerPoint in quite a short space of time, that was definitely challenging.

James: So, listeners, if you’re applying, make sure you know those IPS principles like the back of your hand so you’re able to recall them nice and easy when it comes to the assessment centre stage.

Charlotte: Yeah, definitely.

James: And did you have to do any of the dreaded verbal or numerical reasoning, or situational judgment tests?

Charlotte: I didn’t, no, which was such a relief for me. Yeah, none of that.

James: You’ve got off lightly then. So, that’s good to know. So, what advice would you give someone who’s going through the process now and applying to IPS Grow?

Charlotte: Learn the eight principles. Especially if you haven’t been in anything related to this before, I think just learn the principles so that you can relate your answers in interviews back to them so you can say things like, “Because of the principle of doing a rapid job search, I would do X, Y, Z just to show that you know what you’re applying for, you know what IPS is. It’s not sort of a normal employment service.”

James: That’s quality advice there. And listeners, just to say that you’ll be able to find a full transcript of everything that we talked about today and links to everything that we’ve discussed over in the show notes at GraduteJobPodcast.com/IPS2. So, Charlotte, once you got the job, what was the next stage? Did they get everybody, all the new recruits in IPS Grow together, or is it just done then on a sort of trust-by-trust basis?

Charlotte: I think it’s just done on a trust-by-trust basis, yeah. So, I started because I was taking over a case load. It was quite nice to hit the ground running and had my induction. I think my induction lasted two or three weeks, maybe, and in that, I did a lot of shadowing my colleagues. So, shadowing them in client meetings, in registration meetings, and judging them doing employee engagements just to sort of get an idea of how that worked.

James: That’s a nice long period of two or three weeks just so you can learn about the job as opposed to being dunked into the deep end, which is always a worry. So, that’s good to hear.

Charlotte: Yeah, I think my induction was managed very well because I had a lot of client handovers with the person whose case I was taking over. So, I took people one at a time, so it was quite gradual, and with the shadowing, I felt like, by the time I actually started doing the job properly, I’d already seen how to do all of the aspects of the job. So, the shadowing was really important.

James: And in terms of looking further into the future then, is there a structured role progression for Employment Specialists in terms of where you’ll be in three, five, 10 years’ time?

Charlotte: To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. Obviously, it takes quite a while to get into the role of Employment Specialist, and I think you’ll probably be at your best doing that role after a year, a couple of years with experience, and then you can go into roles that involve management as well, I guess. But, yeah, I don’t necessarily know specifics about what the steps are.

James: Sound as you said the more experience you have, the easier these things are, and the more skills you get. So, Charlotte, moving onto the weekly staple questions. So, I sprung these on you today. What one book would you recommend to someone applying to IPS Grow?

Charlotte: I didn’t know about this one because I’ve never really read a book that would be related to it. So, I don’t know if this is a bit of a cop-out, so tell me if I should give a different answer, but I think any book that helps you to relax and switch off, because especially if you’re doing a lot of applications to different things, it’s very stressful. And then once you’re in the job, I’ve said that it can be quite an emotionally-draining job, and read any book that helps you to relax. So, me personally, I would recommend Harry Potter. But, yeah I’m not really sure about a book that’s IPS-related.

James: No, that’s a good answer, and especially if you pick one of the later Harry Potters. There’s plenty there to get your teeth into. They’re fairly chosty tomes. So, that’s a good answer, so I’ll let you off with that one. And the next question. What one internet resource would you recommend?

Charlotte: Actually, probably the centre for mental health. Their website has a whole section on IPS resources and the IPS principles, which is really useful, and they also run the IPS courses as well, and it’s good for just simple information quite clearly put, and that’s what I used to help me do my presentation for the interview. So, all the eight principles are on there.

James: Excellent, and I will make sure that is linked to in the show notes of the GraduateJobPodcast.com/IPS2. So, that sounds like a treasure trove of information there. Finally, what one tip would you give someone who is applying to IPS Grow?

Charlotte: I think don’t be afraid of using any of your own experience of mental health, or friend’s, or family’s experience of struggling with their mental health to give you ideas for what to write in your application or to say in interviews, because actually I think any type of experience with supporting someone or supporting yourself through a difficult period of mental health will be beneficial in the role.

James: That’s really good advice, and yeah, bringing just your own personality and your own background and experience into any application is a good idea, and especially for IPS Grow. So, that’s a really nice point for us to finish the interview on. Charlotte, thank you so much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast.

Charlotte: No problem at all. Thank you for having me.

James: Many thanks again to Charlotte for her time today. I hope that gave you a more in-depth flavour of IPS Grow and what to expect in the role as an Employment Specialist. It sounds a really interesting role, and you can’t got wrong with roles where you will be making a difference in peoples lives. If you do apply to IPS Grow and want some coaching and help with your application, drop me a line at hello@graduatejobpodcast.com and I’d be happy to help. Let me know if you liked the episode today and I’ll look to get more recent grads from some of the companies that we have spoken to on the show on, so you can learn what it is really like and what you will be doing on a day to day basis. So that is everything from today, show notes as I mentioned are at graduatejobpodcast.com/IPS2. All that remains is to say I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.