Prospero - Senploy interview with Specialist Consultant, Mike Watts
Prospero Teaching Manchester's Mike Watts talks to Amy Allen about why candidates should apply through Senploy to find their career goals!
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Good morning i'm Amy Allen i'm the founder of senploy.co.uk and i'm really excited to be doing a series of interviews with the specialist education recruiters prospero teaching and this morning first of all we have um
we have mike so mike do you want to introduce yourself and what do you do at prospero yeah i can do it my name's mike i'm one of the managers over at prospero i predominantly look after secondary and special needs i've been doing education recruitment for coming up to 14 15 years now so i've seen a lot of changes in the market i've seen how schools change their attitude towards using specialist support staff and i'm also here to talk about what we're really looking for in terms of staff and how senpai can hopefully help us
absolutely so you know what you're doing. Why come to Prospero with all that experience and but there
are a lot of recruitment companies out there who deal with specialist education so why should candidates come to prospero there's so many reasons why candidates should look at agencies and firstly with ourselves we've got in our team probably approaching 100 years worth of experience which combined is massive again we've seen so many changes in the marketplace everything from government changes to legislation changes it's also our attitude as to how we speak to our candidates because without our candidates we're nothing so we prefer speaking to people on the phone pick us up pick the phone up to us ring us talk to us don't worry about anything don't send a massive long email and then take a big deep breath pick the phone up we've all worked in schools as well i'm a martial arts culture i'm a cricket coach i'm a boxing coach i've worked with the young people that you'll be working with so we've been there we've seen it we've all had a bad day in school and thought wow we've all had a brilliant day in school and thought yeah that's why i go to work don't be afraid we're here to help you and we also know that we pay exceptionally well and we reward our staff so we're not talking about you know paying two or three pounds a day more because you're traveling you know a little bit further than you want we pay the best because we want to attract the best. Benefits of working in SEND i think that's really really important and can you tell the the people who
are looking at this video what the benefits are of working in this sector specifically so why would people want to work in scn scnd so when we speak to candidates who wants work in sen they have to do it for the reward it is i personally would rather work with my little access group who i coached at cricket last year
who have their challenges than some of our gifted and talented youngsters when i was coaching in schools i preferred working with the young people who didn't want to be there because you get that much more back
it's rewarding it's enjoyable and when you're working in a school you find out a lot more about yourself
and to how you realize patterns of your behaviour as to why you were like something in school and why mr jones used to hate you and you think oh yeah i actually understand that now um it's about seeing the best in every pupil yeah and you know we get so many people that come to us wanting to i want to go and do my teacher training oh i'll go and volunteer schools actually look more at your attitude and your mindset now and your personality rather than a piece of paper and we get to know our people better than everyone else okay What personal qualities are important i think that brings me quite nicely on to um the question of what personal qualities are important to work in special education definitely patience and resilience as well you've got to be thick-skinned and whether you're working with scmh which the young people are going to be challenging because they've got so much stuff going on at home you've got so much stuff going on internally
sometimes there may be a little bit of a ticking time bump and i think you just need that patience and that understanding to think it's not aimed at me yeah you know it could have been an altercation outside of school it could have been mum or dad or grandma granddad having a goat and because you've not had the breakfast they've not done homework it's just being confident in your own abilities to look at a young person that you think might be about to have a bit of a moment and say no come on let's go and have a cup of tea talk to me what's wrong and you can remember Influence yeah you can really change the the way that days
that person's day actually ends up can't you by the influence that you have and how you react to situations
i remember a head teacher i worked for as a coach he basically said to me i will never ever ever penalize or pull up a member of staff if i see him chatting to my young people having a drink just having two minutes checking in on and you know it's quite nice when you're a head teacher say that yeah and some of us a lot of our head teachers will still sit down with a young person in the morning and just just a cup of tea cup of coffee you know did you see the football last night anything like that because it's about having the ability to
build relationships with young people that feel on their own yeah Jobs okay so with that what type of jobs are you recruiting for at the moment mike within scn we are we're always recruiting for for people with that patience who can provide support and support is very broad very all-encompassing and what i would be mindful of saying to people is just be careful when you apply for a teaching assistant job make sure
you're aware what the needs of the young people are because some of our schools have young people with very very complex needs and they may find themselves limited by mobility or how they can feed themselves
those staff even though they may be more carers may still be called a teaching assistant generally what we're looking for is young people with a positive people who've got a positive attitude towards working with young people who need that extra whether it is mobility whether it is mental health needs whether it is behaviour and if you've got a positive mental attitude yourself patience and resilience it doesn't matter what your background is or what the qualifications are there is a home for you in a school and there are young people that you can help so you saying that you would recruit individuals that don't have any experience they're like absolutely we again because of the experience levels we have we've got relationships with head teachers hr managers who will listen to us when they ring us and say mike we need someone who can do this when we say well we've got this person who's done this this and this they will listen to us and if we can convince that school that our person has got the right mentality and personality and patience to support that young person they'll take them everyone gets a chance with ourselves Job Title yeah i think that's it i think any skill can be learnt but it's your intrinsic personality that needs to shine through in this type of role
massively so job title wise what should people be looking out for on senploy anything from learning mentor to academic support behavioural support sometimes we may call them educational care assistants the clue is in the all our adverts we'll have a little blurb at the top that will tell you about the school what the young people really need and what skills you may need or what personality you may need to work with and be effective in that environment okay Application Process and can you tell people what the process is like to apply for a position would be applying through senploy you would then we'd obviously then get your details we'd arrange a telephone interview we'd then do a registration interview we'd answer any questions you had once you were registered you'd get access to all rcpd and we would obviously fully prepare you for whatever job role you were going into we may the only time it would cost you anything is if you had to do new dbs which we can do for you but we would also be on hand all the way through the time you're working for us as well Do candidates have to pay okay and do candidates have to pay you to find them a job not at all i think there could be a myth out there about people they the candidates do have to pay recruitment companies so that's really really good to spell that myth
um it is complete the only time we would ask the money off you is if you needed to do a new dbs check okay and what's the cost of that mike new dbs costs 45 pound 80 but there is still a myth somewhere around that everyone has to have a different dbs for a different agency there is a process and a service called the online update service that costs a further 13 pound a year but once you've got your new certificate and you're registered to the update service you will only then pay 13 pound a year to keep your vetting live so it's like an essential piece of your toolkit you can't become a teaching assistant or anyone working in this sector without your dbs so it is very much essential to have this massively no no school will accept you without a dbs Temporary to permanent okay we have quite a few jobs on employee that are temporary to permanent
and do they always turn perm what are the options available to individuals with the type of contracts that are
available there's so many options and again that's the beauty of working for an agency you may choose to do what we call day-to-day work which could fit in around further studies for instance you may be studying
your undergraduate and you may have a couple of days a week free and you think i've always fancied
working in schools i'm thinking of doing my teacher training we could keep you busy on what we call day-to-day work which is very ad hoc and it fits in with your diary if you wanted something more longer term
at which we class is anything over four weeks long we can also put into bookings like that with regards to temp to perm it's we have agreements with a lot of our schools that after a certain amount of period of working for us they can transfer them transfer you as a member of staff to their payroll it may not work for you though so please don't feel forced into it don't be afraid of saints for school i'm going to teach training in September because they may say well we'll keep you on agency while you're working for ourselves you
do get paid weekly and we do get permanent working as well which obviously is much more of a lengthy process where you go to interviews with the school but we can accommodate everyone's diary we've got some people that work one day a week and some people are still upset when they're working five days a week and they pick up extra shifts and a lot of our recent graduates have still got the retail jobs they had in
university but what i would say to anyone brand new trying education is don't be afraid of dropping your other job down to eight hours or the minimum contract and just seeing how you get on with us you may realize it's not for you and then you can pick up your other job there's no ill feeling we're not going to twist around and stay into a job we completely understand because a lot of people try education before going on
to further studies Outro that's really helpful mike so if there is anyone out there that does want to consider a career in education um pick up the phone speak to mike apply through senploy and hopefully you'll be on the road to your new career thanks very much mike and um i wish you a really great day
thanks amy you too take care bye
bye