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a shift as they had an important medical appointment that they needed to thought-BaSed QueStionS examPLe inteRview anSweRS
attend. The difficulty was that overall, we were slightly short staffed anyway,
so finding a way of releasing this person and still being able to adequately
staff the shift was going to be difficult. I therefore needed to look at all the
information available to me and provide some options for how it might be
possible to grant the request.

I looked at the previous 3 weeks’ rotas to get a feel for who had done what
work; I checked the holiday requests to identify anybody who would definitely
not be able to substitute and I looked at what activities had been scheduled
which might require a particular staffing level. Finally, I looked at the guidelines
which had been laid down for staffing levels in general to ensure that we were
complying with legislation. Using all of this information, I generated three
possible solutions. The first was to swap two people around, so that one of
his off days would fall on the appointment day. The second was to run the
shift with just one person fewer – but that meant we were not complying with
guidelines. The final option was to ask somebody to cover the 2 hours that
he would be away and to pay that person overtime. Even though that was the
slightly costlier option, as we would have to pay one person 2 hours’ overtime,
this was my preferred option. I spoke to the manager and outlined to her the
three options I had arrived at and which one I preferred. In the end, she went

with my recommendation.”

This is a well structured response, in the CaR format:

n Circumstances: working in a shift system, somebody needed time off for a
medical appointment.

n action: exploration of different sources of information, resulting in options
being identified and proposed.

n Result: decision to offer somebody overtime for a couple of hours, which
ensured everybody’s needs were met.

The answer provides evidence of what the interviewee actually did – they
used ‘I’ in their response. They also stated what data they looked at and
what options they developed from their analysis. All this shows that they have
understood the question as a ‘thought’ question rather than as a ‘task’ or a
‘people’ question.

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