Hiring an SEN learning support assistant
A hundred and sixty applications for a role that is usually about one particular child — and a set of CVs that describe wildly different experience in almost identical language.
"Experience supporting children with additional needs" covers almost everything and specifies nothing. SEN support is the most specific work in this list and the most generically described. Supporting a child with autism who is non-verbal, a child with ADHD in a mainstream secondary class, and a child with a physical disability requiring personal care are entirely different jobs demanding different training, temperament and physical capability — and every one of those candidates writes the same sentence about supporting children with additional needs. Schools compound it by advertising the same way, because naming the child’s needs feels like disclosure. The result is a large pile in which relevance is genuinely invisible, and the interview becomes the first point at which anyone finds out.
Which needs, specifically
Selene pushes for the specifics the advert leaves out, because without them nothing in this pile can be ranked meaningfully.
The child, the needs, and what support actually involves
Naming the type of need — without identifying the child — is what makes this pile sortable. It also changes which qualifications and physical requirements are genuine, and whether the role includes personal care, which many applicants will not have expected.
One sentence changes the guide
It also names why paper qualifications predict this role so poorly. Training teaches the plan, and the plan is genuinely useful; the work happens in the gap between the plan and a particular Tuesday morning, and the people who are good at that gap are recognisable from how they describe a difficult session rather than from what they have completed.
Exceptional, not just good —
“Someone who adapts in the moment, not in the plan. The plan is always right until about ten past nine.”
→ Adapting mid-session became a must-have; formal SEN qualifications dropped below de-escalation and consistency.
What the guide ends up measuring
Seven criteria, three of them facts. The scored half is specific to this child’s needs, which is why it is worth naming them — a generic SEN guide would rank a hundred and sixty people on a phrase they all wrote.
Three questions, and one of them is a kindness
Vetting and right to work are standard facts. The personal-care question is the important one and is asked plainly rather than implied: a substantial number of applicants for SEN roles do not expect it, and discovering it at interview wastes their time and the school’s. Asking on the application page lets people opt out privately, which is better for everyone than a conversation in a room.
Scored against this child’s needs, not SEN in general
Selene never receives the candidate’s name or the raw CV. She scores a blind, structured profile, with any stated age, sex, nationality and religion stripped out before scoring runs.
She reads for described sessions and specific needs rather than for the shared vocabulary, which is what makes a generic-looking pile sortable at all.
How the blind scoring works →What stays with you
Selene's half
- Getting the specific needs on the record, without which the criteria are meaningless
- Reading all 160 against the same guide, blind, with the evidence attached
- A ranked shortlist sorted on relevance rather than on a shared phrase
- Drafting the declines, so a large pile hears back quickly
Yours
- Advertising the vacancy — Selene doesn’t post to job boards or sourcing sites
- All safeguarding checks and references before anyone starts; she records what candidates state, she doesn’t verify it
- The interview and any time with the child, with her brief in hand
- Every hiring decision, and any override — stored with your reason
Nearby roles
Name the needs, not the job title
It stays general in the advert and makes the guide specific — which is the only way this pile sorts.