Our recruitment process is designed to assess your strengths. It’s not about what you’ve studied, the university you went to or the work experience you might have done. We’re interested in finding out your potential to become a future NHS leader.
Stage 1 Online assessment
The strengths-based online assessment will take you approximately 40 mins to complete – although it’s not time limited. This will help you learn more about the work you’d be doing on the Scheme.
If you are successful, you’ll be invited to the next stage. All candidates will receive a feedback report.
Stage 2 Work-based scenarios
You can take this assessment as soon as you’ve been notified of success at stage 1. This stage will include video responses, giving you a great opportunity to show us more about you as an individual. Stage 2 will take approximately 60 mins to complete.
Some of the video-based questions will be timed, but don’t worry – you’ll have plenty of time to prepare before recording your answers. You’ll even have an opportunity to practice with an un-scored question first.
Stage 3 Virtual Assessment Centre (VAC)
During this half-day VAC, we’ll ask you to complete several engaging strengths-based exercises. You’ll meet the NHS team and other candidates. As with the earlier online assessments, you’ll be encouraged to just be yourself and enjoy the experience. We’ll provide a feedback report after this stage, regardless of the outcome.
VAC outcome
Following your VAC, we’ll contact you with one of three possible outcomes:
This is our process of matching candidates who have been offered a place on the Scheme to available placements. This is not part of the assessment, the VAC is the final assessment stage for candidates. During allocation, we consider the assessment scores and preferences of hundreds of successful candidates – and compare these with the placement roles offered by NHS employers.
Candidates who have passed their VAC and been successfully matched with a placement are offered a place on the Scheme. We’ll contact you to begin pre-employment checks and onboarding.
Reasonable Adjustment
Disclosure is a very personal decision, but we think it’s really important to let us know if you need any reasonable adjustment during the selection process. We respect your privacy and don’t insist on you sharing details you want to keep private.
We just need enough information to confirm what adjustments need to be put in place. We will also ask if the medical condition is something our VAC team need to be aware of, to provide the right support.
Fair assessment
All assessors are fully trained, including in recognising and avoiding unconscious bias, to ensure a fair and inclusive experience for all candidates.
If you’re considering applying, or wondering if you’re a good fit for the Scheme, we recommend you visit our Preparation Hub when you clickthrough to our website from our Graduate Jobs and follow the link on our Apply page. It’s an excellent opportunity to learn more about your own values and learning styles, while exploring our assessment process.
The Preparation Hub includes information and practice exercises for each stage of the assessment process. The questions are similar to those you’ll be asked in our assessments.
There is no requirement to work through the exercises in the Preparation Hub. However, it’s a useful tool as you prepare for the assessments and we encourage you to use it. It’s a great way to check that your equipment and internet connection will work well with our assessment platform too.
