Do NHS jobs have to be advertised?

A frustration among candidates for NHS jobs is the perception that some of the “best” jobs never make it to being advertised externally. It is often suggested that managers find ways of giving jobs to preferred internal candidates without going through a fair and competitive recruitment process.

In reality, as with many recruitment-related issues, whether NHS jobs have to be advertised varies significantly based on organisational policies. There is no specific policy within Agenda for Change or other nationally-recognised policy documents about how jobs should be advertised.

Although normal practice is advertise all roles externally for two weeks, it is not uncommon for roles to only be advertised internally, and sometimes only to specific groups of internal staff.

Some of the scenarios where NHS jobs would not be advertised externally include:

• Organisations undergoing redundancy or restructuring programmes. Often large NHS organisations in the process of making significant numbers of staff redundant will insist that all vacancies are circulated to staff “at risk” before they are advertised any further. This gives staff who may otherwise be leaving the organisation the chance to apply for the vacancy.
• Organisations under financial pressure. When NHS trusts or other organisations are experiencing challenging financial environments, they may alter their recruitment policies to reduce the time and expenses related to external recruitment. This is sometimes called a “recruitment freeze”, where vacancies are often left unfilled if they are deemed non-essential. However, in circumstances where a vacancy must be filled, these organisations may choose advertise internally first.
• Organisations with discretionary policies around internal recruitment. Because external recruitment takes a significant amount of time and effort to organise, some NHS organisations have policies (whether formal or informal) allowing managers to advertise vacancies internally if they feel there are likely to be good candidates within the organisation. In these cases, hiring managers will work with HR colleagues to decide if this is the best course of action. This is more likely to be possible for semi-junior positions where there are many internal staff looking to progress.

However, it is extremely uncommon for a manager to be allowed to simply “give” a job to an internal candidate without some form of recruitment process taking place. Managers only have limited control of the recruitment process within NHS organisations, and HR colleagues tend to be highly aware of recruitment processes that could be deemed to be unfair, opening the organisation up to potential employment tribunals or other legal challenges.