How long does the NHS recruitment process take?

Recruitment across the health and care sector tends to be quite a slow process – with many roles requiring additional checks (such as DBS checks) to make sure that candidates are suitable to work with potentially vulnerable patients. However, even within the context of the wider sector, recruitment for NHS jobs does tend to take quite a long time.

While no two recruitment processes within the NHS are exactly alike, this article breaks down some of the key stages of the process and how long they tend to take.

Advertising: 2-4 weeks

Most NHS organisations have a minimum period for job advertisements to be open for of two weeks. For more senior or specialist jobs, longer advertising periods of up to a month are also possible.

However, with NHS job application volumes skyrocketing in recent years, closing jobs early has become more common. We’re aware of some NHS jobs closing after less than a week due to excessive volumes of applications.

Shortlisting: 1-2 weeks

With most NHS vacancies now receiving more than 100 applications, reviewing and shortlisting applications has become an extremely time consuming process for hiring managers. Historically, NHS best practice for shortlisting has been to aim to complete this process within two working days of the advert closing – but nowadays a period of 1-2 weeks is much more realistic. We have an article explaining why the shortlisting process takes so long here.

Interviews: 2-3 weeks

Although there are no hard and fast rules on how many candidates are taken to interview, it is fairly common to have up to 8 interviews to conduct. Building in a week to allow candidates to prepare, this can mean that the interview process (with interview slots potentially spread across several days) usually lasts at least two weeks in total.

Pre-employment checks: 1-3 months

Unfortunately, “can you start on Monday?” is a question you’re unlikely to be asked if you’ve been offered a permanent NHS role!

Pre-employment checks for NHS roles are notoriously slow – in part because there are so many processes to complete. After being verbally offered the role by your hiring manager, some of the checks which will need to be completed are likely to include:

• DBS (criminal record) checks
• References from previous employment
• Checks on professional registration (for clinical staff)
• Visa or right-to-work checks
• Health and safety screening or assessments

Once all these checks are completed, you may also be asked to coordinate your start date with local inductions (often run weekly or fortnightly at larger NHS Trusts).

NHS organisations are uniformly strict on all checks being completed before an unconditional offer is made – so you should hold off on giving notice to any current employer until you’re sure they are complete.

While our experience is that a month or a month-and-a-half is typical for pre-employment checks for existing NHS candidates moving between roles, three months or even longer can often be the case if there are complex issues to address such as visa sponsorship or reasonable adjustments to make for disabled candidates.