How to write a good NHS job application

Getting the job you want in the NHS has arguably never been more difficult. Many NHS jobs (especially non-clinical roles) now receive more than 100 applications, making competition fierce for roles at every level.

At the same time, the NHS is in desperate need of skilled and enthusiastic staff. Many professions have significant vacancy rates; about 1 in 12 nursing roles are vacant at any one time.

Applying for NHS jobs is not necessarily a simple task. From complex applications using clunky platforms such as NHS Jobs or Trac, to demystifying jargon used in person specifications, it can be difficult to know how to approach NHS job applications.

We recently spoke to a group NHS hiring managers with experience hiring at a variety of levels to get the inside track on what makes an NHS job application good (and bad):

Writing a good NHS supporting statement

Supporting statements (sometimes also called personal statements or supporting information) can be make or break for NHS job applications. These are the main part of the job application where you can demonstrate your passion for the role and the reasons why you should stand out against the many other applicants who might have similar qualifications or experience.

Our managers gave us a clear list of “do’s and don’ts” for supporting information:

• Do make sure your supporting statement clearly shows how you meet every part of the person specification. The person specification (usually part of the job description) is the key list of skills that the hiring manager will be using to score your application against. Work through each section of the “essential” and “desirable” elements of the person specification and check your personal statement demonstrates how you meet each criteria, including examples where possible.
• Do talk about where you’re applying for. One of the biggest mistakes our managers mentioned was focusing the supporting information purely on the candidate. Your personal statement gives you a chance to show that you have properly researched the job and organisation you are planning to join. Has the hospital you’ve applied for recently won an award? Is there a particular specialty at the hospital you’re passionate about? Mentioning these kind of details is a great way to show that you are a self-starter and enthusiastic about this particular role.
• Do properly check and proof-read your supporting statement. Not very surprising advice, but our managers were shocked at how many supporting statements had poor grammar, spelling, or included other blunders such as getting organisation names wrong. Get someone else to check your statement before you submit it!
• Don’t rely on AI to write your supporting statement. Easy access to tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini has made it tempting to hand over the hard work of writing personal statements to AI, but our managers told us they generally found AI-generated supporting statements easy to spot. In particular, they found AI-generated statements tended to be vague on detail, formulaic in structure and full of cliched expressions. Some managers estimated up to 80% of the applications they saw were obviously constructed using ChatGPT. By all means, use these tools to help research roles – but our advice is to stick to doing the writing yourself.
• Don’t include external links. Some application systems remove external links or email addresses automatically. Most of the managers we spoke to said they simply didn’t have time to visit external websites such as LinkedIn when reviewing applications, unless the application form specifically asked for them.

Understanding the NHS application process

Almost all NHS job applications are reviewed by managers who are working full-time in busy roles. Reviewing applications is a time-consuming process, especially when managers are being asked to review potentially hundreds of applications; one manager we spoke to said they regularly receive more than 300 applications for entry-level roles.

You can make your application more likely to succeed by understanding some key elements of the process and making your application as easy to score as possible:

• Applications are usually anonymous. Most modern Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) anonymise applications to avoid bias – so the hiring manager doesn’t know whose application they are scoring. If you’re an internal candidate, bear this in mind if you’ve got a relationship with the hiring manager already; they won’t necessarily know who you are, and as such you need to imagine you are writing your application to someone you’ve never met before. If you’re an external candidate, trying to build a relationship with a hiring manager through requesting phone calls is usually not a good use of time (unless you have genuine questions).
• Applications are scored using a strict and inflexible scoring system. Applications are usually scored against some or all of the criteria in the person specification section of the job description. Usually the scoring is from 0 (no evidence) to 3 (exceptional) for each criteria. Missing any element of the person specification can cost you big marks against your competition.
• Equality, diversity and inclusion and values are important. In today’s NHS, understanding concepts such as equity and diversity are vital. Many of the biggest challenges facing NHS services are related to health inequalities, and managers want staff who are conscious of these types of issue. Many NHS organisations also have their own values, and it can be useful for scoring to mention these values by name.
• Using technical and unfamiliar terms. Don’t make any assumptions about what the person scoring your application will or won’t know. Spell out acronyms and explain every element of your application. In particular, our managers mentioned that many applicants educated outside the UK include references to grading or educational attainment which are unfamiliar – and which they don’t have time to look up themselves. Make sure that you explain these terms in ways that are more familiar to British reviewers, e.g. “equivalent to an A-level“.