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Creating Vacancies

About this GuideThis guide explains how to enter the details of new vacancies on NHS Jobs. Along the way, it also explains how you can view your vacancies, and sort and filter them. There are separate guides that explain how to ‘publish’ vacancies so that they can be seen by job-seekers, and how to use the optional ‘vacancy authorisation’ process.

Remember that many parts of NHS Jobs can be customised for local use by individual organisations. If you organisation has customised NHS Jobs, then the screens you see might not match what appears in this guide. Your local NHS Jobs system administrator should be able to explain any locally customised features that apply to you.

OverviewCreating a vacancy on NHS Jobs is easy - you just have to fill-in the online vacancy form and save it. The main choices you have along the way are:

Whether to use a ‘template’. A template is just a stored set of standard vacancy details, that have been created by your organisation. NHS Jobs will copy the details from a template into your vacancy form so that you don’t have to enter them from scratch.

What application form should be used for the vacancy. NHS Jobs has three different application forms, namely Standard, Medical and Dental, and Short. You also have the option to customise the forms with additional questions.

Whether the job should be published to all job-seekers, or just to certain types.

Whether and how members of the recruitment team should be notified when applications are submitted for the vacancy.

You don’t have to enter all of the vacancy details at once. You can save your vacancy as a draft, and finish it later.

These options are all explained in this guide.

2 September 2013 1 © NHS Jobs 2013

A word about ESRThis guide is mainly about creating vacancies from scratch on NHS Jobs. There is an option for new vacancies to be imported from ESR. If your organisation uses that option then some of the work to do with creating vacancies will be done for you automatically. NHS Jobs will use information from ESR to create new vacancies and fill-in some of their details, leaving the rest for you to complete in NHS Jobs. Vacancies that have been received from ESR will have the “Received from ESR” status.

Where to startIf you click the ‘Vacancies’ button on the left hand menu you will see the vacancies page of NHS Jobs, which will look like the image below. The page contains summary information about your vacancies, from which you can click through to see the details of each vacancy. We’ll explain the vacancies page later in this guide. For now, to add a new vacancy, click the ‘Add a new vacancy’ button in the top right corner.


The Vacancy FormNext you’ll see the vacancy form that you have to complete and save to create the new vacancy, the first part of which is shown below. The form is in sections. At the right hand side of the form is a list of the sections- If you click on the name of a section then the form will scroll down to the start of that section. Also to the right are some options to save the information you’ve entered in the form –we’ll explain those later. For now, we’ll go through the form from top to bottom.

TemplatesAt the top of the form is an option to ‘Select vacancy template?’ A template is a stored set of standard vacancy details, created by a system administrator in your organisation, that you can load into the form to save you having to enter them from scratch. If you want to use a particular template, you just select it from the drop-down list and click the ‘Load Data’ button next to the list. Once you’ve loaded details from a template you can still change them if you need to.

Please note that organisations can create their own templates on NHS Jobs. If your organisation hasn’t created any templates then the drop down list will be empty.

The Job Details sectionMost of the details you enter in this section will appear in the advert for the vacancy. Other important things you need to know about the details in this section are:


Employer Name: This is the name of your organisation on NHS Jobs. You cannot change this. (Should your organisation change its name please ask a system administrator to notify the NHS Jobs team.)

Reference numbers. Every vacancy on NHS Jobs has to have a unique reference number. If your organisation has a system for allocating reference numbers to vacancies then you should enter the reference number here. If you don’t have such a system then you can click the ‘Generate’ button and NHS Jobs will create a reference number for you. Note that there is a separate three digit prefix for reference numbers on NHS Jobs. The prefix is filled-in automatically and you cannot change it.

Displayed Town/Location and Post code. The details you enter here will be used by NHS Jobs to display the location of the vacancy to job-seekers .

Working pattern. This is meant to contain a short indication to job-seekers about the pattern of working hours for the vacancy. For example, it might be ‘three mornings a week’, or ‘normal hours plus on-call’.

Suitable for newly qualified applicant? There’s an option on NHS Jobs for job seekers to search for jobs that are suitable for newly qualified applicants. If you’d like your vacancy to be found in such searches, then please tick the box.

Div/dept for reporting. This information does not appear in the job adverts displayed to job-seekers. It is meant to be a list of divisions or departments specific to your organisation. If you select a particular division or department from the list, then the vacancy will be associated with it for management reporting. The list is maintained by your local NHS Jobs system administrator, which means that the list will be blank if your organisation has not set it up.

Vacancy specific documents. As well as a person specification and job description, you can upload a risk assessment document, if that is relevant to the post. The vacancy specific documents can be uploaded from a local computer or network.

In some cases, the organisation may have a set of job descriptions and person specifications stored on NHS Jobs. If this applies, a document can be attached to a vacancy by selecting it from the relevant drop-down list.


The Vacancy Team section The Vacancy Team section is shown below. What you enter in this section is not displayed to job-seekers. You should enter the email addresses of the other people in your organisation who will be involved in the recruitment for the vacancy. Each vacancy must have a recruiting manager (line manager) and a recruitment officer identified.

Once you start typing an email address for a Recruiting Manager or a Recruitment Officer, the system will display a list of users with the relevant role in your organisation. You can pick the relevant user from the list to save time typing.

Other vacancy team members that can be identified are approvers (if you are using NHS Jobs approval process), reviewers and the recruitment team manager.

The form has space to enter email addresses for three reviewers initially. If you want to add more reviewers then click the ‘Add reviewer’ button.


The Advert Text sectionThe Advert Text section is shown below. The text you enter here will form the main body of the job advert for the vacancy.

From left to right the menu buttons along the top of the text box are:

To switch between bold and normal type To switch between italic and normal type To switch between underlined and normal type To choose between three formats of type (Paragraph, Heading 1 and Heading 2) To check the spelling of the text in the box To start a bulleted list To start a numbered list To undo the last change To redo the last change.

You can enlarge the box by clicking and dragging on the striped triangle in the bottom right corner.


The Documents and Links sectionIn the Documents and Links section you will be presented with a list of documents and web-links that you can select to be included in the job advert for the vacancy. The list is set-up and maintained by your local NHS Jobs administrator. The example shown below has just four documents.

Note that a ‘job pack’ is a pre-defined combination of the documents and links. If you select a job pack then the individual documents and/or links associated with it will all be selected at once, which will be quicker than having to select them all individually.

The Placing your Advert sectionThis section contains some more details about the way the vacancy will be advertised. Important points to understand about this section are:

Contact Details. Whatever you enter here will be shown on the job advert for the vacancy.

Advert Options. Here you can pick any of three standard messages to be appended to the text of your job advert (DBS check, Tier 2, or UK Registration).

Notification Options. These options determine whether and how often emails are sent to the recruiting manager and recruiting officer to let them know when applications have been made for the vacancy. If you select the option ‘Email when XXXX applications received per vacancy’, you will be asked to enter a value for the XXXX threshold that will trigger a notification email.

Publishing Options. These options determine who gets to see the job advert when it is published. Note that it is possible for organisations using NHS Jobs to ‘group’ together for the purpose of recruitment. With that in mind, the options are as follows:

‘All NHS Jobs Visitors’ - the advert will appear in a job search by anyone.


‘Internal Only’ – the advert will only appear to visitors that enter the specific advert reference number into the search or that have followed a link from your intranet, vacancy bulletin or similar internal communication.

‘Group Internal’ – this is similar to the ‘Internal Only’ option, but allowing for a number of organisations to advertise to internal staff within a group of organisations.

‘Trust restricted’ – the advert will only appear to applicants that have been set up with restricted accounts by the organisation advertising.

‘Group restricted’ – the advert will only appear to applicants that have been set up with restricted accounts by one of the organisations in the restricted group or cluster in which the organisation advertising is a member.

‘National restricted’ – the advert will only appear to applicants that have been set up with restricted accounts by any organisation using NHS Jobs.

Your local NHS Jobs system administrator will be able to let you know whether your organisation is part of a group, or has set up a list of restricted accounts.

The Application Form sectionThis section contains some options about how job-seekers will be able to make applications to the vacancy. The main points to note are explained below.

Application forms

NHS Jobs has three types of application form:

The ‘Standard’ form, which is meant to be suitable for most jobs in the NHS. The ‘Medical and Dental’ form, which is for recruiting to medical and dental posts. The ‘Short’ form, which has fewer questions regarding qualifications and employment

history.

If you are not sure which form to use, you should seek advice from your HR department or recruitment team.


CVs and Welsh Applications

In certain circumstances applicants will be able to attach a CV to their application, for use in interviewing. Simply tick the box by ‘Allow CV attachment?’. The application form still needs to be completed by the applicant and used when shortlisting. If you are not sure whether to use this option you should check with your HR department or recruitment team.

If you tick the box by ‘Welsh applications accepted?’ then applicants will be able to apply for the vacancy using a Welsh language version of the application form.

Pre application Questions

There is an option to require job-seekers answer some ‘pre-application’ questions, which they must answer correctly in order to be able to access the application form and apply for the vacancy (see screenshot below). If the applicant answers the questions incorrectly then they will be prevented from accessing the application form and applying for the vacancy.

Your local NHS Jobs system administrator has the ability to remove the block in exceptional cases when an applicant has inadvertently submitted an incorrect answer.

Note that there are two questions that are shown with an XXXXX placeholder in them. If you select either of those you will be asked to enter some text to replace the placeholder (up to 30 characters).

There is important advice about the use of these questions, which is available through the ‘guidance document’ link on the vacancy form.


Application Form Additional Questions

There is an option to include other questions on the application form should you wish. There are quite a lot of additional questions to choose from, therefore they have been organised in groups. On the vacancy form there is a list of the groups (please see the screenshot below). If you select one or more of the groups you will then be shown the questions in the groups you have selected, enabling you to select the individual questions you wish to include.

Note that it is possible for your local NHS Jobs system administrator to set up additional application form questions for use in your organisation.

There is important advice about the use of additional questions, which is available through the ‘guidance document’ link on the vacancy form.

Score cards

There is an option to use ‘score cards’ on NHS Jobs for reviewing applications and shortlisting purposes. There is a ‘standard’ score-card, but your organisation has the ability to create others too. The drop-down box (see screenshot below) will present you with a list of the score cards available in your organisation. If you don’t know which card to use you should ask your HR department for advice. More information about score cards is available in the training guide on shortlisting, which you can find in the User’s Toolkit area on the left navigation menu.


The Internal Documents and Notes sectionThis section allows you to attach documents and notes to the vacancy so that they can be seen by other members of the vacancy team, but not by applicants. For example, you might attach a copy of the business case associated with the vacancy. The vacancy form shows a space to add one document (see the screenshot below), but you can click the ‘Add another document’ button to get spaces to add another 4. Documents must be less than 1MB.


Saving your work.There are several options for saving the details you have entered in the vacancy form. The range of options available to you depends upon your role. Every user is provided with three options shown in the screenshot below.

The ‘Save’ option just performs a quick save of the details you’ve entered, without checking them.

The ‘Save & proceed’ option will check the details you have entered and will only save your work if all the details are acceptable. If they are not acceptable, you will be presented with a list of the errors that you will have to fix before you can continue.

The ‘Save & list vacancies’ will perform a quick save and take you back to your list of vacancies.

If your role provides you with the right to publish adverts, then you will also have a ‘Save and Publish’ option, which will immediately publish the advert, provided you have completed the form correctly.

If your role is a ‘System Administrator’ for NHS Jobs then you’ll have the option to save the details as a vacancy template.


The Vacancy ListIn order to track what stage your vacancy is at it can be viewed via the ‘Vacancies’ option on the left navigation menu. Please refer to the example shown in the screenshot below.

The list shows some details of each of your vacancies. From the list you can:

Click on a vacancy reference number to see all of the details of a particular vacancy. Click to see the applications that have been submitted for a vacancy once published. Click to see what additional questions have been included on the application form. Click the vacancy status (shown at the top right of each vacancy listed) to see the history of

the vacancy, which appears as in the example below. Click on the ‘Actions’ button to perform various tasks to do with the vacancy (explained in

more detail further below).


Notice that each vacancy in the list has a symbol near the top right corner of its display next to its status, as shown in the two examples below. The red triangle with an exclamation mark shows that the vacancy is overdue a change to its status. If you hover your mouse over the triangle you will see the number of days by which it is overdue. The stop-watch symbol shows that a change is not overdue.

The right hand menu gives you options for sorting and filtering the list. To sort the list in a particular way, select an option from the drop down list (shown below) then click the ‘View’ button.


To filter the list, select any combination of the filters and click the ‘View’ button. A warning appears at the top of the list to remind you how many filters you have applied, as shown in the example below. You can click the ‘reset’ link in order to remove the filters.

When you click on the ‘Actions’ button next to a vacancy in the list, you will be shown a screen similar to the screenshot below. The actual options that will be displayed will depend on your role and on the status of the vacancy. However, everyone gets the option to click the ‘Preview Advert’ button to see the job advert and to send an email about the vacancy to all other members of the vacancy team.

To perform one of the listed actions, select it then click the ‘Action’ button.


The Status of vacanciesEvery vacancy on NHS jobs has a ‘Status’ which reflects its current stage in the recruitment process, and determines what action can be performed with it. The important things you need to know about ‘Status’ values are explained below:

Draft. This means that some of the details of the vacancy have been filled in, but not all of them. While a vacancy is in a draft status it can still be deleted. Please note that you cannot delete a vacancy once it has moved beyond the draft stage.

Received from ESR. This means that the draft has been created automatically from a vacancy file transferred from ESR.

Pending Advertisement. This means that the mandatory details have been completed, so the vacancy is waiting to be published to job-seekers.

Advert Open. This means that the advert is currently published and is open for applications.

Advert Closed. Means that the advert has been closed and can no longer receive any more online applications.

Recruitment Closed. This means that recruitment activity for the vacancy has been completed.

Withdrawn. This means that the vacancy has been withdrawn, so there is no longer any need to recruit to it. You cannot withdraw a vacancy while it is at the ‘Advert Open’ stage.


Archived. This means that activity on the vacancy has been completed and it is no longer required in the list of active vacancies. You can only archive a vacancy if its status is ‘Withdrawn’ or ‘Recruitment Closed’.

There are some other status values that are displayed if your organisation uses the vacancy approval process on NHS Jobs. These are explained in the guide to the approval process, which is available in the’ User’s Toolkit’ area from the left navigation menu of NHS Jobs.

Please note that application and vacancy data, and associated information, will be deleted from NHS Jobs after 13 months after the recruitment exercise is completed. Key anonymous and statistical information will be copied from the vacancies and applications before they are deleted, so that information is still available for reporting on in the future.
