Vacancy Request & Advertising Changes

The Trust will soon be migrating to the NHS Jobs Future Service meaning that there will be some changes to the way jobs are posted and fed back through to Trac for recruitment.

Some of these changes include the way that candidates apply, and the way that adverts are written and posted. For example:

• Applicants will no longer submit applications through NHS Jobs. The NHS Jobs board will act as just a advertising site and will directed to Trac to submit their application
• Job adverts will be split into 4 sections; Job Overview, Main duties of the role, About Us, Job Description
• The Role requirements used for shortlisting will be visible on the advert

What this means for appointing managers:

These changes mean that you will now see the exact number of applicants who have applied to public vacancies – no more surprise applications when the vacancy closes!

You will need to think about how you format your adverts – there will be prompts in each field, and these changes should help to structure a clear, informative, and inviting advert to draw the best candidates. These fields will have a minimum character count so you will need to ensure you provide the required information. Over time, the data entered into these four new fields will build up and be stored in Trac. When submitting vacancy requests based on previous, similar vacancies the four new fields will be pre-populated.

You will need to ensure that all Role requirements are set at the point of advertising – applicants will be able to see them from the advert so will be able to more closely tailor their applications to the requirements – this element should in effect work as the person specification and if used correctly, separate documents need not be uploaded.

The process of requesting a vacancy remains the same, and the responsibility for publishing vacancies and then moving them to shortlisting remains with Recruitment.

Trac will be updated to align with these changes, but there may be a period when we will have to use a blended approach to align the existing requirements with the changes.

We’ll be updating our Managers Passport Training in line with these changes and will be refreshing some guidance on the Recruitment pages of East24.

 Published 1st November 2021