Ranking, offers and feedback

You will be ranked based on the scaled Situational Judgement Test (SJT) score and weighted interview score.

Rankings

You will be ranked based on your scaled Situational Judgement Test (SJT) score and weighted interview score. You must achieve 30% of the total marks available to be considered appointable.

Equal weighting will be applied to each of these elements of the selection process.

1. Interview: Clinical governance, quality improvement and professional skills.
2. Interview: Clinical scenario.
3. Situational Judgement Test (SJT).

You will be ranked nationally, in a single list for each vacancy (Dental Core Training (DCT)1 and DCT2/ DCT3), based on your performance.

Tied rankings

If any rankings are tied, the applicant who scored highest on the clinical governance, quality improvement and professional skills part of the interview will be ranked higher.

If those scores are also tied, the applicant with the highest clinical scenario score will be ranked higher.

If those scores are tied as well, the applicant with the highest SJT score will be ranked higher.

Red flags

You can have a "red flag" raised against yourself at any point during the interview.

A panellist can raise a red flag if they consider you may not be suitable for appointment to the post because you are not meeting one or more of the required characteristics.

If you receive a red flag, a review will take place. This will result in either:

• remaining with a red flag and therefore being deemed ‘unappointable’
• being deemed appointable and the red flag removed

Outcome following interview

You will be notified of your final outcome - that is, whether you are appointable or unappointable on Thursday 20 May 2027.

Feedback will be sent by Thursday 27 May 2027.

Appealing the outcome

The outcome is final and cannot be reviewed, re-marked or disputed. There is no appeals process.

If you feel your application has not been managed correctly and have evidence of a failure in the process, please review the MDRS Complaints Policy.

Offers

All offers will be made through Oriel by the Dental Core Training National Recruitment Office (DCTNRO). Offers received in any other way will be deemed invalid. If you're made an offer, you'll need to respond to it on Oriel.

Offers are made in rank order based on this national ranking. Even though, DCT2/3 applicants will be ranked in one single list, you will only be considered for an offer at the level you have applied to.

Initial offers will be released on Thursday 20 May 2027. 

You will be given 48 hours (exclusive of weekends) to respond to an offer. These are the different ways you can respond to an offer.

Only one offer can be held at any one time, across all applications in a round on Oriel.

Expired offers

If you fail to respond to an offer within the 48-hour window you will be deemed to have declined the offer and your application status will change to Offer expired. If you let your offer expire (and are withdrawn from the recruitment process), you may be reinstated if you contact the DCTNRO immediately. However, the original offer cannot be guaranteed.

Withdrawing from an accepted offer

Due to the potential patient impact, the DCTNRO strongly discourages applicants from accepting an offer if there is a potential for them to withdraw at a later date. However, it is appreciated that at times this is necessary due to a change in personal circumstances. 

The DCTNRO considers it unprofessional to withdraw from an offer at very short notice, that is, less than 1 month prior to the start date. Patient safety may be affected if there is insufficient cover within a unit. 

Therefore, you must take up any post that you have formally accepted and work the contractual notice period before leaving a job, unless the employer has reasonable time to make other arrangements. This is at the discretion of the employing Trust and the DCTNRO cannot support any disputes between you and the Trust over late withdrawal from posts. 

Please consider other applicants and colleagues who may not have received an offer through the national recruitment process and remain on the reserve list for an offer. If you withdraw from a post at very short notice, it is unlikely that this post could be re-offered to another applicant, removing the opportunity of a training placement for a colleague. 

Feedback

If you are rejected at the longlisting stage of the recruitment process and would like feedback then please request this from the DCTNRO via Freshdesk and the reason your application was rejected will be confirmed

You will be automatically provided with a scaled SJT score and feedback following your interview and will not need to make a formal request to receive this feedback. 

You will receive your equated SJT score and banding via the Oriel Application Summary Screen by Tuesday 30 March 2027.

Feedback will be sent by Tuesday 27 May 2027.

Feedback released through Oriel

You'll see feedback on Oriel's Application Summary Screen and through direct message. It will include:

• a scaled SJT Score
• a Clinical Scenario interview score 
• a Clinical Governance, Quality Improvement and Professional Skills interview score 
• total selection score 
• a maximum selection score available 
• a minimum selection score required for appointability 
• a rank and appointability 

Feedback released through Digital Scoring System

For feedback released through the Digital Scoring System, we will email you a PDF. Please check your junk or spam folder if you have not received it in your inbox.

This includes:

• interview scores by individual question 

• panellist interview comments by question 

We cannot provide any further feedback.

Remaining vacancies

Any vacancies left unfilled at the end of this process will be handed back to the NHS England (NHSE) local office, Public Services Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland), Northern Ireland Medical and Dental Training Agency (NIMDTA) or Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) for local recruitment.

There will be no more posts entered into national recruitment until 2027. In England, any Trust posts advertised and appointed after the national recruitment round will be Locum Appointment for Service (LAS) posts and not training posts. 

Offers of employment and pre-employment checks

The offer and allocation of a training programme referred to above is not an offer of employment. An employment contract detailing the terms and conditions of employment will be issued by the responsible employing organisation and is made subject to satisfactory pre-employment checks.

You should not attempt to contact an employing Trust until you have confirmed your placement - that is, you have accepted the offer without upgrades, or the upgrade deadline has passed.

Information regarding pay, hours, sick pay, annual leave entitlements, notice period, study leave and pension schemes are set out in the national terms and conditions available from NHS Employers.

Individual NHSE local offices,Public Service Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland), NIMDTA or HEIW websites may also provide additional local information and links to individual employer websites. 

The employing organisation will complete several pre-employment checks before an offer of employment can be confirmed. These will include verification of identity, registration, qualifications, right to work (immigration), employment history and employment reference checks, a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and an occupational health check.