Appointment to Specialty Training posts is decided by competitive interview and a clinical competency assessment.

How to apply

For the 2023 round of recruitment, adverts for posts will appear on Oriel on Tuesday 10 January 2023.

Applications will open on Thursday 12 January at 10am and close on Thursday 2 February at 4pm. 

Late applications will not be accepted.

It's very important that you complete your application in full and include all relevant information for each section.

To apply for Specialty Training:

  • check you meet the eligibility requirements for the specialty you’re planning on applying for by confirming you meet that specialty's person specification eligibility criteria
  • register or sign in to Oriel to fill in and submit an application.

Important: Important

Communication between HEE and applicants will by email or through your Oriel account. You should check your email and Oriel account regularly so you do not miss vital information about your application.

Most recruitment offices will also send applicants an email to a stated email address. These emails should not be relied upon and delivery cannot be guaranteed as they are being sent external to Oriel.

Please also check your spam or junk mail to ensure that correspondence has not been filtered by your email provider.

For more guidance, go to the Using Oriel to apply and preference page

For more important dates during the recruitment process, go to the recruitment timeline page.

The timeline for Dental Public Health is different to other specialties. Its adverts appeared on Wednesday 2 November 2022, with applications closing on Thursday 1 December 2022.

The application form

All dental programmes are recruiting through a national process. In these programmes, you will be able to make a single application where you are asked to state your order of preference between different geographical locations.

To ensure a fair, legal and equitable process, where shortlisting takes place, the people completing the shortlisting will not see your personal details when they consider your application.

Important: Evidence

Your portfolio of evidence must not contain patient identifiable data and should only include your own original work.

Before starting an application, you should ensure you do the following.

Read all supporting documentation

Before commencing an application you should understand what is required of you. For example:

  • programme-specific applicant guidance
  • criteria contained within the person specification
  • any mandatory documentation that needs to be uploaded to the application form
Gather evidence

Gather evidence that's required to complete the application form. For example, dates and titles of qualifications, publications, presentations, research, audit and so on. If you're invited to interview, you'll need to provide original evidence of these.

Applicants need to be able to demonstrate reasons for applying for a programme and what they can bring in terms of skills and personal attributes.

Plan time

Work out how long it will realistically take to complete the application form, including getting feedback from colleagues.

The application form will take some time to complete so applicants should ensure they allow enough time to complete the form and submit it ahead of the published deadline.

Under no circumstances will late applications be considered.

Contact referees

You should contact referees at the earliest opportunity to confirm that they're happy to support your application and provide a reference.

You'll need to provide details, including up-to-date email addresses, of 3 referees who have supervised clinical training in the last 2 years.

Those applying to more than 1 programme may opt to nominate different referees for each.

It's important that applicants confirm referee email addresses prior to completing the application form.

Once offers have been accepted, referees will be contacted by email and sent a link to complete the reference. This means email addresses provided must be correct and for email accounts that are regularly accessed.

Key content of application forms

Applicants must ensure that any work submitted or referenced is their own. Any plagiarism in applications will be treated extremely seriously and will result in further action being taken.

Submitted application forms will need to pass eligibility checks before they can be considered for shortlisting and/or interview.

For more information about how to do this and who to contact, go to the Fitness to Practise page.

Recruitment teams will ensure that applicants meet the following eligibility criteria in addition to any other programme-specific criteria.

  • Immigration status and right to work in the UK
  • Elibility for registration with GDC
  • English language skills as per the eligibility criteria and as demonstrated by registration with the appropriate regulator
  • Any examination/competency/experience requirements in line with the post

By allowing applicants to progress to the shortlisting and/or interview stage, recruitment offices have not accepted or confirmed that applicants meet eligibility requirements. Applicants may still be withdrawn from the recruitment process at any stage, including after interviews have taken place if the evidence pertaining to an eligibility criterion is found to be unsatisfactory by the Recruitment Office.

Recruitment offices will not be able to make any changes to submitted application forms on Oriel. Applicants must therefore ensure that they check the content of their application form prior to submission as there will be no opportunity to correct mistakes at a later date.

Employment history

When you're completing the employment history section of the application form, you should declare all previous clinical experience.

This includes experience both inside and outside of the UK, in both training and service posts. You should also ensure that you detail any time spent out of work to ensure there are no unexplained career gaps.

Fitness to Practise

If you make a Fitness to Practise declaration on your application form, you must complete a form and submit it to the lead recruiter providing more information. You must provide this when you apply.

Special circumstances

If you have a requirement to train in a particular location, you may wish to be considered for special circumstances.

For more information, go to the special circumstances page.

Less than full-time training (LTFT)

If you are applying to enter specialty training but are unable to train full time, you may apply for less than full-time training (LTFT). 

For more information, go to the Less than full-time training (LTFT) page.

Page last reviewed: 21 December 2021