Offers and feedback

Offers are made through Oriel. If you receive an offer, you have various options outlined below.

Receiving offers

If you are unsuccessful at interview/assessment, you will receive a message informing you that you have not been successful on this occasion.

Offers are made in rank order based on selection scores.

Upon receiving offers for DST posts through Oriel, you will have the option to accept, decline or hold (until the hold deadline) the offer. Offers are valid for 48 hours, therefore you have this long (excluding weekends but including bank holidays) to decide whether to accept, reject or hold the offer.

Recycling of offers

Offers which are not responded to within the 48-hour deadline will expire and will be offered to another applicant. If you would have liked to accept the post, you should contact the recruitment office, at the earliest opportunity. Recruitment offices will try to reinstate you, however, as the offer may have already been transferred to another applicant, there is no guarantee that you will receive an offer or that it will be the same offer as initially received.

You should only accept posts that you are willing to undertake. If you are intending to decline a training offer, you are advised to do so as soon as possible to enable the offer to be made to another applicant.

Not all applicants deemed eligible for appointment by the interview/selection panel are guaranteed an offer of a post as the number of appointable applicants often exceeds the number of posts available. If you are deemed eligible for appointment, but rank below the number of vacancies available and do not initially receive an offer, you could receive an offer at a later date, during the process of re-offering declined and expired offers.

Any posts which become available after the recruitment process has finished will be offered to applicants on the reserve list. This process will continue until either the reserve list has been exhausted or up until when the next round of recruitment has gone out for advert.

Offer responses

The different responses, and the conditions of the responses, are summarised below.

Upgrading of Offers

You can configure your upgrade options in Oriel once you have completed preferencing.

You have the option to state which of your preferences you would like to be considered for an upgrade to, should you accept or hold an offer with upgrades. This could include all or some of the posts that were ranked higher than the offered post, but also those that were originally ranked lower. You can completely reconfigure the upgrade options, if you wish.

You can opt out of upgrades at any point through Oriel.

If you wish to be considered for upgrades into a particular post/programme you should opt into this, even if the post/programme is showing no vacancies. If the post becomes available at a later date, you will not be upgraded into it if you have not opted in, regardless of whether or not it was one of your higher ranked preferences in the original application form. Once an upgrade has been made there will be no opportunity to request that your original acceptance be reinstated.

Offer upgrades are processed once all other offers for the programme have been responded to. Upgrades will not be processed at the weekend or on bank holidays.

Upgrading of offers will not continue beyond the stated upgrade deadline, even if a preferred post becomes available at a later date. After the upgrade deadline, vacant posts will be offered to the next eligible applicant who has preferenced the post and who has yet to receive an offer, not to applicants who have already accepted a post.

Pre-Employment Checks

Any offers made are conditional upon the necessary pre-employment checks being carried out successfully. If you are successful, you will receive an offer of employment from your employer (subject to preemployment checks). The offer of employment is distinct from the training agreement. If you are successful, you may change employers several times during your training period.

The first employer will need to complete pre-employment checks before the you can start working for them. Pre-employment checks are designed to ensure that every dentist working in the NHS is fit and safe to work with patients.

You will be required to make declarations on the application form relating to your honesty and probity. Checks will include verification of references, fitness to practise updates from the General Dental Council (GDC) or other regulatory bodies, occupational health clearance, Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and immigration status checks. They may also include validation of English language proficiency and evidence of competence.

Once pre-employment checks have been completed successfully, the employer will confirm new starter details directly with you.

References

Following acceptance of a training programme, reference requests will be sent through Oriel to the referees listed in the application form.

Referees will complete the reference online, using Oriel. If a referee is unable to complete the reference prior to the deadline date, responsibility for requesting and collecting the reference will pass to the employer.

You and/or referees will be contacted directly by the employer if further references are required. There is no need for you and/or referees to do anything until this contact is made.

Deferring the start date of a post

You can only defer the start of your training programmes on statutory grounds such as personal ill health or parental leave. Commencement cannot be deferred for reasons such as research.

If you have had a period of ill health or parental leave during the training programme for which you are applying will be permitted to defer your entry to training by the same period of time (whole time equivalent).

If you require a Skilled Worker visa, and wish to defer should also discuss this with the appropriate visa sponsor to ensure they can do so under current immigration rules.

Receiving feedback

You will be given feedback after each stage of recruitment. This includes:

• longlisting/eligibility checked, if unsuccessful
• shortlisting, if applicable
• interview/selection centre

Interview/selection centre feedback should be given no later than 7 days after the national offer deadline. Where available, the feedback will include:

• individual scores per interview station
• total interview/selection score
• maximum interview/selection score available
• your appointability and the minimum score required for appointability, as appropriate
• your individual ranking

Please note, if you do not reach the required threshold for appointability, you will not be given a rank.

Copies of scoresheets with panellist comments will be sent as PDFs to you.

Support for applicants

You may need support, careers information and guidance to help you make the best choices in entering the next round of recruitment.

For more information, go to the Support for applicants page.