Using Oriel to apply and preference

Oriel is the UK-wide portal and recruitment system for postgraduate dental training vacancies.

You use Oriel to apply to a programme, receive alerts about deadlines and place posts in order of preference.

Registering for an Oriel account

To register, visit the Oriel homepage, choose a staff group from the options and choose the Register option. Use an email address you have regular access to.

Completing all your personal details at this stage means you will not need to fill them in for every separate application you submit.

Email will be the main way you’ll be contacted during recruitment, so it’s important to check you receive a confirmation email after registering. This email should arrive within 15 minutes.

Important: Important

Oriel will notify you about deadlines, interviews and offers using your registered email address. Make sure [email protected] is on your safe senders list.

You should not rely solely on email alerts during the recruitment process. Check the messages section in your Oriel account regularly to make sure you do not miss any important alerts about your application.

Applying for Specialty Training

Vacancies

A vacancy represents the type of training programme available. One vacancy may contain several or many posts, but all applicants interested in that programme will apply for that single vacancy.

For example, there may be 7 Dental and Maxillofacial Radiology Specialty Training posts available across the UK, but Oriel will show this as a single vacancy. 

Applying for a specialty vacancy

To apply, follow these steps.

  1. Log in to Oriel.
  2. Choose Vacancies in the left-hand navigation.
  3. In the "I am applying for" field, choose Dental.
  4. In the "Training programme" field, choose the Specialty Training programme you wish to apply for.

When you’ve selected the vacancy, in the right-hand pane, you’ll be able to see more information about the training programme, view the application form and apply.

Choose Apply to fill in the application form. If you’ve entered your personal details as part of your Oriel profile, some of them will be pre-filled on the application.

When you go to the next page in your application, the information you’ve entered will be saved. You can return to the application at any time, as long as the submission deadline has not passed.

Once you've submitted your application, you will not be able to make any changes, except to update your own contact and referee details.

Preferencing in Oriel

After the application closing date, you’ll receive a message through Oriel telling you about posts on offer in the round. You'll be invited to preference them. This means ranking them according to which posts you’d most like to be appointed to. 

If you only choose to preference a limited number of posts you will reduce your chances of receiving an offer.

Non-urgent advice: When you’re preferencing posts

  • you must only preference posts you’d be prepared to accept. Move posts you would not be willing to accept to the "Not wanted" column
  • you should still preference posts listed with zero vacancies, because these posts may become available at a later date

Page last reviewed: 20 December 2021