Completing your Hampshire County Council job application form

Guidance on the information you need to include in your application form

The application process will be tailored to the job role you are applying for. To apply for a job you will need to either create a candidate profile, or log in to an existing candidate profile, on our Careers website.

If you log in to an existing candidate profile, you will be able to review and amend your information during the application process

For application form writing tips and advice, take a look at the National Careers Service website: Application forms | National Careers Service.

During the application process you can enter or review the following:

My documents

This section allows you to upload your CV and cover letters. Subsequent sections may be pre-populated with information from these documents, for example dates for your employment history.

If you upload a CV and see ‘no selection’ entered in any of the fields it is because the system cannot pull through your information. Remember to over-type any of these fields if this is the case.

For advice on how to write a CV, take a look at the National Careers Service website: CV advice | National Careers Service

Profile information

Review/enter your personal details in this section.

If you have logged into an existing candidate profile, double check your details are correct, and make corrections where necessary.

During the recruitment process we will contact you by email. Some spam filters may re-direct our emails to the spam folder within your email account. Please check your account regularly to minimise the risk of missing an email from us.
Employment history

Current Employer

Enter/review information about your current employer. If this is your first job after school or college, please give details of weekend, evening jobs, or work placements.

Previous Employers

Please provide information about all of your previous employers including permanent, temporary or interim roles. To do this, simply add more sections.

You must give a full history in chronological order since leaving secondary education, including periods of any post-secondary education / training, part-time and voluntary work.

Include full time employment, with start and end dates.

Provide explanations for periods not in employment or education / training and reason

Formal education and language skills

Formal Education

Enter/review your educational qualifications such as NVQs, GCSEs, O-Levels, A-Levels, AS Levels, Highers, Degrees. Include all subjects and grades/scores.

Language Skills

Enter/review information about your language skills in this section. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We currently do not use AI tools in our recruitment processes; however, we understand that you may choose to use AI tools to help you with your application. If you do, please remember:

  • AI-generated answers can often be generic and impersonal, which may not accurately reflect your qualifications, skills, and experiences
  • AI-generated applications may lack the personal touch that human-written applications have, this may make you seem less engaged or interested
  • Ensure the information provided genuinely represents your own voice and experiences
  • You must not provide false or misleading information
  • If you rely too heavily on AI you might not develop the necessary skills to communicate your experiences and qualifications effectively in interviews or other stages of the hiring process. This may make you come across to the interviewer as a different person to the one that wrote the application form, and you may not be successful in the interview
Job specific information

The questions in this section will depend on the role you’re applying for. Ensure you complete all questions. 

Providing evidence against how you meet the role requirements and the essential and desirable knowledge skills and experience

This question asks you to give us evidence, of how you meet the role requirements and the essential and desirable knowledge, skills and experience. These requirements are detailed in the person specification within the job summary document in the recruitment advert.

One of the best strategies for evidencing written or interview examples concisely is to use the STAR technique:

  • Situation - Briefly describe the where / when / who
  • Task - Outline the task or objective – and what you hoped to achieve
  • Action -Describe what you did – focus on your role and your input. This should be the main part of your example
  • Result - Explain what the outcome was, and what skills you developed as a result

You may wish to complete your evidence in a Word document first, before copying and pasting into the online application, this enables you save and edit the text more easily.

Please note: Our recruitment system uses a character count for your answer on each competency-based question. If you answer a question and the system states too many characters have been used, please use this online calculator to help reduce the characters and to ensure your answer will fit. In addition to letters, our system considers spaces, bullet points and other symbols (.”@) as characters. The character calculator can be found via this link: Character Counter.

Please do not use MS Word as a character count guide as it does not use HTML, which is what our system uses.

Disability Confident Employer

Please ensure that you complete the disability section of the application form so that we can treat your application appropriately.

Please ensure that you include a response to each of the areas covered on the standard application form. If you’re unable to complete the application form, we can accept your application in an alternative format. If you need help or equipment to apply or be interviewed, please contact the Recruiting Manager. We will make every effort to meet your particular requirements.

Further information can be found here: Disability Confident Scheme | Staff and managers

Disability confident committed logo

Safeguarding children and adults

Hampshire County Council is committed to safeguarding children and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults. We expect all employees, workers and volunteers to share this commitment. All our recruitment and selection practices reflect this commitment.

For roles working with children and children’s data, we comply with the “Safer Recruitment” national guidelines. Therefore, we will take up references before the interview for these roles.

Employment references for Safer Recruitment roles should not be from a colleague. They should be from your manager, supervisor or someone who is in a position of authority.

If you are not currently working with children or adults but have done so in the past, it is important that you provide a reference from this employer.

What happens after you submit your application

If your application is not successful we will contact you via email to let you know.

Interviews

If you are selected for interview, we'll email you an invitation (please check your spam/junk folders!). Our interviews are conducted either face to face, or online via MS Teams and we will confirm which on the invitation.

If your interview is face to face, you'll be required to bring with you evidence of your right to work in the UK and additional documentation to support a criminal records check.

If your interview is via MS Teams, you'll be required to provide photographic evidence to prove your identity and any further documentation will need to be provided face to face at a later date, should you be successful.

The interview is your opportunity to showcase your skills and experience, discuss the role with the interview panel and find out more about the team. Come prepared with any questions you may have about the role or the team.

Your interview may include values based questions. The values interview section will be separate from the skill-based section. The interview aims to be relaxed and informal, in order for the interviewers to get the best out of you, get to know you as a person, and understand your values and motivations.

When you are invited to interview, if you require any reasonable adjustments in order to be able to attend, you will be advised how to contact us to request these. For tips on interviews, take a look at the Interview advice | National Careers Service.

Timescales

Depending on the role that you apply for some recruitment processes may take longer depending on the pre-employment checks that are required. The recruiting manager can advise on specific timescales for the recruitment process for the role that you are applying for.

If you are currently employed, you will need to consider the notice period you need to give your current employer and you may decide whether to resign from your current role before these checks are completed. However, unsatisfactory checks may result in the conditional offer being withdrawn, therefore this decision is at your own risk.

Help us to speed up the references process:

  • Ensure the email addresses and phone numbers you have provided for your referees are correct
  • Let your referees know when you are offered the role
  • Tell them that they will shortly be contacted for a reference
  • Ask them to complete the reference as soon as possible
Right to work checks

Right to Work and proof of identity checks are legally required to be carried out on all workers including those who are volunteering.

If you are invited to attend an interview or assessment we will take a copy of all visas, certificates, passports and ID cards and confirm that we have seen the original of your documents and that you are the individual who will be taking up employment with the County Council if you are the successful candidate. These documents will be stored in line with our retention schedule.

Conditional offer

If you are successful at interview we will contact you to conditionally offer you the role subject to pre-employment checks. Once you have verbally accepted the conditional offer, you’ll be sent a written conditional offer. You’ll then need to log into your online account to accept this.

Hiring and contract

When all your pre-employment checks are satisfied, we will contact you to confirm and agree a mutually convenient start date. Once the start date is agreed we can arrange for your hiring to be completed and issue you with a contract of employment.