After submission

Once your application has been submitted it will be allocated to staff from one of the UK regions, who will carry out 'longlisting'. Longlisting is carried out to a defined timetable which is published on the timeline section of the website.

The region will check your application and any information accompanying it against the eligibility criteria (as described within the person specifications, and detailed on the am I eligible? section of this website). There are three possible outcomes during longlisting:

• Your application is found to be eligible and you can proceed to the next stage (see below).
• Your application is found not to be eligible, you will be emailed confirmation of this as soon as it is confirmed.
• More information is required to establish your eligibility. Where this is the case you will be given a deadline by which to repsond, most commonly 72 hours from when the request was sent. It is highly important to respond by the deadline as otherwise your application is likely to be rejected. Upon receipt of the requested information it will be decided whether or not you can proceed.

If you do not hear anything during the longlisting period this is likely to mean that 'no news is good news' as recruiters only initially contact applications where they require clarification or they are not eligible. However, please monitor your emails during this period and you can double check your messages area within Oriel to ensure you have not missed an email, as a copy of all messages sent via the system can be found there. 

Acceptance of application form

Once longlisting has been completed eligible candidates will receive an email to confirm this and that their application will progress to shortlisting, where it will be ranked alongside all other IMT applications nationally on the basis of the score awarded to it.

This is not a guarantee of eligibility - in the event information arises later in the process showing that you are not eligible, your application can still be rejected at that point.

For more information on the eligibility criteria and the process by which you can demonstrate that you meet them, please see the am I eligible? section of this website.

If your application is judged to be eligible, it will then progress to shortlisting, where it is established if you can be invited to interview. Shortlisting takes place in a defined period once all longlisting is complete; this is included in the timeline for the round.

Application forms are scored via self-assessment of the answers provided by you in the scoring section of the application form. To give transparency and guidance on how to complete your form, an application scoring page has been published on this website, which details the scores available.

The total score of each application, referred to as the 'application' or 'shortlist' score, will be the basis upon which all applications are ranked to determine if they can be invited to interview. 

Once shortlisting is completed, all shortlisted candidates will be invited to book onto interview. Information about the interview invites can be found on the invitation and booking page.

Reserve list

Applications not initially scoring highly enough to be shortlisted, will be placed on a reserve list and can be considered if spaces become available. It is common that a small proportion of the initially shortlisted candidates will not take up their invitation and these places will be offered to the next ranked candidates on the reserve list. This will take place to a timeframe specified in the timeline for the round.

Subsequent to this, places can become available on an ad hoc basis and the PSRO will make efforts to fill every space possible. It is common for spaces to become available at short notice and an answer may be required immediately.  

Applications far exceed interview capacity

If there are significantly greater number of applications than the interview capacity, it may be decided to shortlist out candidates whose self-assessment score is too far away from the interview capacity cut off to have a chance of being shortlisted. Where this is the case, affected candidates will be withdrawn at an early stage, usually soon after applications close once numbers can be assessed against capacity.