How to apply

The first stage of the recruitment process involves completing an application form.

You’ll need to enter important personal details, including your right to work in the UK. We use these to check you’re eligible to be a probation officer.

We’ll also ask you about your education and career, and assess you against a range of skills and behaviours using the Civil Service Success Profiles framework (GOV.UK, opens in a new tab).

You’ll be asked to complete 3 behaviour-based questions and one experience question. You might find it helpful as part of your preparation to think about the structure of your responses for the behaviours assessed. A common approach you might consider using is the ‘STAR method’:

• Situation – describe the situation you had to deal with
• Task – explain the task you needed to complete
• Action – outline the actions you took to complete the task
• Result – confirm what happened as a result of your action and what you learnt from the experience

To learn more about the STAR method visit the National Careers Service (opens in a new tab).

There’s a 250 word limit for each question, so you may find it helpful to draft your responses in a Word document before putting your final answers into your application form.

Our Reasonable Adjustments Scheme supports individuals who may face disadvantages in the job assessment process due to a diagnosed or undiagnosed disability, long-term condition, or even a short-term need arising from an illness or injury. As part of the application form you can let us know if you would like reasonable adjustments support in the assessment process. Find out about reasonable adjustments.

Once you’ve successfully submitted your application, you may be invited to complete a values-based assessment.

We use this assessment to allow you to demonstrate the values needed to be an effective trainee probation officer. Your results will determine whether you progress to the next stage of the recruitment process.

Overall, the assessment takes around 15-20 minutes to complete, but everyone is different and there is no time limit, so please complete it at your own pace.

The assessment contains a variety of questions styles using different formats. Before you complete the assessment, we recommend you familiarise yourself with the format of the question styles by completing the practice questions.

Do not worry if you have not completed this type of assessment before, the instructions will provide all the information you need to complete the assessment.

If your application is successful, we’ll invite you to attend an online assessment centre.

This half-day session has been designed to reflect the reality of the probation officer role. It will test to see if you have the abilities, behaviours and strengths we’re looking for.

The assessment will involve:

• a written test
• a role play
• an interview

Written test

This will check your written skills and assess if you can analyse information and communicate in writing. We’re looking for you to write in concise sentences that show a reasonable understanding of grammar, with the majority of spelling correct.

Role play

During the role play, you will take on the role of a trainee probation officer who is interacting with an offender. The role play is based upon a challenging scenario that you could be faced with as a trainee probation officer. You do not need any prior knowledge of the role to be successful.

Interview

You’ll have an interview where you can tell us about your past experiences and achievements and we can find out what motivates and energises you. We’ll give you more information about what to expect and how to best prepare when we invite you to attend the online assessment centre.

We’re aware that there are websites offering to help candidates with PQiP assessments – these are not official websites, and they are not endorsed by HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). Plagiarised applications will not be accepted.

If you’re successful at the online assessment centre, you’ll then need to pass our pre-employment checks.

This will include:

• HMPPS enhanced level-2 vetting
• Non-Police Personnel Vetting (NPPV) level 2 (once you are in post)
• declaration of any spent or unspent convictions, cautions and absolute or conditional discharges – however long ago they occurred

You can find more information about what to declare (GOV.UK, opens in a new tab).

If you do not successfully pass vetting, you will not be able to access the multi-agency databases needed to do the role or complete the qualification. We’ll work to understand the reasons for failure and if or where you could be deployed.

Once you have successfully completed the online assessment centre, we’ll write to you with a provisional offer of employment. This is subject to successfully completing your pre-employment checks and pending the availability of a suitable vacancy within a reasonable commute distance.

PQiP learners in the Probation Service are employed on permanent probation services officer contracts. You’ll be expected to undertake routine tasks during the training programme. Learners will also be allocated some study time towards the required learning components. However, further study will need to be undertaken in your own time and the amount varies depending on individual learning styles.

Location offer

Once the allocation process begins, we will send you a specific office location offer letter. If you choose to accept the offer and your pre-employment checks are complete, we’ll send you a contract and you can begin your training. The next intake will commence on 3 March 2025, the initial 4-week induction is hugely important as it covers the foundations for your course. You need to make sure you’re available for every day during this period.

Please note that a PQiP placement is not guaranteed during any intake as vacancies are determined by business need. Allocation of successful candidates into PQiP vacancies is by fair and open competition based on merit from assessment scores.