Preferencing and sub preferences

At the time of application, applicants will be asked to preference one of the 3 clusters (England and Wales or Northern Ireland or Scotland) that they are prepared to work in.

Preferencing

An applicant's choice of cluster cannot be amended once an application has been submitted.

Successful applicants will only be considered for posts in the cluster they have preferenced at time of application. Applicants can only make one application for one of the 3 clusters.

Applicants will have the opportunity to preference more specific geographic locations within their chosen cluster during sub preferences.

Please refer to the Posts section of the website for more detail on participating England regions and devolved nations.

Please be reminded that the recruitment process is competitive with more applicants applying than posts available.

When completing preferences at time of submitting your application, the places available may show as 0.

Places will initially show as 0 as we often only have indicative post numbers available from our recruiting regions when vacancies open; specific posts and numbers will appear later in the process and after sub preferences are opened, applicants will be able to rank their preferred posts then.

Applicants only need to Preference their region (for example, England and Wales) at time of application.

Sub preferences

Once an applicant is invited to an online interview, they will be asked to make more detailed programme and geographical preferences, known as sub preferences.

Sub preferences must be made on Oriel; these sub preferences will be used when offers are made. Please be aware that sub preferences expressed in any other way will not be taken into consideration.

Applicants allocated to the England and Wales cluster can rank sub preferences across the two nations and can be considered for appointment in any of these nations. This means they are not restricted to one single region for appointment and can rank their sub preferences with increased flexibility.

There is no standardised level of detail for sub preferencing in this cluster so applicants may note that some regions provide more information than others. ANRO inform all regions that they must provide as much detail as they can to assist applicants when ranking their sub preferences.

Applicants should include all sub preferences they wish to be considered for appointment to in the 'Preference' box.

If applicants place any of the sub preference options in the 'Not Wanted' box, they will never receive an offer for these rotations/programmes, even if this means that they are bypassed in the offers process and a lower ranked applicant is made an offer. The ANRO therefore suggest that applicants should only move sub preferences to the 'Not Wanted' box if they are certain that they would not want to receive an offer for that rotation/programme.

Applicants that fail to rank their sub preferences on Oriel should expect that they will not be made an offer at any point in the process.

The sub preferencing window will be opened at regular periods. The window will be confirmed in due course.

Once the first wave of offers has been released, sub preferencing will be reopened. The sub preferencing window will be opened in between each offer recycle to allow applicants to update their sub preferences should they wish. This process is described below (when to rank sub preferences) and will continue up until the upgrading deadline at 4pm (UK BST) on Wednesday 14 April 2027.

When to rank sub preferences

All applicants who have been invited to attend an online interview should rank their sub preferences. Sub preferences should be ranked prior to date of initial offers and in the process described above.

Failure to rank sub preferences will result in no offer being made, regardless of eligibility. Applicants who do not rank sub preferences prior to initial offers will be able to go into their application and rank sub preferences when the window is opened again following the initial iteration of offers.

Being invited to rank sub preferences is not confirmation of an offer being made. Applicants who are not made an offer during the initial wave may still be matched to a preference during recycles.

If your status is 'shortlist reserve' you will only need to record a preference if your status changes to 'interview'. Please be advised that an interview offer is subject to capacity becoming available. However, this cannot be guaranteed.