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Application
You can apply for an Adults’ Social Worker role through our Recruitment Hub or by emailing your CV to welovesocialworkers@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
Our social worker roles are on rolling adverts, this means that we check the applications daily and process candidates when we receive them. We would recommend getting your application in as quickly as possible, as if we find someone suitable to fill the role, we will close the advert.
Once you have applied, a member of the recruitment team will be in contact via phone or email to discuss your application and your experience. At this point it would be a good idea to know which of our teams you are interested in, if you haven’t checked out our teams, this would be a good time to do so.
Once the recruitment team has ensured you meet the essential criteria and has found out more about your areas of preference, your details will be passed over to the social work teams for shortlisting. This could mean that your details are sent to a number of different teams, with the hopes of securing you at least one interview.
Interview
If you are successfully shortlisted, we will endeavour to schedule an interview within a few working days, where your availability allows it. A member of the recruitment team will be in contact to find out your availability and offer you an interview slot.
Interviews usually include a short, written assessment prior to your formal interview with the recruiting managers. We ask candidates to allow 90 minutes for the entire process.
Our current method for interviewing is over Microsoft Teams, but we may return to face-to-face interviews.
An example interview schedule looks like:
12:00 – Written Assessment, this will be emailed to you shortly before the start time and you will have 20 minutes to complete it. The completed assessment must be returned to the sender (usually a member of the recruitment team) by the start of your formal interview.
12:30 – Formal Interview with recruiting managers by Microsoft Teams.
Post-interview
We will always let you know the outcome of your interview as soon as we can. If you are unsuccessful, we know that it is disappointing, but we may talk to you about other roles we have available that suit your experience. Just because you’re not suitable for one team, doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be the perfect fit for another!
Should you be successful – congratulations! You’ve taken the first step to join us at Cambridgeshire County Council. We will then send you a conditional offer email, detailing the pre-employment checks required.
Pre-employment checks
Pre-employment checks are a way of making sure we’re safely recruiting the right people into the right positions. All social worker roles require evidence of your qualifications, evidence of your Social Work England registration as well as a full Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check.
Other checks we will require are:
- 2 references satisfactory to Cambridgeshire County Council (one of these must be your current employer)
- Completion of our pre-screening health check questionnaire – this has been designed to help provide us with information to assess your suitability to carry out the role and responsibilities required in this job, or to let us know about any reasonable adjustments that need to be made in the workplace.
Along with other standard checks such as ID verification, and additional information such as your bank details for payroll.
Once your pre-employment checks are completed, your new team will be able to mutually agree a start date with you. At this time a formal offer can then be issued, and it is normal to give notice to your old role at this point.
If at any point within this process you have any questions, please contact your recruitment team representative, or email welovesocialworkers@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.
Starting with us
Before you start, your new team will arrange a date, time, and location for your first day.
When you start with Cambridgeshire County Council, we will provide you all the tools and support you will need. We have a full induction to introduce you to the wider local authority and to see how your role fits in, as well as more local inductions and training to help give you the best start to your career with us.
Feedback
Our aim is to provide a service that is always improving and provides you, the applicant, with a positive experience – whether you have been successful or unsuccessful in your application.
Therefore, we welcome any feedback from you on how you have found the recruitment process, so that we can look at how we can make the recruitment experience better for applicants in future.
When you are giving feedback, don’t just tell us where we’ve made a mistake or disappointed you, please tell us how we can make the process/experience better too!
Please send any feedback to welovesocialworkers@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.
