NHS values-based recruitment: how to show the NHS values in your supporting information

Updated · By the Tick the Spec team

Most NHS employers in England recruit for values as well as skills. That means the panel wants to see how you behave, not just what you can do, usually measured against the six values in the NHS Constitution and the trust's own values. The way to show values in your supporting information is the same as for any criterion: a short, specific example of what you did, in a real situation, and what happened. Simply listing the values, or saying you "share" them, earns little credit.

The six NHS Constitution values

The NHS Constitution for England sets out six values:

  • Working together for patients: patients come first in everything the NHS does.
  • Respect and dignity: valuing each person as an individual and respecting their views.
  • Commitment to quality of care: getting the basics right every time, and welcoming feedback.
  • Compassion: responding with humanity and kindness to people's pain, distress or anxiety.
  • Improving lives: striving to improve health and wellbeing and people's experience of the NHS.
  • Everyone counts: using resources for the benefit of the whole community, and making sure nobody is excluded or left behind.

Many trusts have their own shorter list, such as "kind, respectful, and always improving". Use the trust's own wording where the advert or job pack gives it, and look for it on the trust's website if not. NHS Scotland and NHS Wales have their own values; see our NHS Scotland guide.

Where values appear in an application

  • In the person specification, often under "personal qualities", "values and behaviours" or as a statement that candidates must demonstrate the trust's values.
  • In the advert, which may ask you to explain how you would demonstrate the values.
  • At interview, through values-based questions such as "Tell us about a time you put a patient first when it was difficult".

Values apply to every role, clinical or not. A porter, a finance officer and a consultant all affect patient experience, directly or indirectly.

How to evidence a value

  1. Pick a value and recall a moment when it was tested: a busy shift, an upset customer, a colleague being treated unfairly, a mistake that needed owning.
  2. Describe what you did, briefly and in the first person.
  3. Show the effect on the person or the service.
  4. Name the value lightly, once, if it helps the panel ("this is what respect and dignity mean to me in practice").

Examples from outside health care are welcome. Retail, hospitality, caring for a relative, volunteering and school or university all produce good values evidence.

Worked example (fictional)

Invented applicant and details. Applying for a Band 2 domestic assistant post; the trust's values are "caring, respectful and inclusive".

Caring. In my job as a cleaner at a care home, I noticed one resident became anxious when I came into her room with the trolley. I started knocking, introducing myself by name, and asking if it was a good time, and I came back later when she said no. After a few weeks she would chat to me while I worked, and her daughter told the manager her mum looked forward to my visits.

Respectful. I always ask before moving personal items, put them back exactly where they were, and never discuss residents in corridors.

Inclusive. A new colleague with limited English was struggling with the cleaning schedule. I asked the supervisor if I could make a picture-based version of the checklist, which she now uses for all new starters.

Each value has a real, small, specific example. None of them claim anything heroic, and that is fine.

Values and the rest of your evidence

You do not always need a separate values section. If the person specification lists values as criteria, give them their own headings. If not, let your other examples show them, and add a short paragraph near the end connecting your examples to the trust's values. Do not let values replace evidence for experience and skills criteria.

Common mistakes

  • Copying the values back: "I am compassionate, respectful and committed to quality" is a claim, not evidence.
  • Using only the NHS Constitution when the trust has its own values.
  • Grand statements about wanting to "give back" without an example.
  • Breaching confidentiality in a values story. Keep patients and service users unidentifiable.
  • Forgetting values in non-clinical roles.

Tick the Spec lists every criterion in the job pack, including values and personal qualities, and shows which ones your CV already evidences. The shortlisting sheet is free. For the bigger picture, see how NHS shortlisting works.

Sources

All guides