Your application

What to submit

When you apply for a job with us, you’ll need to submit either:

• a CV with a supporting statement.
• an application form.

We’ll let you know which one to use for the role you want to apply for.

What to include in an application or supporting statement

Your supporting statement or application is your first opportunity to present yourself in the best possible way.

We’ll usually tell you what we’re looking for at the application or the interview stage (or both) on the person specification. Focus on giving us examples of the experience or competencies we’re looking for at the application stage in your supporting statement.

Equal opportunities

Currently, we only collate information to monitor equal opportunities for roles based in Northern Ireland due to a statutory requirement. If you're applying for any of our Northern Ireland roles, you'll be asked to submit this with your application. The aim of collating this information is to ensure you and other applicants aren't discriminated against.

Information contained in our monitoring form is completely anonymised and only seen by our Human Resources team for the purpose of monitoring equal opportunities.

Standing out

You’ll increase your chances of being shortlisted if you can give us some clear specific examples of work and projects that match the person specification and job description and the key competencies. For example, rather than telling us that you have good team-working skills, tell us about a team you’ve been part of where there might have been issues, and what you did to help address these.

Take some time to look around our website to get a good feel for what we do before putting your application together.

What to include on a CV

Our top tip would be to keep your CV as brief as possible, but list your:

• experience.
• organisations.
• roles and dates.
• skills and competences.

You’ll need to clearly highlight how your skills match the person specification and job description in your CV.

Interviews

We’ll usually email you to invite you to interview. We’ll include all of the information you need and will tell you if you’ll need to complete a test or a role-play exercise.

Please keep in mind that some of our roles need a two-stage interview process, especially in the case of people management roles or higher. We’ll usually try to let you know within 24 hours of the first interview if you’ve been selected for the second stage.

At the interview, we’ll often ask you for specific examples and experiences you’ve had which are relevant to the skills and competences required for the role.

Reasonable adjustments

We recognise that applying for a role can be nerve wracking and difficult to navigate and you may experience anxiety at interviews, difficulty in interpreting complex or ambiguous questions, or have a condition that affects communication. At Versus Arthritis, we do not want to assume we know what you need to thrive in an interview, so we want to ask you - “how can we make this the best possible experience for you?”. Please feel free to tell us in your application form or cover email what reasonable adjustment you may need for the application process or interview if you progress to interview stage.