How we recruit
How we recruit
Our recruitment process is based on a five-stage model designed to give you the best opportunity to demonstrate your experience and skills.
Stage 1: Apply
If you meet the minimum criteria for the job role, apply as per the method described on the advert. This could be to complete our application form or to submit your CV and personal statement and/or to include a cover letter. If you are an external candidate we will also ask you to complete our equal opportunities form. We’ll send you an automatic email to confirm we’ve received your application.
Where a person specification asks for an appropriate professional qualification as an essential requirement for the role, we are asking for a qualification in addition to the qualifying educational qualification for the role. For example, a postgraduate course, a leadership or quality management qualification or another qualification relevant to the job role.
To assist us to monitor the effectiveness of our equality and diversity practices, we would encourage you to complete our equal opportunities monitoring form as part of our application process.
Application Form Tips
CV Guidance for Applicants
Cover Letter Guidance for Applicants
Personal Statement Guidance for Applicants
Stage 2: Shortlist
We’ll review your application against the person specification and shortlist it against the qualification, experience, skill and competency requirements for the role. If you meet our essential criteria and are eligible through either of our guaranteed interview schemes we’ll automatically shortlist you.
Stage 3: Interview, assessment and selection
If you’re shortlisted, we’ll invite you to attend an interview and other skills assessments relevant to the role. If you’re successful we’ll let you know that you’re the preferred candidate.
Stage 4: Selection and conditional offer of employment
As the preferred candidate, we’ll send you a conditional offer of employment setting out your main terms and conditions of employment. Your conditional offer will be subject to pre-employment checks and satisfactory references.
Stage 5: Pre-employment checks and confirmed offer of employment
We’ll carry out pre-employment checks so we can confirm your offer of employment. These include:
- proof of ID / right to work in the UK
- two successful references, where one is from your current or most recent employer
- a standard disclosure check
- occupational health questionnaire and referrals, where appropriate
- registration and qualifications check, where relevant.
Once all checks are complete, we’ll agree a start date and formally confirm your offer of employment by providing you with a contract outlining your terms and conditions.
How we recruit inspectors
Our inspector recruitment process also follows the same model with the addition of a two-step selection stage.
Selection assessment 1
If you’re shortlisted, we’ll invite you to complete our online selection assessment. This is a written exercise designed to test your potential to be an inspector.
Selection assessment 2
If you successfully complete the online assessment, you’ll be invited to attend an interview and complete an exercise.
If you’re successful at this stage, we’ll let you know and confirm next steps. We’ll either confirm you’re the preferred candidate for a suitable vacancy (based on your specialism and location) or you’ll be invited to join our talent pool for future vacancies.
For more information about our talent pool please see the FAQs here.
Our recruitment process
How we recruit
How we recruit inspectors
Thank you for your interest in this post
Thank you for your interest in this post.
Unfortunately you do not meet the essential qualification and registration requirements for the role and we are unable to take your application any further at this stage.
Person specification
Job title: Communications Coordinator
Attributes
Experience
Essential:
- Demonstrates a successful record of accomplishment within a relevant role.
Education, qualifications and training
Essential:
- Qualifications or skills and experience at SCQF Level 9 or above.
Desireable:
- Membership of a relevant professional body such as Chartered Institute of Public relations or Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Skils and knowledge
Essential:
- Excellent communication skills.
- Excellent literacy skills.
- Consistently delivers creative solutions.
- Manages conflicting priorities and works to tight deadlines.
- Flexible and responsive, reacting positively to rapidly changing priorities and demands.
- Works on own initiative and prioritises workload.
- Excellent working knowledge of Microsoft Office software.
- Excellent understanding of social media in an organisational setting.
- Up-to-date knowledge, understanding and experience of the range of today’s communications disciplines and channels.
- Understands how to monitor, measure and demonstrate success through analytics and appropriate performance measures.
Desireable:
- Experience using Joomla, Wordpress, Umbraco and other content management software.
- Knowledge of the social care sector.
Key performance outcomes
Effective communication
Essential:
- Expresses ideas clearly and concisely and to adapt communication to suit different audiences.
- Produces written and verbal communication which is clear and concise.
- Listens actively to people, questions and checks understanding.
- Develops and maintains positive working relationships at all levels.
Desireable:
- Plain English training or qualification.
- Copywriting or proofing training or qualification.
Objective decision making
Essential:
- Understands the limits of their knowledge and experience and when to refer decisions to others.
- Acts consistently with the Care Inspectorate values to achieve the desired outcomes.
- Keeps aims and objectives consistently at the heart of decision making.
Planning and organising
Essential:
- Plans workload effectively in the short, medium and long term in conjunction with their line manager and work to strict deadlines.
- Demonstrates attention to detail in all areas.
- Shows initiative and proactively works without close supervision.
Team working
Essential:
- Tolerant and fair towards others, values diversity and is non-discriminatory in their actions.
- Values and makes use of the skills, knowledge and experience of others.
- Cooperates with and supports others.
Personal accountability and responsibility
Essential:
- Takes responsibility for actions.
- Maintains a high standard of work and actively looks for opportunities to improve their work.
- Demonstrates initiative within own areas of expertise.
- Ambitious and positive in quality assuring their work.
Please note – these are key performance outcomes to be used to recruit into the role. Successful applicants will be assessed against all the performance indicators used in the Performance Development Review System once established in the role.
Person specification
Job title: Applications Manager
Attributes
Experience
Essential
- Considerable experience in leading digital/ software development in medium/large-scale public-sector projects, familiar with supporting cloud-based applications.
- Demonstrate excellent technical expertise in areas including applications development and have a well-rounded understanding of computer systems and networks with the analytical skills needed to identify and troubleshoot issues that arise within applications and use problem-solving skills to determine the best solutions for these issues.
- Proven experience of designing, building and delivering working solutions which meet customer needs.
- Proven experience in a range of Internet / Intranet based technologies.
- Experience of formal Project Management Methodologies. (Agile, Prince2)
Desirable
- Experience of working with other regulatory bodies or partner scrutiny bodies.
- Experience of working with Azure PaaS and DevOps environments.
Education, qualifications and training
Essential
- Educated to SCQF level 9 in IT or graduate qualification in a software engineering or related field.
- Evidence of continuous professional development.
Desirable
- Membership of a Professional body, appropriate to Software Engineering
- Project Management qualification
Skills and knowledge
Essential
- Ability to provide user-centric solutions, which users find simple and intuitive to use.
- Ability to challenge and test traditionally held views about web development, and contribute suggestions for continual improvement within IT.
- Have high attention to detail and accuracy. § Excellent written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills across all levels in the organisation.
- Proven ability to multitask in a fast-paced environment to deliver effective outcomes and meet targets on time.
- Ability to prioritise workload.
- Ability to evaluate the impact of decisions on stakeholders and include this in the decision-making process.
- The ability to analyse complex issues related to digital applications and provide effective solutions
- An ability to adapt to evolving technologies and the ability to bring innovative solutions to digital application challenges
- Ability to make fully evaluated and firm recommendation and proposals to the IT Management Team
- Strong decision-making and quality leadership skills to effectively motivate, develop and lead the team to complete necessary tasks.
- Experience in reporting and providing status updates to senior management.
- Experience in budget management.
- Understand organisational motivations including problems, goals, and objectives.
- Drive continuous improvements in process maturity.
- Facilitation skills: ability to facilitate workshops with all staff levels.
- The ability to build relationships and collaborate with other teams, fostering a positive working environment.
Desirable
- Ability to align the application roadmap with the IT strategy
- Ability to support the ongoing development of strategic plans.
Key performance outcomes
Service improvement
Essential
- Uses knowledge and experience to gather and consolidate information to make appropriate changes and improvements.
- Aware of trends and changes and maintains professional knowledge and skills.
- Encourages and promotes innovative ideas.
- Ability to identify gaps in performance and make appropriate suggestions for improvement.
- Demonstrate initiative, drive and determination to complete tasks and achieve objectives.
Leading others
Essential
- Ability to provide leadership, a clear sense of purpose and direction.
- Ability to take a flexible, pragmatic approach to support to effectively achieve performance objectives i.e. interim redeployment of team members.
Team working
Essential
- Adapts to the team and builds team spirit.
- Listens, consults others, and communicates proactively.
- Demonstrates integrity.
- Contributes to the shared vision and purpose and shares this effectively. Involves the team in decision and actions.
- Ability to work effectively with members a multidisciplinary team to deliver business improvement.
Effective communication
Essential
- Listens to, understands, and communicates complex and multi-stranded information from a range of sources, adopting effective questioning techniques to elicit and appreciate a range of views.
- Ability to negotiate with others in a way that suits the situation, demonstrating a prominent level of theoretical and practical knowledge.
- Ability to express ideas clearly and concisely, explain intricate and complicated concepts and ideas.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Equally at ease in technical discussions with IT colleagues as well as business discussions with senior managers and employees.
- Ability to select appropriate communication style and methods depending on the needs and abilities of the audience.
- Ability to explain IT concepts and issues in a straightforward way, without using technical jargon.
- Ability to advise, persuade and influence people in a professional and effective manner.
Objective decision making
Essential
- Demonstrates analytical and systematic approach to problem solving and decision making.
- Ensures the Business Analysis team has the appropriate support, resources, and authority levels to make decisions quickly and easily.
- Encourages and supports decisions of team members.
- Considers Care Inspectorate values in relation to the impact of their decisions and considers the wider context in which the Care Inspectorate operates.
- Ability to work autonomously.
- Ability to make appropriate and realistic judgements based on professional expertise, relevant, up to date and verifiable information.
Planning and organising
Essential
- Ability to plan, execute, track and report on delivery progress against requirements.
- Works in a systematic, methodical, and orderly way.
- Regularly reviews workloads, goals and targets with team and prioritise where necessary.
- Uses 1-1 supervision to support team members to plan workloads.
- Delegates effectively to others and optimises resources to achieve desired results.
- Focuses on customer needs and satisfaction.
- Sets ambitious standards for quality and quantity and monitors and maintains quality and productivity.
Flexibility
Essential
- Encourages a flexible, positive approach to work in their team.
- Applies regulation and standards sensibly and understands where a flexible approach may be required.
- Works productively in a high-pressure environment.
- Adapts to changing circumstances.
- Has a flexible and pragmatic approach to ideas and change initiatives.
- Is open minded to suggestions about how to improve processes within the Care Inspectorate.
- Exercises professional judgement when considering options and outcomes.
- Demonstrates personal resilience, being able to work flexibly under pressure with stamina and tenacity to deliver results.
Please note – these are key performance outcomes to be used to recruit into the role.
Person specification
Job title: Inspection Planning Manager – Workforce Planning and Data
Attributes
Experience
Essential:
- General experience of workforce planning activities.
- Significant experience of office management
- Staff supervision, systems and processes
- Workload planning, prioritisation and allocation
Desireable:
- Experience of collaborative/ partnership working.
Education, qualifications and training
Essential:
- Qualified to SCQF level 5
- Commitment to own CPD.
Desireable:
- Qualification at SCQF Level 6/7 in relevant subject area (i.e. Highers / HNC)
Skills and knowledge
Essential:
- Sound knowledge of Microsoft Excel and Power BI
- The ability to communicate effectively, both verbally and in written form.
- The ability to undertake performance and information analysis in order to formulate and implement strategies and actions effectively.
- Capable of challenging current thinking in a positive and constructive way to develop new and innovative approaches to planning and improvement.
- Ability to translate plans into action.
- Effective negotiating and influencing skills
- Demonstrate a broad level of knowledge of working within inspection/regulation of care and associated IT systems.
- Demonstrate understanding of equality and diversity.
- IT literate, demonstrating experience of IT systems and processes, using the most effective methods to communicate and manage information.
Desireable:
- Understanding of project management
Key performane outcomes
Leading others
Essential:
- Ability to provide leadership, a clear sense of purpose and direction to staff.
- To effectively deploy staff and other resources to achieve corporate aims, objectives and targets.
- Ability to ensure that the planning function conducts itself in accordance with the highest standards of integrity, probity and openness through the implementation of robust corporate governance.
Desireable:
- Demonstrates experience of delivering change and improvement at an operational level.
Management of resoures
Essential:
- Ability to bring together the overall work of a team of staff and involve team members in decision-making.
- Manage resources and budgets effectively and in accordance with Care Inspectorate’s corporate aims and objectives.
- Delegates effectively to others.
- Identifying skills and experience of individual staff and making the best use of resources.
- The ability to adopt a flexible approach to competing priorities and changing circumstances and encourages and supports others to so.
- Ability to drive continuous improvement
- Applies rules and procedures sensibly.
Effective communication
Essential:
- Articulate and positive communicator both in verbal and written communication skills.
- Ability to express ideas clearly and concisely and adapt communication to suit different situations.
- Ability to form constructive relationships with managers and staff at all levels of the organisation.
- Ability to communicate effectively with external stakeholders and manage partnership arrangements effectively to secure positive outcomes/key deliverables.
Desireable:
- Good public speaking skills with ability to represent the Care Inspectorate at conferences, events.
Impact and influence
Essential:
- Demonstrates ability to influence at all levels.
- Demonstrable ability of promoting, leading and implementing strategies and change programmes.
- Evidence of building positive relationships, engaging and collaborating effectively with others internally and externally.
- Demonstrates personal resilience, being able to work flexibly under pressure with stamina and tenacity to deliver results.
Desireable:
- Ability to take account of wider political and organisational sensitivities to deliver strategic objectives.
Objective decision making
Essential:
- The ability to assist key stakeholders to develop strategies and action plans with others, in line with corporate aims and objectives.
- Demonstrates an analytical and systematic approach to problem solving.
- Ability to make appropriate and realistic judgments, based on relevant, up to date and verifiable information
- Ensures that team members have appropriate support, resources and authority levels to make decisions quickly and effectively.
- Encourages and supports devolved decisions-making.
- Considers the Care Inspectorate’s strategic vision, corporate aims and objectives and values in leading and managing others
- Ability to take responsibility for difficult decisions and to remain resilient against possible criticism.
Person specification
Job title: Communications Manager
Attributes |
Essential |
Desireable |
| Experience |
|
Working with different contacts, external and internal. Experience of working within the public sector. |
|
Education, qualifications and training |
|
Communications based subject or equivalent. |
|
Skills and knowledge |
|
Knowledge of the social care sector. |
Competencies/Key performance outcomes |
Description |
|
Effective communication |
|
|
Impact and influence |
|
|
Improvement focus |
|
|
Objective decision making |
|
|
Planning and organising |
|
|
Team working |
|
Please note – these are key performance outcomes to be used to recruit into the role. Successful applicants will be assessed against all the performance indicators used in the Performance Development Review System once established in the role.
Software Developer
Job title: Software Developer
Salary: £44,322 - £47,982
Hours: 35 hours per week
Location: Flexible (Any Care Inspectorate office)
Contract: Permanent
About us
We are the national regulator and scrutiny body responsible for providing assurance and protection for people who experience care services, their families, carers and the wider public, as well as supporting delivery partners to improve the quality of care for people in Scotland. Our vision is that people across Scotland experience high quality care that meets their needs, rights and choices.
We are a scrutiny body that supports improvement. We inspect individual care services and we also work with other scrutiny bodies to inspect the social care and social work services people are experiencing in their local areas.
Our desire is to achieve an effective and balanced way of working, that enables us to meet organisational needs and achieve a work-life balance that promotes wellbeing and collaboration opportunities. We are moving towards an expectation that all staff will work collaboratively, within and across teams, in person, for approximately 40% of their working week.
Starting salary
Please bear in mind that new entrants start on the grade minimum for the role. However, we have a generous benefits package which you will find on our website.
About the role
We are recruiting a Software Developer to work within our Digital team to support the IT, transformation and business change projects, with the design, build, test and release of Digital Applications to meet the Care Inspectorate business requirements, using the Microsoft Azure platform and other Microsoft technologies.
Reporting to the Applications Manager, you will develop and maintain our business applications and deliver an applications support service. Working in an Agile environment, in alignment with ITIL best practice, you will support incident, problem, configuration, change and release management processes, as part of our IT service delivery.
You will assist the internal customer with the analysis of business requirements to produce agreed functional and non-functional design requirements and work with the development team, research and develop modular code solutions, refining and re-writing as required, to derive code that contributes to the production of effective and efficient software solutions.
About you
You will ideally hold a degree or similar equivalent qualification to a minimum of Level 9 of the SCQF Framework and have relevant experience in Computer Science and Software Development
You will have direct work experience which can evidence:
- Experience in software development, working across the entire software development cycle, using a variety of software design patterns.
- Ability to plan, execute, track and report on delivery progress against requirements.
- Knowledge of the Microsoft .NET framework and web development, including HTML, JavaScript and MVC.
- Experienced in designing and implementing relational databases in MS SQL Server.
- Competent in cloud architecture and technologies.
- Experience in continuous improvement of development, integration, and delivery processes.
- Experience in Agile methodologies
- Experience of working as part of an agile software delivery team.
- Experience of providing customer support for in-house developed software solutions.
Next steps
You will find more information in the job profile and person specification.
If you would like more information or an informal chat about the role, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - please include a contact telephone number and times that would be best to reach you in your email.
To apply
If you believe that your skills, experience and motivation make you a suitable candidate for this post, please download and complete an application form and an equal opportunities form, please submit by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 08:00 on Monday 7 October 2024.
It is anticipated that interviews will be held during the week commencing 21 October 2024 at a suitable Care Inspectorate office location.
Subcategories
Inspector - Early Learning and Childcare (ELC)
The early learning and childcare expansion…
Role: Inspector - Early Learning and Childcare (ELC)
Location: Forth Valley, Borders, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh & Glasgow
Salary: £31,083 - £39,069 plus excellent benefits
Hours: 140 hours to be worked over a 4-week period
Contract: Permanent or 2-year secondment (would be considered)
Join us and make a difference – for you, for everyone
It’s our job to ensure care for everyone, everywhere in Scotland is as good as it can be. If you are as passionate about high-quality care as we are, and you’re experienced in your field, we’d love to hear from you.
About us
As a national scrutiny body that supports improvement. We inspect care services and partnerships across Scotland, report on the quality of care people experience, and support improvements in services to facilitate improvements in outcomes for people.
We inspect care services individually. We also work with other scrutiny bodies to inspect the social care and social work services people are experiencing in local areas.
We champion high-quality care whenever we encounter it across the thousands of inspections, we carry out each year, and we work closely with all care providers to support them to improve all the time. We collaborate with other organisations too, supporting improvement across public services. Our work plays a big role in reducing health and social inequalities between people and communities.
We are looking for talented people to join us in making a difference - specialists who understand how to put people’s needs, rights and choices at the heart of delivering social services – and how to lead improvement too. Our 600 staff work with services across the public, voluntary and private sectors. We have offices across Scotland and many of our staff work from home.
About you
Whether early or established in your career, you will share our determination that care, social work and justice services should work well for people – every time. You’ll be confident about what good-quality care looks like and how to deliver it. You’ll be good at analysing information and evidence. You will have excellent writing skills for narrative inspection reports that are clear, concise and focused on outcomes. You will be confident in working with a wide range of people and at supporting and advising on improvement.
You’ll currently be working, or have significant experience in, social care, social work, health, children’s services, early learning, child protection, or community learning and development. You will be registered or eligible to register with a professional body like the SSSC, NMC or GTC.
About the role
Our care inspectors work with care services: childminders, nurseries, care homes, care at home, housing support and a host of other specialist services. A specialist in your field, you may have helped lead a service and have a strong track record in delivering quality. You’ll be adept at leading improvement and influencing others. You will work with people experiencing care, and care service providers, managers and staff.
Why join us?
We strive to be a great employer, knowing that competitive salary, leave and pension schemes are only part of that. We pride ourselves on the values we hold, person-centred; fairness; respect; efficiency and integrity - all supported with a culture of care and kindness.
We believe in collective leadership and innovation. You’ll have a lot of autonomy to manage your own work and use the professional skills you’ve honed during your career – but in new ways. Starting on day one, our learning and development support will help you become confident in the craft of scrutiny and in supporting improvement. Because a lot of your role is about sharing effective practice across Scotland, the impact you can have on experiences and outcomes for people is significant. You will draw on management and leadership skills you’ve developed in the past.
We’re proud to be a progressive, supportive employer – we’re happy to talk about flexible working with you and we’re members of the Disability Confident Scheme, aiming to make the most of the talents disabled people can bring to the workplace.
New appointments will normally be placed on the minimum grade for the role; a higher starting salary may be offered in exceptional circumstances only.
ELC expansion
The Scottish Government is committed to expanding the provision of funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) from 600 hours to 1140 hours per year by 2020. The expansion of ELC is aimed to support the reduction in the poverty-related attainment gap and improve long term outcomes for children and families.
Due to the ELC expansion programme we are looking for 7 further ELC Inspectors in addition to the “business as usual” Inspector campaign launched recently.
Principles and aims
The priority for the expansion to 1140 hours is to improve children's outcomes and close the poverty-related attainment gap. In addition, the expansion aims to support parents into work, study or training. The Scottish Government's four principles of the ELC expansion are: quality, flexibility, affordability, and accessibility.
The Scottish Government has stated that quality is 'at the heart' of the expansion and that achieving a high-quality ELC experience for children is a key objective.
Use and provision
A 2018 survey found that the main reason why parents use funded ELC is that they consider it beneficial for their child's learning and development. In addition, parents reported using the funded hours to either work, increase the number of hours they work, or look for work.
Funded ELC in Scotland is delivered by a wide range of providers including nurseries, crèches and playgroups, from across the public, private and third sectors. A small number of childminders also deliver funded ELC, but the Scottish Government hopes this number will increase under the expansion to 1140 hours.
Criteria to apply
- We require you to hold a relevant qualification (minimum SCQF Level 9), register with either the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) or any other relevant professional body and undertake PVG checks.
- You must also be prepared to do a Professional Development Award in Scrutiny and Improvement (Social Services) at SCQF level 10 with appropriate support from the organisation.
- You will have a minimum of three years recent and demonstrable management experience in a relevant field. You must also be willing to travel with overnight stays as required.
Before you apply
- Please contact the relevant body directly to resolve any queries you have regarding registration or eligible qualifications for registration (SSSC, NMC and so on) before submitting your application.
- For an informal chat about the job role, please contact (Who?) You or Kim Connolly, Team Manager on 07766133161
- For all other queries, please contact Human Resources at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
To apply
- If you are interested, please see the minimum criteria to apply as an Inspector and the specific guidance and directions to apply. Thereafter, click on the gateway questions link to apply.
- Your completed application form (campaign number C39 only forms) and equal opportunities form should be returned to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.no later than Monday, 14 October 2019 at 8.00am.
- We anticipate that selection days will take place in the week commencing Monday, 18 November 2019.