Frequently asked questions

Visit our recruitment portal to see the latest roles we have available. 

Every organisation needs great support functions to complement their work. We have a wide range of corporate services and support roles that offer real challenge and purpose. Whatever the role, you will be integral to our independence and ensuring everyone is able to have trust and confidence in the police. 

We serve people from every walk of life and aim to reflect this diversity in our own organisation. We are not looking for people solely from a policing or legal background, all backgrounds will be considered for our non-investigations roles. Our other areas are:

Strategy and Corporate Services

• Private Office – supporting governance and senior leaders
• Legal Services – legal, data protection and Freedom of Information
• People – Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, wellbeing, human resources, talent acquisition, people systems, payroll, learning and development, talent management, health and safety, organisational design and development
• Strategy and Impact – communications, performance, knowledge and information, oversight, quality and service improvement, stakeholder engagement, research and evaluation, policy and engagement, strategy, business planning, project management, data, innovation and improvement 
• Corporate Services – financial accounting, management accounting, transactions, procurement, facilities, risk and audit
• ICT – support, information security and information assurance, business relationship management, solutions and records management, infrastructure

National Functions

• Customer Contact Centre – one of the first points of contact for the IOPC. The team offers verbal and written advice to members of the public and other agencies regarding the formal police complaints process.
• Casework – this team handles a wide variety of cases, appeals and subject matters, ranging from reviews following police complaint investigations, to serious reports completed by the police.
• Assessment Unit – another first point of contact , providing advice and guidance to complainants, Appropriate Authorities, and other stakeholders.
• Admin Hub – provides administration support to the teams in National Functions
• Typing Team – provides national transcribing services

Operations Specialist Support Team

• Disclosure – provides disclosure capacity to investigations
• Exhibits – provides advice and guidance on exhibit management
• HOLMES Support – provides quality assurance of the investigative material and ensures the HOLMES database supports our investigations
• Investigation Support Unit – provides support to investigation teams including document management, archiving and managing the pool of fleet cars

Our application form requires your personal information and could also request:

• examples of work
• behavioural questions
• experience questions
• technical questions
• values based questions
• psychometric testing
• a task to complete
• your CV
• a statement of suitability

We conduct anonymised screening, so only your answers to the job-specific questions and supporting documents will be viewed by the shortlisting panel, they will not see your personal information. We do this to ensure that decisions are based fairly and without bias. 

We use the Civil Service Success Profiles recruitment framework when we assess people for jobs.

We’re committed to diversity and inclusivity which is why we monitor the impact of our policies and practices on a wide range of protected characteristics including ethnicity, sex (gender), age, religion, gender reassignment, sexual orientation and disability. This enables us to adapt and improve our processes where necessary. All information is held confidentially and will not be used as any part of the selection process unless positive action is being used. If you do not wish to provide this type of information, you can tick the ‘prefer not to answer’ option. 

Our Lead Investigator and Investigator roles involve a lot of travelling so you must have a full driving licence. We will consider reasonable adjustments for those who may have a disability which prevents them from holding a full driving licence. Although a licence is required, we can provide fleet cars, so you do not have to own a vehicle. You can use your own vehicle providing you have the relevant insurance to do so. Our Trainee Investigators must hold a full driving licence or obtain one within 12 months of starting the role. 

Very few of our other vacancies require you to hold a full driving licence. If required, this will be stated in the job advertisement or job description.

It is unlikely that you would need a degree to be successful in our roles. The essential and desirable experience, behaviour and qualities will be highlighted within the job description and person specification. Professional qualifications or memberships may be required for some roles. 

Your start date depends on how quickly your pre-employment checks are completed. We conduct several checks around your employment history (references), Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, health, and work conduct. We will keep you informed of progress during the onboarding process, so you know what has been returned and what is outstanding. Most candidates do not resign from their current place of work until all onboarding checks have been satisfactorily returned. At this stage, we will then agree a suitable start date with you and will take your notice period into consideration. 

All assessments will be in line with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework. We recommend you review the framework prior to your assessment.  We try to provide approximately seven days’ notice to you when being invited to attend an interview or assessment centre. 

If you pass the initial application stage for a Trainee or Lead Investigator role, we may invite you to a telephone interview to follow up on your application answers. If you are successful, you will be invited to attend an assessment centre which may include a formal interview, role play assessment and/or written exercises. 

If you pass the initial application stage for Operations Team Leader or Operations Manager, you will be invited to an assessment centre which may include (but not be limited to) a formal interview, role play assessment, one or several written exercises and/or a presentation.

When invited to interview, you will be informed what methods of assessment will be part of your selection process. 

All assessments will be in line with the Civil Service Success Profiles framework. We recommend you review the framework prior to your assessment.  We try to provide approximately seven days’ notice to you when being invited to an interview or an assessment centre. 

If you pass the initial application stage, you will usually be invited to stage one which will consist of a formal interview and may also include additional tasks such as a  presentation, written exercise, role play, or prioritisation task. Occasionally more than one selection stage may be involved, but we usually make a decision after stage one. 

We use the Civil Service Success Profiles recruitment framework when we assess people for jobs. It helps us to attract and retain people of talent and experience from a range of sectors and all walks of life. This means for each role we advertise, we consider what you will need to demonstrate in order to be successful. This gives us the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, drives up performance and improves our diversity and inclusivity.

The framework moves recruitment away from a purely competency-based system of assessment. It is a more flexible framework which assesses you against a range of elements using a variety of selection methods. 

Not all the elements are relevant to every role, and will vary depending on the profession, level and type of role. You should read the job description carefully to see what elements are required for the specific job you are applying for. There are separate guides to each of the elements, which will give you more information about what and how you can demonstrate the specific requirements. 

As a hybrid working organisation, most of our assessments are conducted virtually using Microsoft Teams. There may be occasions where we ask for you to complete your interview or visit an assessment centre in person. If you require support with using Microsoft Teams, please email [email protected] in advance of your assessment. 

We will email you to let you know your progress through the process. If successful, you will  be able to select an available time slot via the application portal. 

We would appreciate as much notice as possible if you are unable to make the planned assessment. Where possible, we will try to offer you another time slot. Please email us at [email protected] as soon as you know.

We rarely have technical difficulties with our booking system, but if you do experience a problem please email us at [email protected]

We facilitate many reasonable adjustments during the selection process for those who need it. Reasonable adjustments may be additional time allocated for assessment, allocating you a slot at a certain time of day, providing questions in a written format as well as hearing them verbally in your assessment or documents being made available in a different format. We will work with you to identify a suitable adjustment to ensure you are supported throughout the selection process. Please email [email protected] and we will be more than happy to discuss this with you.

We’ll always tell you the outcome and give you the opportunity to obtain verbal feedback after an interview. For most of our roles we can provide outcomes within approximately one week of your final assessment. For large recruitment campaigns such as Trainee and Lead Investigator, it may take a few weeks to inform you of the outcome as we need to complete all assessments first. We will usually inform you of timelines of outcomes in your interview. If it is likely to take any longer, we will email to let you know.

We offer verbal feedback after you’ve attended an assessment. This can be arranged by emailing [email protected]. We will then ensure a suitable time is arranged to discuss your feedback with you. Unfortunately, due to the very high number of applications we receive, we can not offer feedback earlier in our recruitment process.

If you are unsuccessful for a role, you can still apply for other roles at any point. There may be occasions where we advertise a vacancy that you have already been assessed for. We may not have been able to appoint a suitable candidate in the first round of assessments and in this situation we ask that you do not reapply. We will make this clear on the advertisement if this is the case.  

Your start date depends on how quickly your pre-employment checks are completed. We conduct several checks around your employment history (references), Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, health, and work conduct. We will keep you informed of progress during the onboarding process, so you know what has been returned and what is outstanding. Most candidates do not resign from their current place of work until all onboarding checks have been satisfactorily returned. At this stage, we will then agree a suitable start date with you and will take your notice period into consideration. 

Here are some handy hints that we hope will help with your application and assessment:

• Be yourself. We encourage you to bring your authentic self to the recruitment process. Not only do we want to know about your experience and skills, but we want to understand how you will be a great fit for us.
• Shout about your achievements and what may set you apart from other candidates.
• Be specific, not general. Rather than saying something like ‘I am a good leader’, it may be better to say, ‘I am a good leader with experience of moving an underperforming team into a high performing team by doing…’. 
• answers to job-specific application questions are the only parts of your application that will be seen by the shortlisting panel. We undertake anonymised shortlisting, so in your answers it is important you provide sufficient details to demonstrate your suitability for the role. 
• If you submit a CV, try to keep it to two sides of A4. Concentrate on your skills, and most recent and/or relevant experience and achievements. 
• Review the Civil Service Behaviours and Strengths Dictionary as part of your preparation. 
• If a question asks you for an example to be provided, consider using the STAR model. It may help you to present your answer in a more structured way. 
• Detail is key, don’t assume the panel will understand what you mean if you don’t say it. The panel don’t know you and how you work so can only assess you based on the answers you provide. The assessment panel may not have seen the answers you provided at application stage. Therefore, you may want to re-iterate some of this information if it is relevant at assessment stage. 
• Keep your notes brief. You can take notes into your interview with you if you feel it will help. However, it is important that these notes are brief and will help you rather than distract you. Keeping your notes brief prevents you from disengaging with the panel and looking as though you are reading from a script. It is better when your answer is natural. 
• Takes notes. If you feel it will help you, you can note down the question or key words on paper in your interview. This can help you to stay on track so that you answer the question in full. You can always ask for the question to be repeated too. 
• Expect to be asked probing questions in your interview. This is nothing for you to be concerned by, we may just want to better understand your response. 
• Don’t feel as though you need to answer the question immediately at interview. Take a moment after the question is asked to digest it. You are more likely to give the most relevant answer if you take a moment to think before answering. Don’t rush into giving your answer at assessment stage. 
• Think about what you want to know from us. You will have the opportunity to ask us questions in your interview too.

Our values reflect how we work together to deliver our mission and set out how we should behave. Visit What we do to find out more.

The IOPC does not participate in the UK Visa Sponsorship Scheme, therefore you will have to provide evidence of your Right to Work in the UK if we offer you a role. You will be required to provide several documents to be able to prove a right to work in the UK and for the purposes of obtaining any required clearances.

The IOPC Identification Requirements detail the documents we require. Other checks such as references, pension and your health will be conducted following a conditional offer being made. 

Due to the nature of our work there are a number of roles that may be exposed to distressing material. These may be roles within investigations, casework, data protection, assessment unit, people, customer contact centre and others. In performing these types of roles, you may have repeated exposure to distressing material which will likely be impactful, traumatic and challenging. Examples of the types of material you may encounter include: violent death scenes, post mortems, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, sexual offences, suicides in action – this is not an exhaustive list.

Given the nature of the work, it is also very likely that you will have extended contact with individuals who are experiencing extreme distress. We recognise this and offers all staff a range of wellbeing provisions, including TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) peer-to-peer support, a dedicated wellbeing advisor, and access to free confidential counselling. All staff are strongly encouraged to proactively access and engage with the support available.