A step by step guide to our recruitment process, plus guidance on interview techniques.

Application

The EEF Careers Site displays a list of vacancies, including a job description and person specification with a list of essential and desired criteria. We will tell you up front when interviews are likely to take place so you have a good idea of our timelines. Once you find a job to match your interests and experience, you’ll need to make an online application.

Along with uploading your CV, you’ll be asked to answer a number of screening questions, we place great value on your responses when shortlisting applications, therefore, we recommend you take the time to answer these fully and revisit the job description to ensure you match your responses to the requirements of the job. Please refrain from using AI to generate responses, we are keen to see your original work. You can come back to your application to make amendments up to the point you submit before the closing date. Once submitted, we’ll send you an email to confirm we’ve received your application.

In line with our commitment to inclusive recruitment practice, we remove identifying information from your application and CV before shortlisting. Our team will carefully review your application within 7 days of the closing date, and we will always let you know the outcome.

It’s important to us that we’re able to make appropriate arrangements or adjustments where necessary in order to create equitable participation in our application and selection processes. If you require any reasonable adjustments, please get in touch with our recruitment team who will be able to assist you.

Interview

If your application is successful, you will receive an email from us asking you to pick a time slot for interview. Often we’ll ask you to prepare a task which will give you a great opportunity to demonstrate your suitability for the job. The majority of our interviews take place virtually using MS Teams and you will meet a panel of three of our team. During the interview the panel will ask you a combination of competency and scenario based questions based on the criteria found in the job description. To prepare you should think about the skills, knowledge and experience you’ve used in specific tasks in previous roles.

The STAR method can be a useful tool to help format your responses:

S – situation: Describe the situation you were in.
T – task: What was the task that you needed to accomplish to deal with the situation?
A – action: What did you do? How did you do it?
R – result: What was the outcome of the action that you took?

For candidates successful at first interview, there will be a second interview which will follow a similar format. This will give you the opportunity to meet other members of our team.

All interviews will give you the opportunity to ask questions and clearly signpost next steps.

Offer

Once interviews are completed, we’ll be in touch to let you know our decision. All candidates who have attended an interview will be offered the opportunity to receive verbal feedback. If we offer you a job, we’ll do this by phone before confirming our offer in writing. Your offer will be conditional based on receipt of satisfactory references, proof of right to work and a Basic DBS check.

Joining Us

Before you start, we’ll make sure you have the right tools for the job, including a laptop and other equipment to help you with your working from home set up. You’ll also be asked to complete essential documentation and e‑learning modules.

Once you join, you’ll be given an induction to give you the best possible start to your new job.

Equal Opportunities

The EEF is committed to creating a workforce that is diverse, promotes inclusion and supports everyone to progress and achieve, regardless of background characteristics.

We are proud to have been awarded bronze status in the Inclusive Employers standard, the standard has given us a clear framework for our diversity and inclusion strategy.

To assist us in understanding how we are progressing to meet these aims and to identify areas for further focus, we collect information from candidates to produce and monitor equal opportunities aggregate statistics. Providing this information is not mandatory and will not affect or be linked to your application.