How to Apply

Anonymisation

When you apply for a job with Horton your application will be anonymised before it is sent to the shortlisting panel. This means that the sections of the application form that contain your personal information, such as name and address, will be removed. It also means that details about your background will not be visible, including where you went to school, college or university and the names of your previous employers. We do this to ensure that applications are assessed based on skills, achievements and capabilities, and to prevent conscious and unconscious bias from potentially influencing the decisions we make.

How do I apply?

When you find a vacancy you’re interested in, click ‘apply’ and you will be asked to create an account with Horton Careers. Having an account with us means that you will be able to track your application, book interviews, and complete onboarding via your own Horton Careers portal.

You will then be taken to our application form; the first section of this is called the ‘profile builder’. This is where you need to add details of your full career history and information about your education. You’ll be given the option to upload a CV when you set up your profile; if you do this then some of the career and education history will auto-populate, but you will still need to check and edit these sections before submitting your application. This means you can be confident you’re providing us with all the necessary information.

There are then a number of steps you’ll need to complete as part of the application process. This includes writing a supporting statement explaining why you’re the best person for the job, and answering a few simple questions - including some about safeguarding. Please note we cannot shortlist any applications which are not completed in full. Don’t worry, you can save your application and continue it later so it doesn’t all need to be completed at the same time.

Safer Recruitment

Horton Housing is committed to safe and fair recruitment, safeguarding, and protecting the people that we support. All positions here at Horton require a fully completed application to identify and reject applicants who are unsuitable to work with the people we support. Following the principles of safer recruitment also means that we need you to provide some specific information in your application. This includes things such as including your full work history, reason for leaving jobs, and other information which helps us check your suitability to work with us.

The Supporting Statement

As part of your application, you will be asked to fill out a Supporting Statement. This is your chance to show us how you meet the person specification for the role that you are applying for. Addressing the person specification in this section will make it easy for us to see why you would be a good fit for the role. This is where we get the most information from when deciding who to interview, so it’s important you spend some time on this!

When writing the Supporting Statement please go through the role's person specification, and tell us how you meet the criteria. If you don't meet all the criteria but believe that you’d still be a great fit for the role we would encourage you to apply. You’ll need to tell us about any transferable skills/experience relating to the person specification, or demonstrate how you are willing to develop in the role.

We are unable to effectively shortlist applications which do not fully address the person specification in the supporting statement.

How should I set out my Supporting Statement?

You can write your application in any way that you think best showcases your skills and experience.

For some examples please see below:

Person Specification

• Excellent ICT Skills
• Experience of supporting adults that may have experienced homelessness.
• Good written communication skills

Example A:

• ICT Skills - I have excellent ICT Skills, following my work as a Support Worker for a homeless charity in Bradford. In this role I regularly used Microsoft Office including Word and Excel for monthly reporting. I also gained experience using specialist support work software such as Homemaster, and I feel confident that I can learn new systems quickly.
• Experience Supporting Adults - In my role as a Support Worker, I had a caseload of seven people whom I was supporting to become independent and tenancy ready following periods of homelessness. I conducted regular wellbeing meetings with them and successfully supported three of the people I support to move into their own property this year.
• Written Communication - I have excellent written communication skills as I have lots of experience writing out safeguarding reports, writing meeting notes up, as well as liaising with third parties over email and building relationships.

Example B:

• In my most recent role as a Support Worker, I had a caseload of seven people at any one time. In this role, I gained some great experience supporting adults that had experienced homelessness. I held regular workshops and activities, teaching skills that the people I was supporting would need to be tenancy-ready. This included things such as holding group cooking classes, as well as ‘Wellbeing Walks’. I was successful in moving on three people into their own accommodation in the last four months.
• In this role I also gained excellent experience in developing my written communication skills, as I frequently liaised with third parties over email and built great working relationships. I also gained experience in writing up reports and proposals. Further to this, my ICT Skills are excellent, following my experience using Microsoft Word, Excel for monthly reporting, and things like Homemaster to complete my casework.

These are some simple examples of how you can structure your Supporting Statement. We would also encourage you to:

• Use examples to demonstrate how you are meeting the criteria
• Write clearly, in a way that is easy for the people reviewing your application to see how you meet the person specification
• You can also use this as an opportunity to tell us why you are interested in this job and why you’d like to work at Horton Housing

What is the interview process like?

We try to keep our interview process as straightforward as possible. Our interviews are usually one stage, meaning that it doesn’t take too long for you to know if you have been successful or not.

We also try to advertise our interview dates as part of the job posting so that you can plan ahead.

To prepare for your interview we recommend:

• Reviewing the JD and Person Specification and thinking of some examples of how you demonstrate these skills and behaviours
• Reviewing our website and thinking about how our Values and Culture align with your own values and ways of working
Practice using the STAR technique to structure your answers
• S – Situation, what situation were you in?
• T – Task, what were you tasked with doing?
• A – Action, what action did you take?
• R – Result, what were the results of your actions and what positive impact did they have?