How to apply

If you’re interested in applying for a role at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), here’s an explanation of what’s involved.

Applying for a role at the ONS

You will find all applications for roles at the ONS on the Civil Service Jobs website. When you apply for a role, it’s your opportunity to tell us about your work history, skills, experience and ability. We’ll be looking to see how the information in your CV and personal statement matches our advert. 

We may also include some tests to help us choose the best people to interview. You can find more information about Civil Service online tests on the Gov.uk website.

Check out a step-by-step guide to our application process

Reasonable adjustments to the application process

As part of our application process, we will ask you to let us know if you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you. For example, you might need an extension to the closing date if you are a carer or have a cognitive impairment. You can contact the recruitment team on ons.resourcing@ons.gov.uk and we will do our best to meet any reasonable requests that we receive.

“I love knowing that everything I do produces numbers that will help people.”

Keesia – Data Engineer

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Writing a personal statement

A personal statement is the part of the application where you tell us about the skills and experience you have. This section should match up with the essential criteria part of the advert.

When you’re writing a personal statement you should:

• stick to the word limit but don’t be too brief, because you need to show us why you’re the right person for the job
• take the points from the essential criteria and treat each of them like a question that your personal statement will answer
• read what’s required a few times, so that you completely understand it
• include in your answers what was needed, what you did and how you did it, what happened and what the outcome was
• write a first draft offline, so you can check your spelling and grammar
• get someone to check that what you’ve written is clear and answers the questions
• give it one last read before you upload and submit it

Your personal statement should give us all the information we need to decide that you match what’s required for the role. Then, we’ll invite you to an interview. 

We recommend that you consider using the STAR method when completing your application, as it will help you to structure your examples to the essential criteria.

What are Success Profiles?

An advert for a role at the ONS might mention Success Profiles.

The Success Profiles framework is a system developed by the UK Civil Service to assess candidates for job roles based on their experience, behaviours, abilities, strengths, and technical skills.

You can find out more about Success Profiles on the Gov.uk website.