Do NHS apprenticeships ask for experience? What 11 adverts said

If you are applying for an NHS apprenticeship

Read the essential criteria first

Shortlisters look for every essential criterion in your application; desirable ones can set you apart. Paste the person specification into the advert comparison with its “Essential” and “Desirable” headings, and it lists what the employer requires first, then what is only desirable, beside the lines of your CV that answer them. Read the job summary too: Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s summary asked for someone with “extensive experience” of serving the public by telephone, which its person specification did not list.

“Experience” may mean a skill

Two adverts made a skill their essential experience: keyboard and communication at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust; time management and prioritising work at North Bristol NHS Trust. You can show those from school, college, a part-time job or things you organise at home. The CV with no experience guide shows how to describe them.

Volunteering can count

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust made this essential: “Experience in working or volunteering in a customer service or customer facing role”. If you have helped in a charity shop, at a club or at events, it belongs on your CV as experience: see volunteering on a CV.

Some apprenticeships are for people new to care

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust wanted less than 12 months in a care setting, and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust said candidates should not have previous healthcare experience. If you already work in care, check for a line like this before you apply; the healthcare assistant CV example is written for someone with that experience.

Open the attachments

Ten of the 11 adverts attached the job description or person specification as a PDF, and an attachment can list criteria the page leaves out. Read it before you start the application.

Expect an application form

Most NHS jobs ask for an application form rather than a CV. Use your CV for the dates and duties, then answer each criterion in the supporting information: see how NHS employers take applications and the supporting information example. For the CV itself, start from the apprentice CV example or the admin assistant CV example.

What this study cannot tell you

• It is not a rate for UK jobs, or for NHS apprenticeships as a whole. It counts 11 adverts that four web searches found, all on NHS Jobs, all in England, in two kinds of job.
• It says nothing about other sectors. Our searches for junior software jobs and for retail and hospitality apprenticeships found no advert whose requirements we could read: the Find a Job adverts now redirect to another service’s home page, and closed adverts on Find an apprenticeship no longer show their requirements.
• It covers only the advert page. The attached files would not open, so an advert listed here as naming no essential experience may still ask for some in its attachment.
• Paid or unpaid, and for how long, are mostly unknown. Apart from the one advert that accepted volunteering, none said whether experience had to be paid, and none gave a minimum length.
• These adverts have closed. They show what these employers asked for in 2026; they are not jobs you can apply for.
• Each advert was coded once. No second coder has checked the codes yet. The table and the CSV give the words each code rests on, so you can check them yourself.

How we chose and coded the adverts

We wrote the rules before reading any advert, on 26 October 2026 at 01:27 UTC: four web searches, the first eight results of each kept, and every result accounted for whether or not it made the study. An advert counted if its title named an apprentice, apprenticeship, trainee, junior or graduate post, or it said it was an entry-level programme (“assistant” on its own did not count); if it was posted from 1 January 2026; and if its own page showed its requirements. An advert for several places counted once.

Of the 32 results, 11 were included; 5 were posted before 2026; 8 were lists of jobs rather than single adverts; 4 adverts were no longer online; 4 closed adverts no longer showed their requirements. No result was swapped for a better one.

We read each included advert’s page, its summary, job description and the person specification shown on the page, on 26 October 2026, and coded its essential experience as one of four kinds:

Experience in a workplace

Work in a named setting, such as an office, customer care or healthcare. The advert did not say whether it had to be paid.

Experience in a workplace or volunteering

The same, but the advert said volunteering counted as well as work.

Experience using a skill

Experience of a skill, such as keyboard work or managing time, without asking for a previous job.

None named on the advert page

No experience the page said you must have. This does not mean the employer asked for none: the attachments were not read.

Desirable experience was coded separately, as named, “interest or experience”, or none named. Qualifications are recorded as each advert states them, not as rules for every apprenticeship. Where a line could be read two ways, the code follows the advert’s exact words and the table says why. One advert’s summary asked for experience its person specification left out; we coded what the summary asked for, and its row says so.

Download the data and cite it

The CSV has one row per advert: the codes above, the advert’s address, the day we read it, its limits and alternatives, and the words each code rests on. A value nobody stated reads “unknown”.

Download the 11 adverts (CSV, 9 KB)All 32 search results (CSV)

To cite the study:

CVTemplates.co (2026). Do NHS apprenticeships ask for experience? What 11 adverts said. 11 NHS Jobs adverts posted 5 January 2026 to 14 October 2026, read 26 October 2026. https://cvtemplates.co/research/nhs-apprenticeship-adverts

Quoting a figure? Give the count with its total, for example “4 of 11 adverts”, and say they were NHS apprenticeship adverts from 2026.