At its core, being a probation officer is more than skills and qualifications. It’s about how you show up for people. It’s about how you respond in challenging moments, and how you build trust while maintaining clear boundaries and staying safe.

You need to be adaptable, resilient and consistent, making the hard calls because they’re the right calls. Following through on commitments, learning from mistakes and motivating positive change in the people you support.

You can communicate clearly – supporting personal journeys and encouraging accountability. You’re empathetic, not sympathetic. You recognise that small wins are wins all the same.

Teamwork is essential. You are one part of someone’s change, not the whole thing. You need to know how to build those connections, helping people to link up with the right support to help them build a better future for themselves.

It’s not just paperwork and report writing, you work with real people with varied needs and backgrounds. On any given day, you might attend a court hearing, answer questions from a judge, or sit in someone’s living room chatting to their mum.

Probation officers work face-to-face with people on community-based sentences, inspiring meaningful progress and motivating people to follow the conditions of their sentence. They also contribute to decisions by the courts and Parole Board by presenting reports and recommendations.

The work is important, and sometimes the challenges are as complex as they are unpredictable. Every case is different, every situation unique. We need people with problem-solving in their DNA, who can think, adapt, and make judgement calls without losing sight of what’s right.

They work with some challenging people, but they’re not dropped in at the deep end. Probation officers receive full training over six months, starting with a small case load as they then build up to a fully-fledged probation officer. There’s ongoing support from colleagues and managers – they work in collaboration, not isolation.

We are dedicated to making our communities safer by supporting people to leave us with brighter prospects. With 11,000 people working at Corrections, every role plays a part in changing people’s lives for the better and helping to break the cycle of reoffending.

It takes a team to do what we do

We need people who are more than what you can list on a CV – people who’ve got what it takes to thrive in a fast-paced, diverse and challenging environment.

If that sounds like you, then you’ll fit right in.