Hi all
As someone who shortlists and interviews for junior doctor posts in medicine, I thought it might be worth feeding back some tips for your application form that might help you.
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The person who scores you will often be looking at 30+ forms. Make everything easy for them to see! If you are writing a lot, use paragraphs or bullet points to break things up.
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Use a spell-checker, or get someone else to read through it. Your English may not be 100% perfect, but failure to use punctuation, capital letters at the start of a sentence or mis-spelling words makes a bad impression. This is doubled if you then describe yourself as someone who pays attention to details!
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Answer as much of the form as you can, but be aware that in the UK, people are generally less interested in your school achievements, unless you can relate them to one of the skills/criteria needed for the job, so only mention briefly (I personally never pay any attention to them).
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Don’t drop points at the shortlisting stage by omitting essential information. It’s sadly quite common for people not to put their GMC status down. If you have applied for registration, but haven’t yet got it, that’s fine to state that you have applied, and if you have got it, then put it down. Your shortlister is not going to check through the GMC website to see what your status is, they will simply give you 0 marks for the criteria of GMC registration. This brings me on to…
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Read the criteria – and then show explicitly how you fit those criteria! I can’t emphasis how important this is, as this is what gives you good scores at shortlisting and at interview. Each job description will have essential and desirable criteria, and the shortlisting is scored against those. For example, if the job criteria says 6 months experience in medicine, then make sure that you put in the posts you have rotated through and the times so you can get the maximum marks. You might also briefly want to describe the type of patients you saw. If the criteria talks about teamwork, then give an example of teamwork. “I worked in a team of doctors and nurses” won’t get you much, but “ I worked as the junior member of the trauma team. My tasks were to arrange and co-ordinate investigations, and I needed to liaise with the radiographers to get timely scans. I made sure that the resus nurses were always updated with the plans, and went round to talk to the radiographers directly to discuss may case, which meant that my requests were received favourably” will get you more points. Examples are super important – for every behaviour you are describing, give a small example “I enjoy teaching: recently I delivered a talk on hyponatraemia investigation to medical students, and the feedback I got was very positive”
For many IMGs, this is un-necessary advice, but I hope it helps others. Good luck.