Diary of a George's Physio Graduate

Question: i'm qualifying a year behind you, but ive not bern told to get HPC membership. In nursing we apply for jobs 6-3months before qualification also, and can start any time after finishing the course working as a band 3/4 and when our NMC pin comes through we work as a band 5 which tends to be 2-6weeks after the uni sends off our sign off stuff.

How does this mean as a NQ physio you need extra memberships, and the job market is different?

Thanks Jackie

Some of my year had jobs lined up but they were overseas. I guess it's possible that outside of the big hospitals it might be more likely to get a job without holding HPC registration.

If you don't have your HPC and you're not sleeping with the chairman of the selection board then your application is bound for the reject pile.

I know that some of the people on my course who got jobs bfeore graduating were at fairly decent sized hospitals around south-east England.
I think it was more of a case of they had been on placements there and got told to apply for vacancies, which helped them get interviews, and then they did well on the interviews. Quite a few of the band 5's I've been speaking to ended up working somewhere they did a placement, it helps when the interviewers know you and your working style!
So I know for a fact it's not impossible puddlejumper!

My current job had over 1500 applicants for 14 posts. Any application which didn't meet ALL of the basic requirements was immediately discarded. So if they want HPC as a minimum, then you need to have HPC or you're just wasting your time and theirs.

and this is why they will use HPC registration as a means of weeding out people. However if you went for a job at somewhere abit smaller its perfectly feasible that they may not worry about yourHPC registration if you're a recent grad

I'm not sure what you're thinking of as 'smaller'. Any hospital trust will have the same kind of application process and presumably the same weeding out process.

So what is smaller? A single private nursing home or something like that?

Well I can think of at least 2 people in my year of qualifying (only 2 years ago) who held job offers before the end of the course without their HPC registration so clearly thats rubbish.
It is unlikely to be in this situation....but not impossble

alot of the big teaching trusts (mine included) offer their jobs on a point scoring system so it doesn't really matter if they know you or not - if you don't get the top mark, you don't get the job - simple as really. However, what applying for jobs at places you've been to previous does afford you is a little bit more of a relaxed approach if you see familiar faces, or things that you may know about the trust e/g/ new policies and plans etc which you wouldn't necessarily know about if you hadn't been there before

and at the trust I work in, being a current memeber of staff doesn't even guarantee you anything (I was on a temp contract, applied for a permanent job within 2 months of my temp job starting and got reject before interview despite knowing everyone!)

I've just noticed this post.

The point system is not the sole deciding factor.

In a recent vacancy at my hospital a condidate who had a lower score was offered the job. That was because they had worked in the hospital, in fact had trained in the department, and was therefore well known to be a good worker who got on with the other staff. So rather than take a chance with an outside applicant the former worker was employed. They would have been employed at the end of their training, but unfortunately a vacancy didn't come up for 6 months after they qualified so they had to go and work at another hospital. So it's not all about points.

ETA: It's all very well telling people to apply for jobs for which they don't have the relevant experience or qualifications but, to give an example from my application process this year. Out of 1400 applicants, 800 were immediately discarded because they didn't have the experience or qualifications requested for the job. The reality is that the people who are going to interview you and who are going to give you the job have little or no contact with the applications until a short list has been drawn up. Spend your time on fruitless applications if you want to but you would be very lucky in the current job climate to get even an acknowledgement of your application, let alone an invite to an interview.