NHS Clinical Scientist Recruitment

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That's very odd, did you definitely phone the right department? I know it sounds stupid but I used to go through to switchboard when I worked in a hospital and ask to be put through to cytogenetics and nine times out of ten they'd put me through to cytology.

funny that you mention cytology cos thats what i applied for :smile:

anyhow the call back i mentioned was from HR of the relevant department. I even asked the HR lady if she should give me the contact details for the department offering the place and she assured me that she was the most relevant person as she acts on their behalf for anyone coming to the department for similar purposes and the post woul have had to go though her if there was one. I've phoned the STP helpline and they should get back to me by tomorrow. :s-smilie:

Reply 3321

neuneu

As she's HR, she would have thought you were referring to an individual post which was advertised. She probably looked at her list and presumed she knew better.

Reply 3322

laura130490

Original post by nisot

funny that you mention cytology cos thats what i applied for :smile:

I find it really weird that you mentioned they said they'd never heard of the STP. I'm shocked that a cytology lab has never heard of it. Modernising scientific careers and the STP was pretty much all anyone talked about last year when I worked in pathology, everyone knew about it, there were emails and meetings about it all the time. :confused:

If you get no joy with the STP helpline maybe phone the hospital again and ask to be put through to the cytology laboratory and when they transfer you (if you haven't done this already) ask to speak to the head scientist there or a clinical scientist and double check you are speaking to someone in cytology. You may have been speaking to MLAs or BMS' who don't know anything about the scheme.

Reply 3323

nisot

Original post by neuneu

As she's HR, she would have thought you were referring to an individual post which was advertised. She probably looked at her list and presumed she knew better.

I got that feeling as well. I have since searched the trust's web page and found the email of a relevant sounding person. I didn't want to do this initially as this person is the head of pathology and also a medical consultant so likely super busy and won't respond. I was hoping they would give me the contact details of the most appropiate person if I phoned but oh well. Let's wait and see. Thanks everyone :colondollar:

Reply 3324

k3ro

Original post by mateyface

I doubt there's any need to get a first. As long as you get a 2:1 other things will become more important. Now the rest of it depends on what you're applying for, as I've seen medical physics must be less competitive than the medicine/biology allied subjects. Also, it's highly likely that the recruitment system could change between now and then.

Practise aptitude test every so often to get used to them, try to get to the point where you'll actually finish with spare time! The ones they used this year were numerical and logical reasoning, so simple (but very time limited) maths questions on sets of data and "what's the missing part of the series" pictures like you get in IQ tests. This is important, you don't want to fall at the first (stupid) hurdle.

Get to a hospital department related to what you want to do. A visit is fine but a stay would be useful. Don't just use it as a cv filler, that's not the hard part. Go home and look up everything you've seen and find out what it does. Look at who the clinical scientists work with.

Get to know the subject you want to study very well. You don't remotely need to do a masters or phd but some of the people you compete with will have these so you need to know the subject (almost) as well as they might.

Get leadership experience of some sort so you can talk about how you have lead a group to important decisions, dealt with setbacks, dealt with stress etc.

Get an idea of how you'd like your career to progress. Get some experience of interviews, ask the uni careers service for one or consider applying for something you don't actually want but could get to interview for.

Thank you so much for this reply. It was really helpful; I appreciate it. :smile:

I know that getting a first isn't everything, but I'm really going to try hard to get one. I'm unfortunately not at a very 'prestigious' university and so I'm probably at an immediate disadvantage.

I'll make sure to practice aptitude tests and interviews! Interviews especially. I get so nervous, haha. I think I'll go and ask the people in the careers office tomorrow.

As for the hospital thing - I've just applied to do some volunteer work at a hospice (the one I'd hopefully work for after finishing the STP), so if that goes well then I may have a decent advantage. :smile:

As for leadership experience, that's also a really good idea. I've done Young Enterprise twice, but it's probably good if I get some more recent experience too...

And I'm already doing extra reading around the subject. :biggrin:

Again, thanks a ton for the advice! +rep :smile:

Reply 3325

786pk

Original post by nisot

so I tried to contact my first choice for the STP to arrange a visit. After several holds and transfers and a call back, they stated that they had no idea what I was on about as they had never heard of the scheme or the fact that they had a post available. They sounded so suspicious on the fone like I was trying to flog them rotten cheese or something....I double checked again and again on the NHS lists and not only were they listed, I chose them as my first choice from the drop down list on my application. Now all I can think is WTF! :confused:

Hi,
I can't seem to find the post list on the NHS website any more. I have tried googling it as well with no success. Could you please provide a link if you have it.
Thanks :smile:

Reply 3326

littlegirlbigworld

Original post by 786pk

Hi,
I can't seem to find the post list on the NHS website any more. I have tried googling it as well with no success. Could you please provide a link if you have it.
Thanks :smile:

is this what you're after...?

http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/PDFs/STP_Direct_Entry_090212.pdf

Reply 3327

littlegirlbigworld

Original post by Japryan

According to the Facebook page, the short-listing started yesterday so can people please post if they receive any communication; either positive or negative. I was also told by tech support that the pass mark for the online tests we did wouldn't be decided until after the deadline, so even if we didn't receive the 'fail' email, we still may not have passed. Has anybody received anything since?

What's the facebook page please?

Also, a bit scary that we still might have failed those awful tests! Obviously if some people failed then that would indicate that they had some kind of benchmark in place before though, although i guess this means they might raise that benchmark - not good news!

Reply 3328

786pk

Original post by littlegirlbigworld

is this what you're after...?

http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/PDFs/STP_Direct_Entry_090212.pdf

Yes, Thank you very much. who do you think are scoring our applications? Do you think its the placements that we have chosen or a independent group?

Reply 3329

laura130490

I logged into the milkround site and the status of my application has changed from "Your scores are being correlated" to "Your application is currently under review". Does anyone think this means anything in regards to the benchmarks for the tests being set after all the applications have been received? Or am I just clutching at straws here because of desperation? :tongue:

Reply 3330

neuneu

Well mine still says it's correlating my scores. This thread is no good for the paranoid

Reply 3331

kathlovestea

Original post by neuneu

Well mine still says it's correlating my scores. This thread is no good for the paranoid

Mine too, but I refuse to rise to the level of paranoia/over-analysis that I ended up feeling last year. I will just wait until April and see what happens!

If anyone is interested, I contacted Edinburgh and it seems that Scotland are not taking anyone on in micro this year, which is a bit of a bummer.

Reply 3332

laura130490

Original post by neuneu

Well mine still says it's correlating my scores. This thread is no good for the paranoid

It might not be a good thing though, they might be reviewing my application because my score is low and they are looking into rejecting me. I suppose there's no point worrying, would be interested to see if anyone else on this thread has that message though.