In this first‑person testimonial, the speaker recounts applying for an ST5 specialty position twice. The initial application served as a low‑pressure practice run, revealing a lack of structured interview preparation in the deanery. Determined to secure her first‑choice job the following year, she enrolled in a crash‑course program that combined expert panels, scheduled sessions, and a peer‑practice platform on Teams. She emphasizes the importance of repeatedly rehearsing answers, timing responses to cover full questions, and drawing on recent clinical and management experiences. The course also provided a forum for sound‑checking answers and connecting with like‑minded applicants, including those from different geographic regions, reducing direct competition. Through this intensive, structured preparation, both she and a peer obtained their first‑choice positions, underscoring the course’s effectiveness.
Chapters
I actually applied the year before and was deemed appointable but didn't score highly enough to get my first choice of job. So I think the first year was quite nice in that I had felt like I had a bit of a practice run without too much pressure, but I definitely felt the pressure going in as an ST5 to get the job that I wanted and the stress of the potential of having to uproot your life and move elsewhere. So I definitely wanted to throw everything at it this year to try and, try and get it. I did it the year before and I found it really helpful. Um, I found that there wasn't a huge amount of structured practice or prep in my deanery that was set up, and I wanted to not only hear from kind of a bit of an expert panel about what I might expect from the interview, but also try and meet some like-minded people who maybe were applying for Grid and maybe weren't my direct competition so that I could practice on Teams, etc., with them in the evenings and make my answers more slick. It's all very well hitting the books, but actually what you need to do is talk and say your answers over and over again and get people to ask you the questions that scare you. And I think the course was really good at forcing us to do that, to actually just practice. One other PEM person who very much wanted to stay in the north, and I very much wanted to stay in the south, and so we felt very confident with practicing with each other. And we met up 2 or 3 times on Teams and, and practiced PEM questions, and, uh, we both got our first choice job. So I think that probably says something. Fabulous. So I thought that the questions were fair, actually. I thought they were all very relevant to the specialty. The first question, there was more to it than I imagined. There was quite a lot to fit in in a short time, and so I had to be quite brutal with myself and be like very structured with my timing so that I answered the whole question and not just part of it. The clinical scenarios and management scenarios, I had to pull on my experience of just working in the job. So I think that was something that someone said on the course, actually, if you've been in this situation, say you've been in this situation. Yeah. And, um, the management question, I had had that exact situation the week before, and I was able to say, I had this situation last week and this is what I did. I think the crash course is a really good way of ensuring that you do give the time it needs to prepare, like, because there are set sessions and you have to catch up on them if you don't, if you miss them. I think it also gives you a really good structure, talking you through each of the questions and making sure that you don't put all your energy into focusing on one or two and miss the others. And I think what's brilliant is the new facility to meet other people, to ask questions on the forum, so that if you're wondering if you're answering something right, you can soundboard that against other people, but also the experts, and meet like-minded people who want to practice outside of the course. Because some people may have lots of people in their deanery that they want to practice with, but there are definitely people who are doing maybe a slightly obscure specialty or just don't want to practice with the people who they know are going to go for the same job as them. And I think that's, that's fair, that's human nature. But the course allows you to to meet other people, so that's great.
