The region managing your interviews for your specialty are responsible for sending you the instructions to login for your interview.
The timing for receiving your login details will vary by specialty but you can expect this no later than three working days prior to your interview; where available, it will be indicated the likely timing on the interview event, so check Oriel to see if more specific information is available.
If you have not received anything by this date, you are advised to contact the region managing your interviews; contact details for the hosting region should also be available via your interview booking in Oriel.
Please remember to also check your spam/junk folders.
The dates when shortlisting is completed will vary depending on the specialty. Whilst all specialties will be completing shortlisting and sending invitations a minimum of seven days' notice before their interview date, it cannot be guaranteed when this will happen.
Interview dates are published to each specialty's page.
Please be aware that upon receiving an invitation to interview, there will be a stated deadline by which you must book your interview slot, otherwise the invitation will be withdrawn.
While we recognise this is unfortunate, in most cases it is not possible for any action to be taken. If there are exceptional reasons why you cannot attend, you should contact the region managing interviews for the specialty.
You should make contact as soon as possible after you become aware of the issue to increase the possibility that alternative arrangements can be organised. However, it must be stressed that it will not be possible in most cases to make alternative arrangements and you may be required to provide evidence of your circumstances.
Your Oriel PIN is the second-to-last number of the Application ID (discounting the zeros at the start), for example in the full application ID given below, the PIN would be 2368.
PSRO-IMT/21-22/PWY/0106527625/IMT-1-R1A/00000 2368/00630
Your Oriel PIN is also located in the summary section of your Oriel Dashboard in the top left-hand corner.
Unless otherwise requested, the only documentation you should need to bring to interview is your personal identification, which you will be required to show before your interview starts.
You should bring your passport as identification where possible. If you do not hold a passport, then you should provide a photo-card driving licence. If you hold neither, please see the NHS employers website for further guidance.
Once you have booked your interview slot, up until the booking deadline, you can change your slot via your Oriel account to any not already taken by another candidate. If it is after the booking deadline you should contact your interviewing region to discuss possibilities, however, there is no guarantee that you will be able to change slot.
If you are unable to attend on the given date and time, and it is not possible to change your timeslot, you should withdraw your application as soon as possible so the interviewing region are aware of this.
Please note that if you do not attend the interview, your application cannot progress further.
If the date and time clashes with an interview or assessment for another specialty, you will be expected to confirm which you will attend.
Whilst it is natural that candidates may wish to discuss their experiences at interview with their colleagues, you must not share detailed information about the interview beyond that which is publicly available (ie which is available from this website) - specifically, the content and format of questions asked. Ultimately, this may reduce your own chances of success and is unfair to all other candidates.
That being said, interview assessments are competency-based, and there is published evidence demonstrating that prior knowledge of the content and context of assessment does not positively affect performance.
Individual questions are also changed regularly at each interview centre and candidates are advised against altering their behaviour based on the advice of other candidates.
A specialty can begin making offers to candidates once their interviews have been completed, all scores have been compiled and verified, and the closing date for programme preferences has passed.
The exact timing of when offers will start for your specialty/region will vary depending on a variety of factors.
Offers will be made at some point after programme preferences have closed and no later than the first offers deadline; this can be found on the recruitment timeline.
This will depend on the recommendation made on your psychological assessment/medical report. However, where extra time is recommended this will be given. In most cases recommendations are for an extra 25% for reading.
Interviews usually include one or more questions where consideration of a scenario is required. Prior to the start of the question, candidates will be given a short piece of information (usually two/three sentences at most) on a medical situation and asked to consider this for a few minutes prior to questioning starting. In this scenario reading time you will be asked to review this information, and to consider the case (diagnosis, treatment, etc.), which will then be discussed.
The time allocated for reading can vary but is usually between about 2-5 minutes. In the event that it is five minutes, the time would be adjusted to six minutes 15 seconds.
The exact adjustments will depend on: the recommendation, whether it can be considered a reasonable adjustment and documentary evidence of your circumstances.
This will depend on the stage at which this happens. In general, your first approach should be to contact either the region managing your application, which will be confirmed on the 'Who do I contact section?' of each specialty's page or the Physician Specialty Recruitment Office. You should contact as soon as possible after the event as, the later it is the less likely it is that a resolution can be found.
However, if you think something has gone wrong at interview, it is very important that you raise it on the day. The interview host will provide details of how to get in touch if this is the case and when you must contact by for it to be able to be addressed. Raising it straight after the interview will give the best possible chance to investigate and resolve the issue. It is unlikely to be possible to do anything subsequently; you should not wait until scores are confirmed and offers are made.
If you are not satisfied with the response given to your issue you can make a formal complaint or appeal. Whilst we will try and resolve issues before a formal complaint is necessary, if you feel that you wish to do this then please ensure you read the complaints and appeals policy to find out how to do this.