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.
There are a number of factors to bear in mind.
Timing varies
The exact timing of when offers will start for your specialty will vary depending on a variety of factors. Considerations include:
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The interview date(s) of a specialty will affect the earliest offers could start.
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Larger specialties are more likely to take longer to process to the offers stage.
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Programme preferences will need to be completed before the offer process can commence.
Offers made in iterations
In most cases, not all candidates will receive an offer in the first 'batch' of offers that are made.
Higher-scoring candidates will receive offers first. If some of these offers are declined early on, they can be recycled to candidates further down the list at a later stage.
Should the higher-scoring candidates opt to hold offers (see the responding to offers page) for a period of time and then choose to reject, later on, this will delay how quickly offers can be re-circulated.
Deadline for first offers
There is a deadline for each round by which the first batch of offers must be made, please refer to the recruitment timeline for details. The deadline will apply to all specialties participating in the same round to help those applying to more than one with their decisions.
It is common that first offers may be made before the first offer date but cannot be earlier than when programme preferences close and interviews are completed; the timeline section of the website details these for each round.
Holding deadline
When offers are made, candidates will be given the option to hold their offer. If a candidate opts to hold an offer, they must respond - accept or reject it, by the given deadline. For deadline dates please refer to the timeline. Consequently, it is usually the case that this will release a few more programmes for recycling.
[See the responding to offers page of this website for more information on holding offers and the offer-holding deadline.]
Completion of offers
Offers will be recycled as many times as necessary between the first set of offers and when either all posts are filled or, more likely, the pool of candidates has been exhausted.
It cannot be guaranteed exactly when this will be however there are generally very few offers left to be made after the upgrade deadline. Candidates who are on the reserve list when offers have been exhausted will be emailed when this happens.
