Assessment methods
This page gives an overview of how your HST application will be assessed. There is more detailed information about each stage on the relevant sections of the website.
Your application will be assessed at three main stages:
- Longlisting – ensuring you can meet the main eligibility criteria to be considered for an HST post; this is mainly college membership qualifications, core capability and minimum experience.
- Shortlisting - if capacity is insufficient to interview all eligible candidates, deciding who can be invited to interview.
- Interview – assessment by consultant interviewers based on your answers to a variety of question areas.
Application self-assessment
When you apply you will assess yourself against an application scoring matrix based on your achievements across a number of domains. At some point after applications close, you will be asked to upload your evidence to support each claim; the evidence documents section of the website has further information about this area.
Your self-assessed score will then be verified by a senior clinician who will check your claims against your application form and the evidence provided. At this stage scores could be increased or decreased based on the assessment.
If applications exceed interview capacity, candidates will be invited in order of their verified score; with tie-breakers being employed for applicants with the same total score using each of the domains in turn. The after submission page of the website has more information about this process.
Your verified score will also be used to make up a proportion of the total score used for ranking and offers. This is detailed in the 'Interview & scoring' area of each specialty's page.
Over-claiming
Evidence checkers are aware that, on occasion, it will not always be clear exactly which option to choose and so will not treat most cases of perceived over-claiming as a serious offence. However, any instances of candidates blatantly or persistently trying to gain an unfair advantage by over-claiming scores for and/or exaggerating their achievements will lead to a probity investigation and applicants in this position should expect to be contacted to review their scoring.
Commitment to specialty
All specialties will assess commitment to specialty as part of their interview process, however, some specialties will also be assessing this at the application stage. The application scoring page has a section on commitment to specialty which explains how this will be scored. By the application opening date, it will be confirmed for each specialty whether or not they intend to assess commitment to specialty at the shortlisting stage. This will be confirmed in the 'Planning your application' section of each specialty's page.
Interview
There is an extensive section of the website with general information about the interview, with specialty-specific information included in their section of the website. At interview it will be determined if you can be considered for appointment, and the interview will form the majority of the marks used for your total score, which is used to rank candidates for the offers process.