Offers and the Upgrade Process (19 Apr 2023)

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you enjoy listening to career conversations, why not become a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh? Our membership provides you with access to the RCPE educational portal with live evening medical updates, and you have options to view the symposia both in person or online. If you would like to learn more about this, please go to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh website. My name is Dr. Marilena Gianudi, and today I am back with Dr. Hannah Preston for yet another episode where we guide you through applying for higher specialty training. Hannah, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Hi, thank you very much. Good to be on and chat again about this area.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Which can be, I think, really confusing and overwhelming for those applying. And in today's episode, we're going to focus on what happens after you get your first kind of reply once you've been through interview. So could you maybe just talk us through what happens when you receive an offer?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Yeah, so there's really useful information on the higher specialty training website. And this is where a lot of the information that we're going to chat about today is referenced from. So it's definitely worth looking at that. So basically, you will be ranked across a kind of national score if you've been deemed appointable. And then specialties make their offers in score order based on your preferences. And you will get an offer if you have been deemed firstly appointable, and based on your ranking compared to your preferences, which you can then either accept, hold, or decline. And basically the specialties go through from their number. So person who scored number one in the ranking will get an offer first based on their preferences, and they will run from highest to lowest ranking, and they will work through it step by step based on preferences. So you'll only get an offer for somewhere that you have preferenced if your ranking fits with that.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Okay. And once you get an offer, how long do you have to respond to that offer?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

So that's a really good question. So your Oriol status will change, and you'll actually either get an email or you'll get a text to say that the status has changed and that you have got an offer. And all of these offers are made through Oreol, and you need to accept, hold, or decline within 48 hours. This 48 hours does not include a weekend, but I think for there not to be any confusion or mishaps with that, I would personally just calculate it as 48 hours from when you get that change because the last thing you want is for the time to lapse and you haven't made a decision, and actually you were going to take an offer and then you can't go through with it because the time has lapsed. So you do have 48 hours to process that offer. With the accepting and the holding of an offer, you can take those subject to upgrades and you might get upgraded to one of your higher preferences at a later date. And that will be done automatically. So you might choose one region, you might kind of accept or hold a job offer based in one region, but you can accept it subject to upgrades. And then that will automatically update. Say if someone who has ranked more highly than yourself and has declined an offer, you might then get upgraded to that. The timeline for when offers will be made will vary from specialty to specialty. So just because you know one of your colleagues or friends has got an offer from a different specialty doesn't necessarily mean that you haven't got anything. Specialties will vary. And the deadline for this is on the higher specialty website under each specialty, but overall deadlines and timelines are all on the website.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

And if you don't mind, I just want us to backtrack slightly just to make um something very clear. With the holding of an offer, how long can you hold that for? And what does the holding actually facilitate you doing? Do you hold for a certain amount of time and then you can either accept or reject?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

So again, you can only hold for a short period of time. The holding deadline is on the timeline, and you can only hold for one offer. So, say, for example, you apply to more than one specialty and you're holding, waiting on another specialty to come through. You can only hold on one at a time, if that makes sense. So you can't say you apply for three specialties, you can't hold on two waiting for the third. You need to make a choice. The holding deadlines are all on the timeline. And it may be that some programs recycle posts after this if people have declined a post elsewhere. That sounds very complicated, but there is a good FAQ section within the website that will go into that in more detail.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

And I think from my point of view, I would just encourage you that when you do hold, have those that 48-hour time window in the back of your mind that I think that's the maximum that you can hold for. So just because you kind of mentioned this briefly, and I do know that it's something quite common nowadays. If you are applying to three specialties, for example, and you get an offer from one specialty, which you choose to accept because you're worried you may not get it from another one. Once you've accepted that offer, does that mean that your application is immediately pulled out of the other specialties you've applied to?

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yes, I believe it does. Once you've accepted one, you can't accept another one.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Right. Okay, perfect. And what happens once you have confirmed your application?

SPEAKER_01 6:17

So after you've accepted an offer, essentially that will again your application status will change and your Oriel will update. And then this goes to your employers essentially to check your records, do the kind of routine checks they do. And it's at that point where your referees will be contacted for references. You don't need to get involved or get in touch with your referees. They will be contacted by Oriol to complete that. And that's basically a kind of verification process. And then closer to the time of you starting in August, you will get sent through contracts from your local employer. So after that period, it's accepted, everything kind of gets put on your local employer rather than Oriol.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Great, thank you. And obviously, we wish all our listeners the very best of luck and hope that they will get one offer that will suit them and that they want. But what can you advise doctors who perhaps haven't got their first choice offer or haven't got an offer at all? What other options are there?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good question. And as you said, obviously, we hope for the best and we really hope that everybody gets where they want to be. I would also say that if you accept somewhere that isn't necessarily your first choice, you might be really pleasantly surprised and actually it might work out for the best. So don't be downheartened by that. But as we said earlier, you may also get an automatic upgrade that comes through to one of your higher preferences. But if neither of those work out or actually you decide to decline an offer that was given for whatever reason, then there is an option of round two applications. So these are jobs that have been recycled, so unfilled posts from round one after all of this has been processed, that will come out after August. So not all specialties will have posts in round two, but it is certainly worth looking at the website. And the process for round two is the same for round one. So you would reapply as you did for the first round. So that's well worth looking at to see what may be available for a later start. So it might be a February start, for example.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Great. And can I ask if you haven't had an offer because your ranking has been, you know, towards the bottom, but actually enough people pull out that you're moved up the ranking, is there any chance that you would get a delayed offer at that time? Once you know the first lot of round one jobs are released, or would they just automatically all go to round two?

SPEAKER_01 8:59

So they will recycle all the posts until people have filled them if they have matched effectively with your preferences. So I guess it really depends on what you've put preference-wise. But if you've been deemed appointed for ranking, then the jobs will be recycled. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Excellent. And worst case scenario, you don't have a job round one, you don't have a job round two. What other options are there out there?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

So there's lots of options, and I know it's easier said than done not to get disheartened, but don't get disheartened. So it might be that you want to speak with your hospital locally. Do they have any clinical fellow jobs that are coming up? Are there departments that you want to work in that might have a lat job or a last job? It's definitely worth speaking with departments that you might know or ones that you want to reach out to and see what they have because you never know there might be gaps that they hadn't necessarily anticipated and they might be needing a doctor. You might have fellow jobs, medical education jobs. Maybe you might think about a research job, trust grade posts. Maybe you want to go somewhere new, try something different. There are lots of options, but I would say take a period of time to kind of decompress. You will get feedback emailed to you about your interview. You get scores from the interviews on Oreel, but later on you will get feedback from your interviewers. And I would say to speak to friends, speak to colleagues, but there are probably more options than you might initially think of.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah, and I couldn't agree with that more. Talk to your local hospitals, look on NHS jobs, think about whether you want to have a little bit of a break and then come back. But please don't feel disheartened. I think it's so easy that we're all on this treadmill and we think the next job, the next training job. But actually, there are so many different options which perhaps you know you haven't even heard of. So just make the most of being in that position because you can do really great things when you do step off the training treadmill.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah, absolutely. I think we are so used to going from one goal to the next, to the next. And when we get a setback like this, it can really throw you. But just take some time to think, to pause, and keep going. If you know there's a specialty you want to do, don't let this completely throw you off. I'm sure, you know, there'll be people listening to this who, you know, you've got through to high specialty training, you maybe failed paces the first time, the second time. You know, we've all been there with what we deem as failures, but actually, it won't be that you're a bad doctor in inverse commerce per se. Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

I could not agree more. And if you're ever looking for inspiration, I'm going to take the time for a shameless little plug. We have lots and lots of episodes on this podcast website of Career Conversations, looking at different careers, looking at different jobs outside of training. So you can always have a listen to them and see if there's anything that might be potentially suitable for you and what you aspire to be and what stage of career you're at.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yep, absolutely. And I think speak to those around you, colleagues that you work with, and there'll definitely be more people than you think that have gone through this. Well, everyone's gone through this process at some point in some way, shape, or form. So I guess if you've got any queries about the kind of accepting, holding offers, then reach out to your colleagues if you, you know, you get an offer from a location that you don't necessarily know so well. See if there's anybody that you can reach out to, either someone that you know, a friend of a colleague or something, or even on social media, see what that place is like. Or yeah, if you don't know the place, maybe take a leap of faith.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Could not agree more. And I'll make sure that the link to the high speciality website that Hannah's been talking about is posted on the footnotes of this episode. So you can access that quickly and easily. I think from me, that's all my questions. Any parting comments from you, Hannah?

SPEAKER_01 13:05

No, I just hope that people listening to this have found it useful. And then I guess for people who are thinking about applying, you know, for next year, then you can listen to the kind of preceding podcasts, which hopefully will kind of put it in a nice timeline. And I would just say the website's actually got some really good resources and FAQs. And so I would, you know, trawl through the website and utilize that to make the most of your applications going forward. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

So thank you everyone for listening. Good luck in your new starts, whatever they may be. And we hope that everything works out for you the way you want it to. Thank you for listening to us today. Thank you.