Recruitment time again.....(just when you thought it was safe)

Dear Dr Rant,

Having experienced last year’s complete and utter MTAS recruitment/training fuck-up, I had hoped that this year’s deanery run specialist recruitment might proceed in a more logical manner.

Well I was wrong.

After what seemed to be a well organised interview round, Wales Deanery did the following,

- Asked candidates to accept - via email within 24 hours - a post with no location or duty description
(i.e., 'Yes, I’m so lucky to get a training job, you can send me anywhere in Wales, to do anything!').

-Failed to understand how to use email correctly (marking emails as 'Important' by writing * High Priority * at the start of the message).

-Failed to make clear to candidates what the next steps were and when to expect communication, leading to:

Demanding candidates reply - with preferences - for available posts by 9am Tuesday 18th March from an email sent at 4.30PM on Monday 17th March!

Candidates who didn’t respond within the (admittedly generous) 16.5hrs deadline appeared to be allocated at random. Tough if you were on-call, working nights, or not otherwise waiting by a PC the whole time.

Well done Wales Deanery.

Yours sincerely,


Spouse of a long-suffering hard working doctor.


PS. Met up with a civil servant friend last week who confirmed they all think the current Brown government are complete twats and cannot wait to see the back of them either.