The short answer is you don't!
Once programme details have been made available for selection they will remain in this status until the deadline is reached.
When you access your preferences on Oriel, you can arrange them as you see fit; when you have finished, click 'save' to retain the posts in the particular order/arrangement you have given them.
However, they do not need to be submitted. Your preferences will remain in the order/arrangement you have saved up until either preferences are closed, or until you change the order/arrangement - which you can do at any point, and as many times as you like, up until the preferences deadline for that application.
In terms of submitting preferences; essentially, once the preferencing function is closed, your preferences will be 'submitted' in the order/arrangement they are saved at that point.
Please see the programme preferences page of this website for more information.
The approximate dates for each round are included in the dates & posts page of the website. The dates are the same for all candidates in each round.
If you are not initally successful in being made an offer there will be short periods during the offering period where you will be able to reconsider your preferences. This will include reordering your list and changing whether a programme is included in your 'preferences' or 'not wanted' lists. You will be emailed at the time when preferences are available to revise.
Please see the programme preferences page of this website for more information.
If preferencing is still open then you just need to log in to your account there and make amendments to the ranking and/or arrangement of your programme preferences.
If preferencing has closed there are a few possibilities to change:
- If you have been made an offer and you accept or hold it with upgrades, you can rearrange your preferences at any stage up until the offers upgrading deadline. Whilst you cannot move the programme accepted/held into your not wanted column, you can move it lower down your rankings to give yourself the chance of being upgraded.
- If you are not initally successful in being made an offer, there will be short periods during the offering period where you will be able to reconsider your preferences. This will include reordering your list and changing whether a programme is included in your 'preferences' or 'not wanted' lists. You will be emailed at the time when preferences are available to revise.
Outside of these times, you will need to contact the Physician Specialty Recruitment Office. It cannot be guaranteed that any changes to your preferences can be made though and will depend on the stage of the process at that time.
In most cases the region will have provided all that they can at that stage and it may be that no additional information is available. However, you can check the relevant region's website for information about the region and programme.
You can also try emailing the region where the programme is based to request further information. You can find contact details for each region on the region contacts page. However, please note that the offers period is a very busy period in specialty recruitment and it cannot be guaranteed that a response will be received in time.
If you email, you should state that you have received an offer, providing details of the offers and give the date/time you need to respond to the offer by. This will enable the relevant contacts to prioritise responses. An option in some circumstances will be to hold the offer, whilst awaiting a response, before you make a final decision.
During the initial preferences window, you can revise your preferences as often as you wish.
Once this closes, how this is done will depend on whether or not you have been made an offer:
- Not been made an offer - there will be periods when you will be able to make amendments and you will be emailed each time this is available. Revising preferences are done in exactly the same way and place as when they are originally chosen.
- Made an offer - first you will either need to accept or hold the offer and opt in for upgrades. This will then allow you to revise your offer prefences from the 'Offer' screen in Oriel. If the option to update preferences is not there, it will be due to offers being currently run for the vacancy and the option to update preferences will be temporarily unavailable until the offers are released. Consequently it is advised to be aware of the offer timelines when planning to review your preferences.
The Oriel Applicant User Guide contains further guidance on these functions.
Offers cannot begin until all interviews have been completed and programme preferences have closed. Additionally there is a date set by which first offers must have commenced. All candidates will be contacted by this date to either be made an offer, notified they cannot be considered for appointment that round or that they are on the reserve list.
We currently have an intended offers date, published in the recruitment timeline. (Please note this is subject to change).
After the first offers deadline, if you have not been made an offer it will depend upon your ranking as well as the programme preferences you have given. These factors will influence how soon an offer can be made to you (if at all).
In addition the speed with which offers are 'recycled' depends on how quickly higher-scoring candidates decide whether to accept or decline offers. As such, it is not possible for us to advise any candidates on the subject of whether they will receive a post offer, and if so when this would be.
All candidates still on the reserve list will be notified when no more offers can be made.
You will only receive a maximum of one ACCS-IM or IMT offer. Should you decline the offer, as this was the best offer available to you based on your rank and preferences, you will be withdrawn and receive no further offers in this round.
There is one exception to this. If you choose to hold/accept an offer, you will be given the option to be considered for preference upgrades. That is, if one of your higher ranked programme preference options becomes available after you have held/accepted the initial offer, the preference offered to you would be upgraded automatically to the higher preference.
More information can be found on the responding to offers page of this website.
Candidates will be allocated according to their rank and preferences.
The highest-ranked candidate will be offered their first preference; each subsequent candidates will be offered their highest preference available, bearing in mind that higher-ranked candidates may have already been offered their preferred programme.
You will be given your rotations, in most cases, for the first two years of the programme. In some cases, the region may be able to give information on the third year rotations to those who are undertaking it.
Absolutely not. You will, however, be expected to accept, hold or reject any offer within 48 hours of receiving it. If you reject an offer, you will not be eligible for any further offers for that application.
Please note that if you reject an offer in a particular round this will have no implication on your application to any future rounds of recruitment.
If you reapply to IMT, whether you reject an offer, or accept it and then withdraw from it at a later stage, this would not be classed as 'relinquishing' unless you had actually begun physically working in the programme.
It is only possible to hold one offer at a time.
So in the event you had applied to three specialties, received offers from two, and wanted to wait for the outcome of the third before making a decision, then it would not be possible to hold both beyond the standard 48-hour consideration period.
Holding one offer would automatically reject the other held offer.
The Gold Guide states that:
"...the start of training may only be deferred on statutory grounds (eg maternity leave, ill health)."
This includes a period of illness or maternity leave taken during foundation training prior to making an application. Where applicants are unable to achieve competence on time, they may still apply and may be permitted to defer whilst they complete the time/competences missed. Extended training will need to be organised in the current post to cover the time that was missed.
If your particular circumstances will make it necessary for the start date of any post offered to you to be deferred or delayed, but are not covered by the text above, then please contact the region at which you wish to work.
Upon receiving an offer, you should contact the region of offer to ensure they are aware of your desire to defer your start date and ensure this will be permissible. The final decision on whether a start date can be deferred is at the discretion of the region.
When confirming your decision on Oriel you will undergo a two-step process to confirm the response to your offer: once to select the option and then again to confirm it; if you do not go through both stages your decision will not have been made. There are three ways you can confirm that a decision has been registered:
- You will receive an automatic email confirming your decision. Please note that the email may not arrive immediately, in busy times there can be a significant delay in when this email is received.
- Check your messages in your Oriel account. Any emails sent to you via the application system will be stored in your candidate portal on Oriel (ie your 'account') in the 'My Messages' section if your Dashboard.
- Check that your application status has been updated from 'Offer made' to the relevant decision. This can be seen in the 'My Applications' area of your Dashboard.
If you are still concerned, contact the Physician Specialty Recruitment Office as soon as possible so it can be investigated. Offers without a decision come the deadline are considered to be declined and will be offered to someone else where possible.
Feedback on performance will be provided to all candidates, regardless of whether their application has been successful or not. This will be via three different ways:
- Once interviews are completed and offers have commenced, a breakdown of the scores awarded across the various interview assessment areas will be released to Oriel and an email sent confirming this.
- Around the same time, a graph showing the distribution of scores nationally, the appointability rate and average scores will be released to this website for both application and interview scores. This will be available from the document library.
- All candidates will receive the written feedback from their interviewers via email on the date advertised on the recruitment timeline.
Please do not contact us during this time to request feedback as you will be sent feedback as early as possible.
The offer will be considered as declined and you would not be considered for any further offers. However, you can email us to have your application reinstated and considered in the next iteration of offers.
It is important to note that if offers are run again before your email is received we cannot guarantee whether or not it will be possible to get the same offer back as it may have been offered to another candidate. For this reason please contact the Physician Specialty Recruitment Office as soon as possible after you realise.
We will email applicants after each set of offers has been released, so anybody opting in for upgrades will be notified when an iteration has been made.
If you have opted into upgrades when accepting or holding your offer, your offer will be automatically upgraded to your highest preference available based on your preferences at the time the offers are run.
At this point the upgraded offer will replace your current offer on your Oriel dashboard and an email will be sent to advise you of this upgrade. This will continue until the upgrade deadline, which can be found in the timeline section of the website.
Please note that upgrades can only be made when the offers process is run. It is not possible to say exactly when this will happen but each iteration of offers will be made at least two working days apart.
Where possible, yes.
The primary concern for recruiters when seeking references is that they should be as up-to-date as possible; the purpose of seeking a reference is to ensure your candidature is suitable for IMT, rather than to influence the decision when deciding to whom posts should be offered; references are not collected until after offers are made so have no bearing on your chances of being made an offer.
A reference from a 'good' or 'notable' referee will garner no advantage to your application.
It is possible to change your referees after submission of your form should you start working with another supervisor who is more familiar with your recent experience. Information about when you can amend references is on the 'sections of the application form' tab of the application form page of the website.
In some instances, using a current/recent referee will not be possible (eg an academic supervisor can only act as a referee if they are your current supervisor); also some past supervisors may not be able or willing to give a reference (such as if they are out of the country, or have since retired).
In these instances, you should nominate your next-most recent supervisor as a referee in their stead.
Should you start working with other potential referees after submitting your form, you can change your referees up to a certain point. Information about when you can amend references is on the 'sections of the application form' tab of the application form page of the website.
In short, this is at your discretion.
While it is generally preferred that your referees relate to as current a period of your training as is possible, it is also appreciated that you may not feel comfortable nominating a supervisor you may not have even met.
It is possible to change your referees after you submit your form, so you can update them to a newer supervisor once you have been working with them for a longer period.
Information about when you can amend references is on the 'sections of the application form' tab of the application form page of the website.
A person does not need to be a consultant to act as your referee necessarily. You must provide contact details of three referees who have supervised your clinical training during the last two years of your employment or undergraduate training. One referee must be your current or most recent consultant or educational supervisor familiar with your clinical development.
Yes - even after your application has been submitted, you can log back in and change/update referees' details if need be.
So if you are not sure about nomination of referees, do not let this hold up your application. Add details of those you deem appropriate at present, and then if need be these can be changed at a later date.
Information about when you can amend references is on the 'sections of the application form' tab of the completing the application form page of the website.
Unfortunately it is not possible to submit references after the deadline has passed. What will happen is that applications of successful candidates will be passed to employing trusts. At this stage they will review the references received and make a decision whether any outstanding are required; as three references are requested, they will often be satisfied if they have two.
Our advice is that you do not need to take any action at this stage. If an employer needs an additional reference they will be in touch and there will be time to resolve this in advance of the post start date; any outstanding references at this stage will not prevent someone taking up their training programme.