The Application
The 2022 application round timeline and key dates are as follows:
Adverts appear | By 5pm Tuesday 2nd November 2021 |
Applications open | 10:00am Thursday 4th November 2021 |
Applications close | 4:00pm Wednesday 1st December 2021 |
Evidence upload portal opens | Friday 10th December 2021 |
Evidence upload portal closes | Thursday 30th December 2021 |
Invites to interview sent on | Tuesday 25th January 2022 |
Interview window | 7th February to 18th February 2022 |
Preferencing window | 7th to 21st March 2022 |
Initial offers released | By 5pm Thursday 24th March 2022 |
Hold deadline | Tuesday 5th April 2022 |
Upgrade deadline | Monday 11th April 2022 |
The Core Surgical Training application process takes place at a national level (Northern Ireland applications are done separately), and is coordinated by Health Education Kent, Surrey and Sussex. The application window opens once per year at about the start of November. Applications are submitted via the Oriel Recruitment Portal. As part of the application, candidates have to complete a set of Self-assessment Questions. These are then verified and scored and the approximately the highest scoring 1,100 candidates are invited for a remote interview.
Following this, each Deanery (or LETB as they are now called) releases the number of jobs they have available. This number often varies, and may not be confirmed until the last minute. The table below shows the average number of CST jobs per deanery over the last 3 years. Please note that Competition Rates for jobs vary between deaneries.
Rough CST numbers per region | |
East Midlands | 41 |
East of England | 49 |
Kent, Surrey, Sussex | 38 |
London | 79 |
North West | 79 |
Northern (North East) | 31 |
Thames Valley (Oxford) | 18 |
South West | 43 |
Scotland | 47 |
Wessex | 23 |
West Midlands | 51 |
Yorkshire and Humber | 54 |
Wales | 44 |
Total | 596 |
Once all the jobs have been released, applicants then have to rank them in order of preference. How well candidates perform in their interview determines how likely they are to get their first preference. Some Core Surgical posts are themed towards a particular surgical sub specialty.
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