Appeal for shortlisters for STP recruitment

This year, because of an unforeseen technological issue that occurred with the third-party platform we used to deliver the longlisting situational judgement tests, there is an exceptional and significant challenge to the delivery of STP recruitment. That is why we are appealing for your help to make sure this year’s recruitment round continues as planned and we are able to welcome a new cohort of trainees in September.

In order to align our recruitment process more closely with the person specification for STP trainees, this year we introduced a situational judgment test for longlisting. Unfortunately, the test platform failed and, as a result, the test did not produce valid results. We had no alternative but to abandon its use, and that has left us with over 6,000 applications to be processed. After considering all other options, we have decided that the only fair way to continue with recruitment is to consider them all for shortlisting.

This means we need more volunteers than ever before to help us with shortlisting.  We already have a very strong pool of scientists who have volunteered to shortlist, but we now need more in some specialties. Below is a table showing the specialties in which we have a shortfall.

Of course, we are conscious that in the current climate, additional calls on your time are a lot to ask. We aim to mitigate this by recruiting as many new shortlisters as possible, so that no individual takes on an unreasonable number of applications, and by extending the shortlisting period considerably so that you will not be under undue pressure of time.

We anticipate that the shortlisting window will be 15th March to 30th April.

Shortlisters should be Clinical Scientists with post-qualification experience in the workplace (normally at least one year). We will also welcome help from senior healthcare scientists and biomedical scientists who have good knowledge/experience of the programme.

We hope you will understand how necessary this is for the future of our workforce.

To volunteer to shortlist, please click this link and sign up before Monday 8th March.