Moronic Totally Arbitrary System
Ugh. I'm trying to answer questions for a crazy matching programme to try and get a job which, if I'm really being honest, I'm not sure I even want. This, ladies and gentlemen, is MTAS. I know I've bitched about this before but I don't think I've attempted to explain it as yet so I'll have a go now.
If you want a job in the UK as a first year doctor you have to apply through fancy new MTAS. The entire country is divided into twenty-something foundation schools (these are huge geographical areas e.g. the whole of Scotland) and you have to rank ALL of them in order of preference: one to twenty-something. You answer some ridiculous questions about prioritizing and working in a team and along with your medical school quartile ranking (this warrants an entirely separate rant of its own... every medical school in the country is considered equal so being in the top (or bottom) quartile of Oxford is given the same weighting as being in the top (or bottom) quartile of anywhere else... which you generally tend to agree or disagree very strongly with... depending on which medical school you're at...) is used to calculate a score for you. Each foundation school fills up its places with people who've got the best scores who applied to them as their first choice. So if you apply to an unpopular foundation school (and popularity is completely unpredictable and changes every year) you might get in even with a low score but if you apply to a fiercely competitive one you can end up in your third or fourth (or worse) choice.
Okay so if that isn't complicated enough it gets better... once you've been allocated a foundation school you then have to rank the jobs within it... ALL of them... and there are several HUNDRED. And this will happen when we're on our elective period in far flung corners of the globe. So you might find yourself in Tanzania having to walk between villages trying to find internet access (yes this did happen to somebody... I'm not going to Tanzania...). Then and only then do they match people up to jobs and tell you where you're going to be working.
So the upshot of this is that you get to apply for an unknown job (i.e. you don't know which specialities it will include) in a rough geographical area (which might be as large as Scotland). So you might really want to do cardiology in Edinburgh but get given urology in Lerwick. And if you do- tough. If you decide not to take the job (e.g. because it's nowhere near friends/family/significant other/other lifeforms) then you withdraw from the whole process for the year and are left jobless.
Nobody else would apply for a job in this way. What the hell is wrong with actually interviewing people like they used to? I'm so tempted to just bail out now and go find a job in the city... where I actually get to apply to a known location for a known task.
Medicine is evil. Damn these ridiculous questions. They're the stuff of motivational posters. All they test is blagging ability. I'm determined to work a Michael Scott quote into one of my answers.
And my back still bloody hurts.
If you want a job in the UK as a first year doctor you have to apply through fancy new MTAS. The entire country is divided into twenty-something foundation schools (these are huge geographical areas e.g. the whole of Scotland) and you have to rank ALL of them in order of preference: one to twenty-something. You answer some ridiculous questions about prioritizing and working in a team and along with your medical school quartile ranking (this warrants an entirely separate rant of its own... every medical school in the country is considered equal so being in the top (or bottom) quartile of Oxford is given the same weighting as being in the top (or bottom) quartile of anywhere else... which you generally tend to agree or disagree very strongly with... depending on which medical school you're at...) is used to calculate a score for you. Each foundation school fills up its places with people who've got the best scores who applied to them as their first choice. So if you apply to an unpopular foundation school (and popularity is completely unpredictable and changes every year) you might get in even with a low score but if you apply to a fiercely competitive one you can end up in your third or fourth (or worse) choice.
Okay so if that isn't complicated enough it gets better... once you've been allocated a foundation school you then have to rank the jobs within it... ALL of them... and there are several HUNDRED. And this will happen when we're on our elective period in far flung corners of the globe. So you might find yourself in Tanzania having to walk between villages trying to find internet access (yes this did happen to somebody... I'm not going to Tanzania...). Then and only then do they match people up to jobs and tell you where you're going to be working.
So the upshot of this is that you get to apply for an unknown job (i.e. you don't know which specialities it will include) in a rough geographical area (which might be as large as Scotland). So you might really want to do cardiology in Edinburgh but get given urology in Lerwick. And if you do- tough. If you decide not to take the job (e.g. because it's nowhere near friends/family/significant other/other lifeforms) then you withdraw from the whole process for the year and are left jobless.
Nobody else would apply for a job in this way. What the hell is wrong with actually interviewing people like they used to? I'm so tempted to just bail out now and go find a job in the city... where I actually get to apply to a known location for a known task.
Medicine is evil. Damn these ridiculous questions. They're the stuff of motivational posters. All they test is blagging ability. I'm determined to work a Michael Scott quote into one of my answers.
And my back still bloody hurts.