Consultant job description

Who is involved?

It is the Trust's responsibility to write the job description for any consultant post.  In practice, this will be the responsibility of the clinical lead or some other consultant.  The Trust has an obligation to consult a Regional Adviser of the relevant Royal College (so-called "Royal College Representative") as they may provide valuable input on various aspects of the job description based on their knowledge of what other Trusts do.  In theory, the Trust should take account, or at least consider seriously any comments made by the Royal College representative.  When the post involves significant teaching commitments and/or research commitments, suitable representatives from the University should be involved.

What does it show?

The job description will set out the details of the job and will typically include the following items:

• A presentation of the Trust/hospital, its values, the population and geographical area it covers.
• A presentation of the department or service which you will be joining.
• The Trust's and department's involvement in clinical governance, audit, research and teaching.
• A description of the post that you will be taking up, including full details of the clinical sessions, on-call commitment and other clinical and non-clinical duties.
• A description of the SPAs and expectations in relation to these.
• Any specific requirements for the post (e.g. drawing attention to a special interest).
• Information about the town or region.

What should you make of it?

Whilst many Trusts produce good job descriptions, others are more sloppy or sneaky.  There are essentially three main problems you can encounter with the job description:

Problem 1 - it is vague, contradictory or simply wrong

Writing a job description is not a glamourous task, so most consultants would try not to get involved.  Those who do get involved want to get rid of the project as soon as they can.  For those reasons, many job descriptions are copied and pasted from other documents, which makes interesting and sometimes contradictory reading.  It is also often the case that the job has not been well defined as it depends on current targets, or the possibility to reallocate responsibilities and interests within the team once the new person joins; in such cases, the job description is left deliberately vague to ensure that the Trust cannot be accused of misleading candidates.

Problem 2 - it is deliberately misleading

Some more cynical Trusts deliberately produce job descriptions which attract a certain caliber of candidates, only for those candidates to find out once they are in post that the job is not quite what they thought it was.  Some applicants to consultant posts who came to our consultant interview courses have reported personal stories of:

• Trusts advertising for 10 PAs but in fact insisting on the new recruit doing 12 PAs.
• Trusts advertising 2.5 SPAs insisting they should be used to run additional clinics.
• Trusts advertising 2.5 SPAs. which suddenly become 1.5 SPAs.
• Trusts advertising for a special interest which may or may not be needed (i.e. "just in case").
• Trusts failing to advertise the more painful parts of the job (e.g. boring clinical activities).

Such misleading job descriptions are designed to attract candidates to non-glamourous jobs.  In most cases though, the hyped-up job description is used to keep the Royal College respresentative happy, whilst the Trust can do what it wants once the post has been filled.

Problem 3 - it is deliberately geared towards a "favourite candidate"

Sometimes a job description may be deliberately tweaked to favour one particular candidate.  For example, they may require candidates to pursue a certain personal interest or to have done research on specific topics.  They may also involve requiring specific knowledge of local facts.  Whilst this may not put off anyone from applying (see our feature on 'Are consultant interviews fixed or fair?'), candidates should be aware of such situations to manage their expectations accordingly.

Overall though, most job descriptions are fair, but the lesson to be drawn from the above is that you must make sure that you enquire thoroughly about the nature and particulars of the post during the application process.  Too often, candidates are so desperate to get a job that some end up in the wrong job, which can then be difficult to resign from.  The ideal platform to gain all this information are the pre-shortlisting visit and the pre-interview visit.

It is also important that you read the job description thoroughly as you will need to ensure that the answers that you provide in the consultant application form and at your consultant interview are geared towards its content.