MTAS abuse of candidates

Another shocking tale of incompetence and gut-wrenching cruelty thanks to MTAS has come to light. I have obtained copies of emails that show quite clearly that some candidates had their hopes raised by being told that they had successfully got jobs, only for this to be retracted in a later email and the candidates told they had no jobs at all. This is the first email of congratulation:

"Dear Dr ......

Congratulations, please find attached letters. We look forward to hearing from you by 15th May 2007.

Regards"

A couple of emails later:

"Dear Doctor

You will this morning have received an email from my colleague, ***** *****. Unfortunately ***** was only attempting a draft email (you will see that it was not signed by myself or any other in the recruitment team) when the system automatically sent this to everyone on the complete list - not just those that were successful. This is purely an administrative error, for which we send our most sincere apologies.

Please see below text which you can expect to receive from the National office this afternoon. We are sending this to you in advance due to the administrative error that occurred this morning.

Dear GP Applicant,

I am writing on behalf of the Wessex deanery to confirm the result of your GP application.

The selection panel felt that you are suitable to be appointed to a GP training programme but unfortunately you did not score highly enough to be made an offer at this time. You are, essentially, on a “reserve” list and we will re-consider your application if any posts at the Wessex deanery are declined. In addition, we may also be able to consider your application at any of the other deaneries you originally applied to if suitable vacancies remain unfilled at those deaneries. If GP training programmes are still available, we will conduct a national clearing system and will contact you again if that is the case.

In the meantime could I ask you please NOT to contact either the NRO or the deanery at this very busy time. The Wessex deanery will be not be able to give you feedback on your performance at selection centre until after the current recruitment episode and you will be informed of the process to obtain this in due course.

Yours sincerely"

Unbelievable. MTAS is working so well for the GP application process. It is bad enough that there are going to be hundreds of excellent juniors left jobless after this unfair farce, but for them to be treated so barbarically is quite deplorable.

Its gets worse. It turns out all candidates who put GP as their 2nd to 4th choice, irrespective of their brilliance at the interview and selection centres, have not been offered jobs as yet and have been put on the reserve list. The scandal of this is that no posts are being held back for the reserve list.

This means that less able candidates are being handed out GP posts because they ranked GP as their first choice, while more able candidates have no chance of getting a GP job if they did not rank GP as their first choice. Can this be legal? I find it hard to believe it can be, especially when candidates were told beforehand that those offering jobs would not be able to know how a candidate had ranked their preferences; hence it should not have been possible to selectively hand out posts to only those who ranked GP as their first choice.

I fear this will not be the last tale of rank incompetence and unfairness thanks the cruel joke of MTAS.