The Application Process

 

Positions for 2025 will be recruited in July 2024.  The application portal will not be open until this time.

If you would like a specific Position Description for any of the jobs you are interested in, please email the contact person at that site/department who will be able to forward one to you.  We recommend you obtain job descriptions for the roles you are planning to preference.  

• There are 3 main steps to the application process - you do not need to do all steps at the same time, as long as they are all done by the closing date
  1. Submit the application with your CV and cover letters, with referee names and emails
  2. Choose your preferences
  3. Record a video interview - please note that this is hosted on the Western Health site, so do not be surprised by the Western Health logo.

To apply you will need to:

1. Register through the Victorian Paediatric Advanced Trainee portal (https://vpat.au).

• You will need to create a profile when you get to this site.  You do not have to load a picture of yourself (this is optional).  Once you have successfully created a profile, you will then see the menu to apply.  If you don't see the menu - click the blue suitcase with a plus sign on the top banner to open it.
• Do not apply on this site unless we are in the recruitment open period - your application will be archived!

2.  Fill in the registration form and upload your CV and cover letters.   

• You are strongly encouraged to load several cover letters if the roles you are applying to have specialist aspects.   We recommend one letter for Chief Registrar /Senior Fellow roles; one letter for Community Roles; one letter for General Paediatric Registrar roles; one letter for NICU roles.  You do not need to supply a separate letter for each health service.

What should my cover letter address?

• Information on your skills and attributes for the type(s) of jobs you are applying for - for example, if you you are applying for NICU roles it would be pertinent to discuss things like your experience with neonatal medicine, procedural skills, research and audit.

3.  Nominate 3 referees, supplying email and phone number. 

• Please carefully review the email addresses before you submit, as incorrect email addresses mean your referees won't get the link.  Do NOT put in "test" referee emails, as you cannot update these after you have submitted your application.
• The website will automatically email your referees. 
• Once referees complete their reference, you will be notified by return email that this has been completed.
• You will require a minimum of 2 referees to respond in order for your application to be complete.  Your referees have 2 weeks following the close of applications in order to get their report returned.  Referees who do not respond by the closing date will receive one reminder email automatically.  If your referee has difficulty with the link, please ask them to email vpat.recruitment@gmail.com

Please note that VPAT does not supply referee reports to other departments/sites. 

If a department or health service is not participating in the centralised applications, then you will need to have referees complete references separately for your applications to those sites/departments.

4.  Submit the application.  You will receive an email confirming that your application has been submitted.

5. Make your preferences from the Menu on the portal - you must make some preferences (even if you would accept any position) or your application will not be considered.

• Do NOT preference a position that you are not fully committed to accepting should it be offered. As the matching process is complex, we may need to match someone to a role that is further down their preference list, so you must be willing to accept the position if offered.  If you are genuinely prepared to accept any offer at any health service, then please tick the "Yes" box at the top of the preference form - but you should ALSO fill in preferences.  If you only want to be considered for the jobs in your preference list, then tick "No"
• If you are applying as a job-share partnership - both sets of preferences must match and be in the same order - if you want to apply individually to a part-time preference, you can just list that within your preferences, as it will be assumed that you want to job-share a full-time position OR accept a part-time position as an independent applicant.  Please also email the vpat email to ensure your preferencing is clear to the team.
• For the RCH rotating registrar positions:  you may preference "Any Rotating Registrar Position" rather than choosing each position separately - but if you preference as "Any Rotating Registrar Position" you will not have an option to negotiate the offered rotations unless there are vacant roles.
• Do not change the order of your preferences after the closing date  as sites will be reviewing applications at that time.  You may email vpat.recruitment@gmail.com if you really need to make changes - as this will ensure sites are alerted to your requested changes.  The vpat team will update the portal on the back-end to reflect any approved changes.
• You do not have to select all 10 preferences - you may choose to preference only 1 or 2 jobs if they are the only things that you want/need (e.g. looking only for NICU jobs).  However, it is prudent to put one or two "next-best" options if you are seeking a community position, as these are often very popular.  We regularly have a few trainees who are unable to be offered a position in the first round as they have placed only a couple of options in their list.
• Combination roles are listed once, with roles offered in either order - you cannot preference which order to do metro rotations.
  • If you want 2 x 6 month roles (ie. your own combined job), you will be able to list 10 preferences for the 1st 6 months and 6 preferences for the 2nd 6 months.  Do not preference rural sites in both the first half of the year and the second half of the year unless you are genuinely prepared to do 2 x rural rotations.
    Please be aware that each 6 months will be allocated separately, so you may get your 1st preference in one 6 months, and a lower preference in the other 6 months (ie they are not linked and are treated as separate applications to those roles)
  • If you are prepared to do your 2 x 6 months preferences in either order (which increases your chances to get your highest choices), it is best to email vpat.recruitment@gmail.com so we can notate this into our spreadsheet for allocation day.

6. Click the link to record your interview - this MUST be completed before the application closing date or your application cannot be considered in the first round. 

• Please note that this will direct you to an external site (Modern Hire) to record your interview - you will have to register with your name and email on this site.  The interview site is hosted by Western Health (Sunshine JKWC) and has the Western Health logo.  This is the correct page - it is being shared by our collaboration so all sites can review these.
• If you get blocked by your organisation's firewall - please complete this section from a home computer network.
• Once you click on the link to record your interview - you must complete this interview within the one sitting.  Do not pause the recording.  There are 5 questions.   
• You will only have one attempt to record each of the interview questions.  Do NOT press pause at any time during the interview (as this will lock that question and you will not be able to re-sit).  There are opportunities to test your microphone and camera beforehand. You only need to have 4 out 5 answers recorded to consider your interview complete - so don't stress if one single question doesn't record properly!
• You will not receive a notification from VPAT about interview completion, as this is via an external site.  If you have issues during your interview and there are concerns about whether it recorded, please email vpat.recruitment@gmail.com as we can check whether an interview is there. We are not offering the opportunity to re-set the interview.  As long as you have 4 questions recorded, it will be considered complete.  If there are major errors then the sites will contact you if they wish to do an additional interview.  Many sites do their own interviews as well anyway.

You may also be invited to an additional live interview for particular positions or sites, at their discretion.  In particular this is likely for Senior Registrar roles, Centre for Community Child Health roles, and NICU or ED roles.  These will occur in the 4 weeks after job applications close. You will be contacted by those sites directly if they wish you to attend a supplementary interview.

All jobs will be offered via this central process even if you interview for a particular job separately.

You should not be receiving job offers from participating sites/departments prior to the allocation period.  If this occurs, the central application process will be compromised for future years.

 

Interview Landing Page for Modern Hire looks like this:

 

7. If you have accepted another position (from a site that is not participating in the central recruitment) prior to 20th August, PLEASE withdraw from VPAT on the portal, or update your length of contract requested (from 12 months to 6 months). 

• We request you do this prior to 2Oth August, as this is when allocation processes will begin in the background.  If you do not withdraw, another candidate may miss out on their preferred position - and the position you have been matched to may remain empty.  This is not good for anyone.   

 

6. You will only receive ONE offer via this centralised process 

• If you have put in for 2 x 6 months positions that are not currently combined, then both of these will be offered at this time. You may get a high preference for one 6 months, but a lower one for the other 6 months - ie, these preferences are not linked in any way - if you want certainty, then you should apply to a combination job.
• The department/site you have been allocated to will contact you to make the VPAT offer.  This will be the best possible match from your preferences and the health service rankings of candidates for their service.
• You will also be able to see your own allocation on the VPAT portal once offers are made

Not every applicant will be offered a position in this process.  This may be due to one of the following reasons:

• you only put a small number of job preferences in your list, but other applicants were rated more highly for those jobs by the department/ health service - some jobs get a lot of applicants each year and are competitive
  • There will  be a range of unfilled jobs that we will put forward to you for consideration
• you were not considered suitable by any of the services you applied to - this may be the case for some applicants who do not have the prerequisite requirements for the role, or the service is unable to support your requirements - this may particularly be the case for overseas trained doctors with specific needs for top-up training or for AHPRA registration. 
• your application requires another level of assessment that was not able to be completed prior to allocation day - this may be the case for doctors who are currently overseas and have not worked in the Australian hospital system previously.  
   

8. Any vacant positions after allocations will be re-advertised by the individual health services, and applicants who have not been allocated one of their preferred positions will be notified what roles are still available and may re-preference for remaining positions.

 

9.  Once you have been offered a position, you will have 24 hours to accept (or decline) the offer by notifying the nominated contact person for that role, as well as accepting/declining on the portal.

• Please be aware that if you decline your initial offer, you will not be offered another role in a second round of VPAT offers. Any vacant positions at the end of 2 rounds of offers will be be recruited directly by sites with vacancies and you will need to apply individually to these when they are opened if you are still seeking a position.

 

Other Queries:

Who can apply via this website?

• Advanced Paediatric Trainees with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP)
  • General Paediatric trainees
  • Neonatology trainees
  • Community Paediatric trainees
  • Other Subspecialty Paediatric trainees
• Continuing Basic Paediatric Trainees
  • Those basic trainees who have completed all of their time-based requirements, but are still waiting to complete their exams (if you are a Basic Trainee who still has time requirements to complete, please contact your DPE)
• Fellows of the RACP wishing to complete an additional year of training
• International Medical Graduates with sufficient paediatric or neonatal experience, including those who require Peer Review 
• Unaccredited registrars who are not in the paediatric training program, but who wish to work as a paediatric registrar
• ACEM / PEM / ICU trainees
• GP trainees

Job-Sharing - if you are applying with a job-share partner, this must be stated in your cover letter, and you will also need to nominate this in the application form. 

• If you need help finding a job-share partner, please contact MWFU at RCH:   mwu.enquiries@rch.org.au

Part-time - some roles are specifically part-time and are listed like this on the department's page and in the preference list.  Other roles might be suitable for part-time, but you will need to contact those services to enquire about this PRIOR to making preferences as not every service can accommodate part-time applicants.  

Changing job preferences or required length of position:

• Prior to the application closing date: 
  • this can be done on the trainee portal application page 
• After the application closing date, but before allocations: 
  • length of contract may be changed by updating this on the trainee portal application page under the preferences menu (ie going from a 12 month role to a 6 month role).  However:
    • Job preferences should ideally not be changed after the application closing date, and new sites cannot be added.  If you are dropping from a 12 month request to a 6 month request and you had preferenced combination roles, you may change your preferences to either of those health services for your 6 month role only - but cannot add in any new preferences, if your order of preferences needs to change, you will need to email us.    vpat.recruitment@gmail.com  

Withdrawing completely:

• Prior to the application closing date: 
  • this can be done on the trainee portal application page by simply entering the portal and clicking on the tab that indicates "withdraw"
• After the application closing date, but before allocations: 
  • you will need to withdraw on the trainee portal page but ALSO
  • email the central email to ensure your withdrawal has been noted vpat.recruitment@gmail.com

3 month positions - these are not available via the VPAT portal.  All positions are either 6 months or 12 months in duration.  Positions commence in February (1st 6 months) and August (2nd 6 months) of each year.  

I don't see the job I wanted on here - please contact the department you want to work for directly.  Not all jobs in Victoria are listed here.  In particular, most sub-specialty positions are recruited directly by those departments.  Even within one department or health service, some jobs are not recruited via this process for various reasons.  We are hoping to expand this over the coming years.

If you having difficulties applying please email vpat.recruitment@gmail.com

Accreditation for Basic Trainees 

Please note that the Royal Australasian College of Physicians will not accredit Basic Trainees who are appointed to positions unless they are employed directly through a site with a Director of Paediatric Physician Training (DPPT).  Basic Trainees are seconded to other sites within the training network.  Currently you must be employed via RCH or Monash in order to have Basic Training time accredited.  This rule will be strictly enforced.

International Medical Graduates

Please note that you should contact the Royal Australasian College of Physicians to determine your pathway.  You should please indicate in your cover letter what requirements you have been asked to complete to help the Health Services determine whether their role will meet your needs.  You must also be registered with AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioners Registration Authority).