Development of Selection Methods for National Preregistration Pharmacist Recruitment – Health Education England

Descriptions

There are currently approximately 2500+ preregistration pharmacists in training in the UK. These posts are recruited into using a variety of methods. Some large companies have invested heavily in developed behaviour and values based selection whilst at the other end of the spectrum trainees may be recruited without an interview. In February 2016 Health Education England made a decision to introduce a national process for the recruitment and selection of preregistration pharmacists using the IT system ORIEL. This IT platform is currently used by HEE for the recruitment of a broad range of professions including medical foundation and specialties, dental foundation and health care scientists. The platform is flexible to allow professional groupings to tailor it to their specific requirements whilst at the same time providing economies of scale and value for money as there is a common framework. One of the key elements of a national recruitment scheme is that employers have greatest vested interest in is the selection criteria used to recruit and methods used to assess these. To ensure that decisions relating to this are evidence based HEE commissioned the design and development of a Preregistration Pharmacists Professional Attributes Framework between December 2015 and July 2016. Moving on from there, the purpose of this next phase of the work is to design effective selection methods to assess the 6 prioritised attributes within the Professional Attributes Framework as well as the key knowledge and skills set out in national Person Specification. In terms of expected numbers, the national recruitment system will be utilised for all HEE funded preregistration pharmacists (approximately 650 posts across England). In addition the system is open to all community pharmacy employers. We do not expect the employers for all 2000+ community preregistration pharmacist posts to sign up to the system in the first year however, we would wish to build capacity into the system to accommodate that in the long term. HEE’s Values Based Recruitment programme clearly specifies that all NHS trainees and staff should be recruited for values. Selection methods clearly need to align with these principles and in relation to preregistration pharmacist posts. Feedback from over 100 stakeholders at a launch event for the Preregistration Pharmacist Professional Attributes Framework on July 20th 2016 indicated that employers wished to see:- -Face to face recruitment (either via multiple mini interviews or selection centres) as essential -Situational Judgement Tests as desirable -Personality tests as not desirable It is envisaged that any face to face element of selection is likely to be administered by HEE recruitment teams managed at a regional level. In this phase of the project HEE is seeking expertise to develop appropriate selection methods and assessor training in order to recruit using a new national system in September 2017.