Portfolio Station
Your portfolio achievements are assessed using the validated self-assessment (34 marks) and your answers given at online interview (50 marks). In the portfolio station you will be interviewed about elements of your career and experience to date.
The total time allocated for the Portfolio station is ten minutes. You will be assessed independently by two interviewers scoring in each of the following domains: Career Motivation, Learning and Development; Academic; Leadership and Team Involvement; Organisation and Planning; Communication – Information Giving. These match the ST3 T&O person specification, which can be accessed from our ST3 T&O Application page.
The Portfolio station is designed to assess past achievements, commitment to specialty and career progression to date. You will therefore be expected to have evidence to show against the person specification domains. Failure to supply suitable evidence to fully support the score awarded will result in your score being reduced.
Interviewers will have analysed your portfolio and it is critical that achievements and evidence are easy to find. Spending time creating an easy to navigate portfolio is well worth your time. Questions may relate directly to information within your CV or portfolio, or may be more generic personal insight questions such as “why should we select you?”
Preparation
Half of the marks awarded for the Portfolio station are scored before you even enter the room. Knowing what is required to score points ahead of time is essential — work through the self-assessment questions and gather the evidence for each one.
Structuring your answers and preparing personalised answers to commonly asked questions is important, and our online interview preparation features a question bank of such questions with analysis and breakdown by successful candidates.
Scoring
This station is scored out of 50. Interviewers score you out of 10 across five domains:
- Career Motivation, Learning and Development
- Academic
- Leadership and Team Involvement
- Organisation and Planning
- Communication – Information Giving
The self-assessment you completed at application adds a further 34 marks, and the four stations plus the self-assessment give a total of 234. See the interview overview for the full scoring matrix.
Top Tips
- Spend time re-reading old audits, presentations and publications. Anything included in your portfolio may be discussed by the interviewers and it is important that you can recall data and results from projects you undertook several years previously.
- Be honest with everything on the portfolio checklist and make sure you have included sufficient evidence to back it up.
- Think about what your key selling points are and what makes you stand out, and focus on these attributes.
- Give clear, concise answers and practise, practise, practise.
More interview info
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The question bank covers every station with model answers and AI-marked spoken practice.
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