How To Structure Your Orthopaedic CV for ST3 in 2027

Structure your orthopaedic CV around the 13 questions of the 2027 ST3 T&O self-assessment — not around a generic medical CV template. Every scored question is a section heading; every line in that section should either earn a mark or evidence one. The self-assessment feeds 34 of the 234 total interview marks, and 2 of those marks are awarded purely for how well your evidence is organised. That is the whole strategy. The rest of this article shows you how to execute it.

What should an orthopaedic CV look like in 2027?

Two documents, one skeleton. You need a conventional CV for courses, fellowships and taster-week introductions — and you need an evidence upload for the national selection process. Build both on the same skeleton: the 2027 self-assessment domains. If a line on your CV doesn't map to a scored question, it either supports an interview answer or it goes.

Open with a front page that works like the front page of a newspaper: your headlines. Months of T&O experience, neck of femur fracture numbers, publications with PMIDs, your best presentation, your highest leadership role. A reviewer or interviewer should grasp your strongest claims in thirty seconds, before they reach the detail.

Then order the sections by your strength, not by convention. Readers skim. Put your 4-point domains before your 1-point domains. Within each section, most recent first, and use subheadings to pre-sort the reviewer's judgement for them — split Presentations into Podium (delivered by you) and Poster / co-author delivered, because that is exactly the line the 2027 scoring draws.

How is the 2027 self-assessment actually scored?

These figures come from the published 2027 Self-Assessment Scoring System. Question 1 is an unscored single-page employment summary; questions 2–13 score as follows. The full option-by-option tables are on our 2027 self-assessment page.

Note the shape of the curve on Question 2: the system deliberately rewards 10–36 months and penalises very long experience. And note that any unaccounted period up to end July 2027 is assumed to be T&O employment — a gap you fail to document can silently push you over the 36-month cliff edge.

How do I map my CV sections to the scored domains?

Replace the old kitchen-sink section list with this:

1. Front page — headlines and personal details.
2. Employment summary — one page: graduation date, foundation training, every post-foundation post with title, specialty and dates, LTFT details, and any periods out of employment. This mirrors the unscored Question 1 exactly, so write it once and reuse it.
3. Operative experience — headline NOF numbers, logbook consolidation summary, PBA count.
4. Publications — first-author (with PMIDs, bold) separated from other-author.
5. Presentations — podium-delivered-by-you first, then everything else.
6. Audit & QIP — your best two closed-loop projects, one line each on standard, cycle 1, change, cycle 2, outcome.
7. Higher degrees & qualifications.
8. Leadership & management — highest role first, with dates proving 6+ months.
9. Teaching — frequency and duration explicit ("fortnightly since Aug 2025", not "regular").
10. Courses, prizes, extracurricular — trimmed hard. Everything here is interview fuel, not points.

The old advice still holds on style: bullet points stating action and outcome, not paragraphs; Arial, Helvetica or Times New Roman at 10–11pt; one accent colour at most; your name in the header of every page. Seven-plus pages is normal for a medical CV — length is fine, padding is not. The test for every line: could you defend it in a ten-minute station, and does it map to a domain? Delete anything that fails both.

How should I organise my evidence folder?

Question 13 gives you 2 marks for organisation alone — the cheapest marks on the entire form, and the only question that cannot be appealed. Build your folder like this from day one:

• One folder per question, numbered 2–13, matching the self-assessment order.
• A single summary page first in every domain stating what you claim and listing the evidence behind it. This is explicitly what reviewers are told to look for.
• Every document legible and the right way up. A sideways phone photo of a certificate reads as a 0-band upload.
• Upload only what's asked. Best two papers, best two presentations, best two projects, exactly six PBAs. Extra documents are not read and make you look disorganised.
• Validation details on everything that needs them — logbook consolidation sheets carry the consultant's name, signature and GMC number on each sheet; national leadership roles need a signed letter from the recognised body.
• Audit outcomes on a single slide, not the full presentation deck, plus a validated letter from the audit lead — a meeting agenda is not evidence.

Do this as you go through the year, not in the upload window. The evidence window in the last cycle was about ten days.

What are the most common orthopaedic CV mistakes?

• Uploading employment contracts instead of a one-page summary. The guidance is explicit: summary page only (contract front pages are for evidencing non-training post dates under Questions 2–3, not Question 1).
• Leaving employment gaps unexplained — they are assumed to be T&O time and can cost you 4 marks on Question 2.
• Claiming collaborative group authorship as first-author. It doesn't count, and collaborative papers under Question 7 need evidence of a significant role in design, analysis or writing.
• Counting journals that aren't indexed in both PubMed and Web of Science — Cureus papers, for example, are discounted.
• PBAs validated by a registrar without CCT. Only consultant or recognised ISCP trainer validation counts.
• Listing ATLS Instructor or Training-the-Trainer attendance as teaching. Explicitly excluded. Evidence a recurring programme, course delivery or a contractual teaching role instead.
• Claiming an intercalated BSc as a higher degree. It scores nothing under Question 10.
• Vague frequency words. "Regular teaching" scores nothing; "4+ sessions per year over the last two years" is the actual banding language — write to it.
• Counting one project twice. A project presented at three meetings is still one presentation for Question 8.

Does the interview panel actually see my CV?

No — and this changes how you prepare. At the Commitment to Specialty station, the panel scores ten minutes of you talking about your career and experience without sight of your portfolio. Your CV's real interview function is as a script: if it is structured by domain, you can walk the panel through your strongest evidence from memory, in scoring order. Candidates who structure the document well tend to structure the answer well. The remaining stations — Clinical, Prioritisation and Communication, each worth 50 marks — are pure performance, which is where practice against realistic scenarios earns its keep; the orthointerview.com question bank is built around exactly those station formats, including high-yield clinical topics like neck of femur fractures.

When does everything need to be ready?

The 2027 Applicant Handbook has not yet been published, so treat the confirmed 2026-cycle dates as your planning template and expect the 2027 cycle to mirror them roughly a year on:

The practical deadline is the old one from the original version of this article, and it hasn't changed: have the CV finished and proofread before Christmas, so the new year is spent assembling and checking evidence — not writing. In 2026 the minimum appointability score was 146/232; the 2027 threshold is yet to be confirmed. Check the live tables on /self-assessment before you finalise anything — we update them the day new guidance lands.