Should job applications be meritocratic?

In four months time, when I apply for my first postregistration house officer job, my overall worth as a doctor will be represented by a number between one and 400-the number of people in my year. The new application process in the United Kingdom gives a numerical value to everything on my CV, from exam results to voluntary work, and the sum total is added up to give me a personal score. This then determines my rank in the year.

The concept of being ranked according to exam results is not new to me. At least it acts as a useful guide about the amount of revision I did before an exam. But the notion that a ranking can somehow reflect the infinite number of qualities that constitute a good doctor, strikes me as not only short sighted but downright insulting.

How is the committee to determine, for example, whether more points should be awarded to the candidate who was president of the hockey club or to the one who published a paper in a scientific journal? Will an objective scoring system differentiate the candidate who transformed the rugby team from a bottom division side lacking morale to a highly motivated cup winning team from the candidate who merely occupied the privileged position for one season without any further effort?

The medical profession is becoming a meritocracy. And if we are to believe what Tony Blair told us before the last general election, this term describes a social system that we should aspire to. In this system, success is rewarded on the basis of objective measures of human achievement. As members of the medical profession, we should therefore be able to rise above the tedium of social networking-a necessary evil for our friends in media or acting. Now that preregistration house officer interviews have been abolished and consultants are not allowed a say on the identity of their future house officers, there's no advantage in chatting up your future employer. The new secret to professional success will be to get a list of the decided criteria that make a good doctor and to go through it, ensuring that you have something on your CV that constitutes each of the highest scoring non-academic achievements. But is this really a good thing?

The socialist writer Michael Young, who first coined the term "meritocracy," described a bleak society that rejects anybody who is unable to or refuses to jump through educational hoops. A meritocratic selection system, therefore, will manufacture doctors whose concept of professional excellence is to fit a rigid mould as closely as possible. How will we know who will be the best doctor on the production line? The one with the highest ranking, of course.

       

           

	REVIEWS Should job applications be meritocratic?       Susannah Daniel(July 2005)
	Dr Pooja Dassan (August 21, 2005)       Clinical Research Fellow, National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery p.dassan@ion.ucl.ac.uk
	I sympathise with Susannah Daniel on the view points illustrated in her article entitled "Should job applications be meritocratic?". I agree a ranking system really doesn't seem a fair depiction of a cadidates mertis and achievements. But as they say that's life and certainly as you climb the ranks it becomes evident that this ranking system is certainly not an alien concept. The application forms for National Training Numbers are also based on a comparable system and what becomes even more bewildering is that equal number of points are awarded for example for a postgraduate degree as they are for communication skills! Therefore to play the game, as that truly is what it boils down to, you need to get a list of the set criteria in advance and make you sure you meet all the requirements.