Portfolio Station Returns For 2025 CST Interviews
The Portfolio station has been added to the core surgical training interviews for 2025. This replaces the self-assessment score from the application.
The Portfolio station was present at in-person CST interviews and allowed candidates to score points by talking through their CV and portfolios.
Our CST Interview Question Bank features Portfolio questions for you to practice prior to the real interview.
Our popular Core Surgery Interview Course includes realistic portfolio questions and model answers.
What Is The Core Surgery Portfolio Station?
Following the successful use of a multi-station format during the interviews for Core Surgical Training for 2023/24, HEE will continue to use this format for the 2024/25 selection process and have expanded it to include a portfolio station.
Candidates will no longer be asked to complete self-assessment on Oriel.
Instead, candidates invited to interview will be requested to upload an index page with the appropriate indicators for each domain.
Candidates will assign a letter from A to E to each domain showing which category of evidence they think their evidence sits in (A being the top, E being the bottom).
The portfolio has moved to this structure as the category acts as a guide for the assessor and is not the final score allocated - this is determined during the interview.
As HEE are no longer using a verification process, they do not need to allocate a score before interview as it may potentially mislead candidates as to what they will score on this station. As in previous years, candidates will continue to upload evidence on the portal.
During their interview, candidate's portfolio will be assessed by the interviewers during a 10 minute waiting period (similar to the process pre-pandemic). After this, there will be a 10 minute virtual interview about the portfolio, candidates will have 5 minutes for each question and will be asked about 2 of their portfolio domains.
What Evidence Should I Submit?
- Assessors will have a 10 minute window to assess an applicant’s portfolio, therefore if an applicant has not followed the guidance in this document, it will be very difficult to assess. If too many items are uploaded, assessors will only assess the first item of evidence for each domain. Candidates will be informed of this during their interview
- For each domain, candidates should only submit a maximum of one item from each box to evidence an achievement
Core Surgery Portfolio Hints and Tips
- The portfolio assessors will try their best to give you the maximum points they can, and hopefully will agree with your self-assessment. However, they only have ten minutes to look through the whole portfolio, if they have to look through a large document it will make it harder to give the correct points, please take account of all of the information above when submitting
- Ask advice from colleagues who have been through the process or who take part in portfolio assessment, they will be able to guide you through how information should be presented to maximize points
- Be careful about including evidence from potentially disreputable sources – if you have been asked to pay money to present something at a meeting; or if you have paid for a “2 day course” which only has 6 hours of online activity over two days it is unlikely that the activity has been appropriately peer-reviewed. This makes it unlikely that we can award the points
- Candidates should be wary of applying an electronic signature to a document. Some PDF programs will allow the text in the signature box to be altered after they have been uploaded. In this case, assessors will not be able to accept the document and it will score 0 points
- Any patient identifiable data will be removed and score 0 points. Any candidate who uploads PID will be asked to attend a meeting with the clinical lead to explain. Please check that you have not accidently done so
- Any data that is not directly relevant to your application should be very carefully thought through. For example, if a local meeting includes evidence of your presentation in the minutes, be careful of what other information is included in those minutes and redact accordingly
- When uploading an item of evidence to a domain, a single PDF that includes each item of evidence for that domain onlyshould be created and uploaded. This will allow the assessors to assess your evidence more easily and prevent any confusion about what points should be awarded
- Do not upload the entire portfolio to each domain, as assessors have a limited time to review each portfolio, and they may inadvertently consider only the first piece of evidence in each domain, therefore limiting how many points you can score
