In order to get any job that you really want, a number of factors have to be considered. Becoming a consultant is a culmination of training in the right specialty and the right type of experience in training, teaching and research. Getting a consultant job is not impossible provided you have the right aptitude, knowledge and skills. The number of vacancies at the consultant level in the NHS is limited, and hence job interviews are becoming highly competitive. For this reason, you have to prepare yourself at a very high level to get the right job. Geting the job you really want requires technique and background work. This chapter aims to help the trainee look at a job and apply the right skills to obtain it.

It will be helpful to consider the kind of job as well as the environment you would like to pursue your career in. Within the NHS, there are teaching and non-teaching trusts as well those that have already achieved a foundation status or are aspiring to do so. The NHS posts are primarily based in either the community or in-patient settings but they can also have combined responsibilities. The growth of the independent sector has led to the offer of a considerable number of jobs within it. Increasingly, it is being seen that trainees are taking up these jobs quite early in their careers. However, jobs in the independent sector can be in highly specialised areas, mostly in in-patient services. Academic jobs with university tie-ups have dwindled in number in recent years.

There is little doubt that for those in psychiatric practice, becoming a consultant is important: if not a pinnacle of achievement, it is at least a stopover to bigger achievements. Assessing a job and going after the one you really want must be approached as a professional task. The art of getting such a job is not a battle that has to be won but courtship, in which potential employers and colleagues have to be wooed. When planning to go out on a date, you decide whether there is any long-term potential in the relationship and prepare accordingly (where to go to, what to wear, what food to order, what wine to drink).