Step by step guide to landing your first job as a dietitian
Hi there! My name is Klaudia and I am a Registered Dietitian working in an acute hospital setting in North London. I have just graduated from BSc Nutrition & Dietetics from King's College London this summer. Feel free to DM me any questions you may have after reading this article under @hungryevidently on Instagram!
First of all – congrats! You’ve either graduated or are close to doing so, which is an amazing achievement in itself. This is often an exciting but also daunting time, when you realize the next step is to look for your first graduate job. So, how do you go about it?
Step 1. Think about what it is that you want to do
Going into the NHS as a band 5 dietitian is often the obvious (and most popular) choice. It tends to be the most secure and supportive environment when starting out, as everyone involved knows you are freshly graduated and the job is focused on your progressive learning and professional development. But let’s be honest – clinical NHS work may not be for everyone and there are so many career paths you can pursue with a dietetic degree. At this stage, take some time to think about what you enjoyed most about your degree, what you didn’t enjoy as much and why, what are your strengths that you would want to contribute to your new role, and what would you want to learn? If possible, get in touch with people who may be working in the area you are interested in. You can always look for them on LinkedIn or one of the nutrition and dietetic Facebook groups such as NutriTribe or Nutrimote. From my experience, dietitians tend to be lovely people always ready to help. Most importantly, remember that this is just the first step of you career – not a lifetime sentence! If you have no clue whether the job you are looking at is what you see yourself doing in 5+ years, you can always try it and see if you like it! Most jobs have a probation period during which you can leave with a few weeks’ notice.
Step 2. Time to start job hunting
Now that you know what kind of a job you want to pursue, it is time to start the job market research! This process is the most straightforward for NHS jobs – and this is also the only process I know from my experience; hence this will be the focus of this article (sorry!). All currently recruiting roles are listed on one of two websites (or more often than not, on both): www.nhsjobs.com or www.jobs.nhs.uk. All you need to do is choose “Dietitian”, “Band 5” and a location (if you have any in mind) – like in the screenshot below.
Although many band 5 roles within the NHS are fairly similar, they can still differ to some extent! You can have acute (hospital-based) or community (clinics, community hospitals and domiciliary visits) roles. You will often find rotational posts, which means you will cover different rotations (or specialties) within your role – again, these will differ from Trust to Trust. Some acute roles involve outpatient clinics while others are purely focused on inpatients. All these things are worth thinking about when choosing where to apply to.
In terms of jobs outside of the NHS – job search gets a bit trickier and there is no one specific place to look at. All of your standard job advert websites are a good starting point – Indeed, Reed, LinkedIn. Many jobs are also informally advertised on Twitter! Nutrition-specific Facebook groups such as UK Nutrition Mentoring also share some amazing opportunities. The best tip is not to limit yourself with the search criteria. Rather than looking solely for “dietitian” or “nutritionist”, try “health coach”, “wellbeing”, “food” – it can also show you roles associated with these phrases such as “weight management practitioner”.
Step 3. Writing a personal statement
Once again, when applying for a non-NHS role the process will be slightly different and I am not very familiar with it. However, you will most likely need a CV and potentially a cover letter (similar to the personal statement I will describe in detail below). Most universities have career services which you can access for some time after graduating and that’s usually a great way of making sure your CV will turn heads!
For NHS roles, you will not need a CV (yay!). You will, however, need a personal statement – and writing it in a way that lands you an interview is a whole skill in itself. But worry not, we will go through it together! Ideally, you would be reading this before finishing your course, as the first steps of preparing a good personal statement start way before the application process itself. What I mean by that, is gathering evidence and examples showing that you are the perfect candidate for the role. As you may or may not know, all NHS applications are scored based on a point system. The points are awarded for meeting criteria listed in person specifications for a particular role. Hence, from now on, the person specifications table (an example of which you can see below) will be your best friend.
Ultimately, what you want to do is to show that you are a walking personification of every single point mentioned above. What I found particularly helpful was making an Excel sheet (yes, I am that type) where I copied over all the requirements into column A, and over time I was collecting examples showing how I am meeting these in a column B. This way, when it comes to writing your statement you don’t have to spend ages trying to remember a situation you handled particularly well working under pressure etc. etc... This will also come in handy for the interview later on! But how to structure your personal statement? You don’t want to give a list of all the great things that you have done in no particular order. Instead, try grouping the skills together and looking for examples that can serve more than one purpose, e.g. “Having my own caseload of 15 patients during consolidation period of my clinical placement required me to further enhance my ability to prioritise workload and manage my own time, but also taught me to work well under pressure” (see what I did there?). Another important point is to be as specific with your examples as you can! Remember that everyone applying has done “a course in Dietetics at university” or had “a clinical placement within the NHS”.
Alongside working your way through the person specification, have a look at the Trust values of the Trust you are applying to. Just as person specs, these will differ slightly between different roles – a good reason not to reuse the same application for different jobs (although the bulk of it can be recycled). You can normally find them in the introduction of personal specs document or on the Trust’s website. These can include qualities such as “welcoming”, “clear communicator” or “committed to innovation” and incorporating these within your personal statement can score you some extra points!
Step 4. Congrats, you got an interview! What now?
Interviews can be nerve-wracking but ultimately getting an invite means that the recruitment team liked you enough to choose you out of tens of other candidates! Dependent on the hospital, the number of applicants invited for an interview generally varies between 8 and 15, from my experience, which means you are the closest you’ve been to getting the job! But equally, so are the other 10 people waiting in the room with you. So how to make sure you score that extra point over Lucy sat to your right? Preparation is the answer.
What you’re trying to show during the interview is the same as with your personal statement – and that is you are the person for the job. Hence, a good starting point is making sure that you are well familiar with your personal statement. You would have given some good examples in there already. What you have a chance to do in the interview, is to expand on them further and add some extra relevance to the role you are interviewing for. The best way to do it, is to use the STAR technique. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result. It prompts you to describe a situation where you demonstrated the skill in question, but also provide more detail on what you actually did in the situation and what it led to. Personally, I like adding another step which is “How is it relevant to this role? How will I use it to make your organisation better?”. Mastering this technique already brings you ten steps closer to getting the job. To add another couple of jumps in the right direction, you can try to predict the questions you may get and prep accordingly. Questions within the NHS tend to be quite repetitive and there is a good chance your university already compiled a list of common questions – definitely ask you course lead or career services about it. They usually cover both clinical and non-clinical skills. If such a list is not available to you, don’t worry! Below are listed some of the most common question types:
1. Which one of our Trust values do you identify with the most, and how have you demonstrated it in practice?
2. Why did you choose to apply for this role?
3. Tell us about your dietetic experience and what you can bring to the team.
4. Tell us about a recent CPD that influenced your practice.
5. Tell us about a time when you had to deal with conflict.
6. Tell us about a time when you had to work under pressure/within time constraints.
7. Assessment question: X patient has been referred to you. They have a diagnosis of Y and nurses report they have been managing less than half of their meals. Describe your clinical assessment of this patient.
*note: always say WHY you would consider certain aspects, give your full clinical reasoning and how it would influence your dietetic plan.
8. Patient-centred question: X patient has been referred to you for weight management for diabetes remission. They say they are currently following a ketogenic diet and avoid all carbohydrates. How would you direct this consultation?
*note: insert any other diet/behaviour with no evidence base.
9. Dealing with difficult situations question: A patient who you are counselling for weight management breaks down during the consultation and confides in you that they have been experiencing domestic abuse. What do you do?
10. Prioritisation question: It’s 4pm on a Friday and you get a referral for a) new ONS, b) new NG, c) low albumin and d) Type 2 Diabetes education for a patient on oral antihyperglycemics. How do you deal with it?
Last thing to remember: interviews work both ways! They are there for the employer to test your knowledge, values and how well you would fit in the team just as much as they are for you to determine whether it seems like an environment you would want to work in! So do take the time to ask all the questions you may have, both about the role itself but also the set up in the office, any support for band 5s, opportunities for personal development and more!
That’s it! Now you are fully equipped to step into the wild world of job searching. Should you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to DM me on Instagram under @hungryevidently and I will do my best to help! Most importantly, don’t get disheartened if you don’t get your first, second, third job. Like everything in life, job applications take practice!