Information for Referees

The Allocation Programme

The Allocation Program places new graduate physiotherapists into public hospital positions for a 12-month term following their graduation. It is a two-step process. The first step is the allocation of candidates to their preferred hospital site using a centralized Allocation System. The second is assessing the candidates’ suitability through a recruitment process at the hospital site itself.

The recruitment at the hospital is in line with normal Public Health procedures and includes an interview and reference checking. Candidates must also pass through the normal employment checks prior to being offered a position.

Role of Referees

As a student unit supervisor, you may be a prospective referee. As thus, it is important that you have an understanding of the process and your role within it.

All candidates are allocated to a hospital of their choice. This is not a guarantee of a position; rather the candidate enters the recruitment process at that hospital. This includes addressing selection criteria, a competitive interview and a satisfactory reference check.

As part of the recruitment process, candidates for Allocation are required to list all of their student unit supervisors. Any of these may be chosen by the hospital site as a referee. Hospital sites will often chose a supervisor from a clinical area that is similar to the work the new graduate physiotherapist will be doing in their graduate year.

The Committee recommends that all candidates inform their student unit supervisors that they will be putting them as referees. The Committee also acknowledges that some supervisors may have supervised multiple candidates and may be called upon to do multiple reference checks. It may also be the case that these units were up to two years prior to the date of the actual reference checking.

Please see the Timetable for the relevant allocation dates. This will enable you to prepare for the references.