Qualified as a radiographer and there are no jobs, need some advice :/

Fus Ro Dah · 10 Jun 2016 at 13:57

Hey guys, I'm a mature student (27) and I've just finished my BSc degree in Radiotherapy & Oncology.

Background information and my current situation
I chose this degree/career path as when I was looking 4 years ago they were in desperate need for radiographers and according to uni-stats 95% of students on this course secured a job in this field within 3 months.

3/4 years later and there are now no jobs. The first job I applied for they shortlisted me out of 65 and interviewed 30 of us for 4-5 jobs, many of which were given to experienced radiographers. I recently went for another interview where they interviewed 22 of us for 1 job, again, this job was given to someone who was already had experience. My local hospital now only recruits experienced staff, so as a newly qualified radiographer it's really difficult to get jobs. From what I've seen, I'm not only just competing with people from my uni, but also experienced radiographers and people from other universities, some as far as Scotland!

There is a chance that if I further expand how far I'm willing to travel (I'm already looking at hospitals with a 4 hour return journey) then I may be able to secure a job. However I have a mortgage and I don't want to move house. So if I look further a field I would need to rent a place as well as pay my mortgage, after factoring in these costs I'd be much better off working my part my job at my local Co-op!!!

What now?
Given the huge lack of radiotherapy jobs, I feel the best decision would be to end my radiotherapy career before it's even properly started and look at graduate jobs, the problem is, is that I've trained very specifically to be a radiographer (the cancer kind) and I don't really have any skill sets outside of this. So I don't even know what kind of jobs I should be looking at!?!? I guess my training involved the operation of complex equipment/machinery but I doubt this would pay anywhere near what I was hoping to earn as a newly qualified radiographer (£22K).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Artery · 10 Jun 2016 at 14:12

So wait, how long have you been looking?

PS, there* not their

Fus Ro Dah · 10 Jun 2016 at 14:26

Artery said:
So wait, how long have you been looking?

In radiotherapy? We started applying for jobs around March, so only about 3 months. However with radiotherapy it's not as though there are loads of jobs that I just haven't found yet through lack of searching. There are literally only a handful of hospitals within a 2 hour radius of me, most of which recruit between February and June. So far I'd say only 15-20% of my year have secured jobs. However a few years ago around 90% of the course had secured a job by this time.

I actually have an interview on Monday but if it goes anything like my last few interviews I'll be up against a ton of candidates fighting over 1 job and they're just end up hiring experienced staff again so I'm not going to get my hopes up. Even if I do get the job i'll be better of renting accommodation down there (in addition to paying my mortgage) as opposed to travelling 4 hours a day. With the cost of renting accommodation just secure a job away from home, I'd earn more working at the Co-op!

Outside of radiotherapy I haven't started looking for jobs yet because I'm not sure what I can even apply for with my degree, it's kind of useless outside of radiotherapy :confused:

Artery said:
PS, there* not their

Ha ha, cheers, there's no excuses for that

Buffman · 10 Jun 2016 at 15:30

Why dont you sell house/move?
You'll just need to sell transferable graduate skills for other jobs, any ideas of what youd like??

Fus Ro Dah · 10 Jun 2016 at 15:43

The Craig said:
Why dont you sell house/move?

I really like it here. I live next door to my older brother and my little nephew, and my younger brother lives a few doors down from us. There is also a good community here, anywhere else wouldn't be "home" for me.

The Craig said:
You'll just need to sell transferable graduate skills for other jobs, any ideas of what youd like??

Radiotherapy is basically people skills, technical skills (operating the equipment) and then the human biology side of it (knowledge of anatomy, cancer and symptoms and side effects etc). Outside of radiotherapy only the first 2 are really transferable. So that leaves me looking at customer focused kind of jobs (store manager/assistant manager) or technical jobs (machine operator). Neither of which are paid particularly well at the entry level. I'm tempted to go back into retail but after 3 years of uni and radiotherapy training it would just be super embarrassing.

dowie · 10 Jun 2016 at 17:02

I think that is the danger with a specialist degree - you really really need to want to pursue that career. If the idea of moving house is making you decide to not bother after all and consider something else then maybe it wasn't for you in the first place as you don't really want it *that* much.

My sister studied medicine, she was lucky to get a place in her chosen specialty a couple of hours away from where she grew up... so she settled down there and it's not too far to come visit family/friends at weekends but she also applied for jobs further up north and right down on the south coast and would have been prepared to take them too.

Basically it just boils down to how much do you really want to be a radiographer - if you're really keen on it then your search should be UK-wide, if you're considering trying something else simply because you can't land something at your local hospital or one of another handful nearby then perhaps it would be better to find something you're a bit more passionate about anyway.

You could always use your bachelors to get entry onto a masters degree in another area - there are various 'conversion' masters degrees out there for general graduates - especially in areas like IT/computer science (for example).

Buffman · 10 Jun 2016 at 17:34

Could you maybe rent your current place, apply for a radiotherapy job elsewhere and come back in a couple years (or 18 months, depends on what the field commands!) once you've got the experience?

I did similar when I wanted to move nearer to my Gf after my engineering degree (spent 18 months in a grad job in Cambridge)

NickK · 10 Jun 2016 at 18:14

Three options:
1. Move flexibly to find a new job
2. Stay put and wait until a new job appears
3. Look for closely related fields - including manufacturers and services in the field.

rtho782 · 14 Jun 2016 at 09:54

Radiographers as with any healthcare trade have a lot of regional variation.

My partner qualified as an RNLD (Registered Nurse, Learning Disabilities) last year. It's quite a small branch of Nursing not offered by that many Unis. The uni she went to puts out about 30-35 of them a year.

Of course, this means that all the RNLD jobs in that area are the bottom of NHS band 5, or even band 4.

Had we stayed there, she would have at best earned 24-25k in the NHS, or worked privately, perhaps as low as 20k.

We moved for my new job. We're now in a completely different area of the UK, and the nearby unis don't do RNLD courses.

She works in a non-NHS post on almost 34k as a newly qualified nurse with 8 months experience. This is the bottom of band 7 in the NHS, which is managerial salary.

TL;DR - move, there is still a national shortage of radiographers, there are just too many of them near you!

cheesyboy · 14 Jun 2016 at 09:59

Sounds like you went a bit too specialist with your degree. My wife's a radiographer, and there seem to be plenty of those jobs around (they regularly hire new recruits, anyway) - can you go for a vanilla radiography position instead of radiotherapy specifically?

Diagro · 14 Jun 2016 at 13:26

I had the same problem when i left uni.

My Degree was AI & Robotics, Unfortunately the only jobs in that field were 300 miles away or only pop up once every 4-5 years around here.

So i became an ICT technician and now a Computer Science teacher (training next year)

You do what you can.

dowie · 14 Jun 2016 at 13:55

that sounds dubious - there is plenty of demand for people with that sort of skill set and has been for many years

muon · 14 Jun 2016 at 19:27

How comes so few universities have this course?

http://search.ucas.com/search/provi...ocation=&IsFeatherProcessed=True&SubjectCode=

Of which only a few actually have a medical department?

Fus Ro Dah said:
In radiotherapy? We started applying for jobs around March, so only about 3 months. However with radiotherapy it's not as though there are loads of jobs that I just haven't found yet through lack of searching. There are literally only a handful of hospitals within a 2 hour radius of me, most of which recruit between February and June. So far I'd say only 15-20% of my year have secured jobs. However a few years ago around 90% of the course had secured a job by this time.

You sure it was in radiotherapy though? Unistats only say what proportion are employed and then what proportion of that is in a professional capacity.

Pawnless Endgame · 16 Jun 2016 at 13:18

Diagro said:
I had the same problem when i left uni.

My Degree was AI & Robotics, Unfortunately the only jobs in that field were 300 miles away or only pop up once every 4-5 years around here.

So i became an ICT technician and now a Computer Science teacher (training next year)

You do what you can.

Same here for me back in the late 1990s. I wanted to study sound engineering. Parents pushed me onto electronic engineering as apparently "the country's crying out for electronic engineers". 4 years later, jobs have dried up and like in the OP, any vacancies got handed over to experienced applicants. After volunteering at CAB etc, ended up as a 1st-line tech and now work in customer services, so totally unrelated now.

dowie · 16 Jun 2016 at 16:12

There is probably more to it... electronic engineering is a rather nice degree to have employment wise. Other factors such as simply 'luck', perception of your university, course, your degree grade and A-Level grades(which could also act as a crude proxy for assessing how competitive the course was) and simply your CV, how well you interview/sell yourself.

People indicating that there were no jobs in computer science/AI, engineering really are making rather dubious claims, plenty of people were getting employed in those areas and there is still plenty of demand for those skills now. If you've ended up in first line support then there are other significant factors at play too and it isn't necessarily your degree. There were also general grad scheme jobs and jobs that like quantitative degrees such as programmer. If you weren't competitive for these other jobs either then it quite likely was something more than just the degree course.

Lokai · 16 Jun 2016 at 17:29

Should have gone diagnostic, crying out for staff.

hyperfighting · 24 Jun 2016 at 17:52

I work in IT for a healthcare dignostic provider which is growing like crazy. They cant get radiographers in fast enough and sometimes resort to going abroad to carry out huge recruitment drives.

Rroff · 24 Jun 2016 at 17:59

dowie said:
There is probably more to it... electronic engineering is a rather nice degree to have employment wise.

Kicking myself I dropped out of electronic engineering - its one of those degrees that doesn't really lose its relevancy like the IT stuff I did instead (and covers a fair amount of computing related stuff itself) - even with the relatively sporadic employment opportunities around here it would open so many doors if I had that on my CV :|

EDIT: That said I was really struggling with it along with spending time on other courses - I'd really have needed to study maths and physics to a higher level than I had first before I'd have really done well at EE.

niko · 1 Jul 2016 at 07:49

Fus Ro Dah said:
I really like it here. I live next door to my older brother and my little nephew, and my younger brother lives a few doors down from us. There is also a good community here, anywhere else wouldn't be "home" for me.

Radiotherapy is basically people skills, technical skills (operating the equipment) and then the human biology side of it (knowledge of anatomy, cancer and symptoms and side effects etc). Outside of radiotherapy only the first 2 are really transferable. So that leaves me looking at customer focused kind of jobs (store manager/assistant manager) or technical jobs (machine operator). Neither of which are paid particularly well at the entry level. I'm tempted to go back into retail but after 3 years of uni and radiotherapy training it would just be super embarrassing.

another possible option would be retrain for diagnostic radiography, if there are positions/jobs locally to you. i am in my final year-well start it in a couple of weeks. i think the 1st year of your course is transferable so you might get a uni place and only need to complete the last two years. otherwise as already been pointed out move area or wait for a role to show up near you and hope you get selected at interview.

memyselfandi · 3 Jul 2016 at 14:16

One of the things you should have got from your degree is the skills on how to learn reasonably independently. This is why a lot of big companies just want a degree rather than a specific degree.

I'd go with the looking further afield and possibly renting out your existing house.

For the record my degree is in Astrophysics ... but I work in IT. Do I regret doing a degree in that subject ... not at all, it was very interesting ... would I prefer a job in that area rather than IT ... of course but getting a job in IT after Uni was easy. I'd imagine that there are more vacancies nationwide for Radiotherapy than Astrophysics.