Guide to drafting an expert CV for senior medical jobs in Saudi Arabia

This article provides a guide to writing a curriculum vitae for candidates applying for senior medical jobs in Saudi Arabia. A well drafted curriculum vitae is vital to secure an interview and ultimately, a job offer and there are specific issues to be considered in Saudi Arabia.

1: Define Your Scope of Medical Practice

Your scope of medical practice must be set out in clear detail in your CV defining your skills, expertise, years of experience, level of experience and transferable skills. This should also include an overview of the hospitals or clinics where you have recently worked. A CV in which the candidate's scope of practice is ill defined and vague will often be given scant attention.

You will need to include considerably more information than you would if applying for a similar job in your home country. What is obvious to people in your current working environment is often unknown to people abroad. In Saudi Arabia the issue is further complicated by the employment of medical staff from diverse backgrounds and geographical areas who have trained in different clinical systems.

Your CV will probably be reviewed by doctors who have trained in different healthcare systems; USA, Canada, Germany, Scandinavia, France and other countries where job titles and scope of practice in a given role is quite different. For example, a gynaecologist in some European countries will perform breast surgery whereas in the UK, Ireland, USA and Canada this is not the role of a gynaecologist but of a general surgeon. Similar practice variations exist in other specialities so it is crucial that you detail the procedures which you can do and the expertise which you can offer to a role.

Listing a job title and place of work may be sufficient when applying for a job in the healthcare system where you currently work because there is a general assumption that people who review CVs have a basic knowledge of the hospitals and clinics which make up that system and the level of services and quality of facilities which they offer. That assumption does not hold in Saudi Arabia.

Information which should be set out in the CV includes:

Current and Recent Past Places of Employment or Medical Practice

• name and location of the hospital or clinic
• service level: primary, secondary or tertiary care
• facilities: number of beds, operating theatres, ICU beds, NICU/PICU beds, consulting rooms, staff numbers, equipment, laboratories, radiology equipment (eg MRI, CT, Interventional Radiology)
• accreditations (if relevant)
• services provided: 24/7 emergency, ICU, PICU/ NICU, specialist services, pathology, radiology
• education and research: university affiliations, medical student teaching, postgraduate training programs.

Job Title

1. Job Title as incorporated in employment contract
2. Additional titles: university appointments, clinical directorships, leadership roles

Qualifications

1. Medical Degree with date of award and awarding institution
2. Postgraduate specialist qualifications with dates of awards and awarding institutions

Technical Skills

1. Procedural competency - surgical and interventional procedures
2. Competences in specialist and subspecialist field
3. Level of competence - basic, intermediate, advanced
4. Level of experience - tertiary care subspecialist teaching hospital, district general, rural hospital, polyclinic, rural or urban general practice.

Transferrable Skills (with examples)

1. Leadership experience - clinical leadership, goals and outcomes achieved
2. Management experience - hospital, clinic, team management
3. Problem solving skills - in depth analysis of problems at work
4. Analytical skills - critical thinking
5. Communication skills - oral, written
6. Creativity and innovation - innovative and effective at solving problems
7. Entrepreneurial skills - practice development

2: Personal Details

In some countries, personal details on job applications are kept to a minimum, allegedly to avoid selection bias or grounds for discrimination during the recruitment process. This is not the case in Saudi Arabia where discrimination on the basis of age, sex or nationality is quite legitimate and widely practised.

Here are some typical personal job requirements:

1. Saudization: certain jobs are identified for Saudi citizens only and preference will usually be given to Saudi citizens when available.
2. Obstetrics and Gynaecology: many hospitals and clinics have policies for hiring female physicians only for all or some obstetric and gynaecology jobs.
3. Breast Surgery: some hospitals employ only female surgeons
4. Age: the upper age limit for new hires in Saudi Arabia is 60 and most hospitals will not consider new applicants over the age of 59. Some hospitals have an upper age limit of 55 for surgeons.
5. Arabic Language: Arabic language fluency is a requirement of some jobs, particularly in the fields of psychiatry, family medicine and geriatrics, and native speakers are often preferred.
6. Citizenship: employers have restricted access to employment visas for passport holders of some countries and may therefore refuse to hire prospective employees who are citizens of these countries on the grounds that the quota of visas available has been used.

The best policy when drafting a CV is to include sufficient personal details to provide the employer with enough information to address the above issues. If relevant information is omitted, the CV may be rejected on the grounds that it does not address key issues for the recruitment process or the recruitment process may be started only to be terminated later once the appropriate information comes to light.

We would recommend that the following personal information is set out on the first page of the CV:

• Name:
• Date and Place of Birth:
• Nationality: passport(s) held
• Sex:
• Languages: list language skills and competency - native, basic, advanced, fluent

Additional information such as passport and ID numbers is unnecessary.

3: Preconditions of Job Application

Before applying for jobs in Saudi Arabia, you should define the objectives you seek from an appointment and on the basis of these, you may wish to add some preconditions to your CV.

1: Location

Some employers in Saudi Arabia draft job offers and employment contracts which do not define a place of performance of duties and include a clause which permits the employer to transfer the employee from one facility to another, often without a defined reason. This includes transfers to hospitals and clinics in different cities.

Some people do not object to this but others, and particularly those with school children, find the clause unreasonable and unsettling. If you wish to work in one place and resist transfer to a different city, you can include this as a pre-condition of your application.

2: Incentive Schemes

Private sector employers in Saudi Arabia often offer consultants incentive schemes as part of a remuneration package on top of the basic salary and other allowances and benefits. This is essentially a performance based bonus in which the doctor can retain a percentage of turnover or profit derived from the practice.

Whilst some employers are transparent about the methodology of incentive calculation, others are deliberately vague. In Saudi Arabia verbal assurances are worthless and all terms must be incorporated into the employment contract. If an incentive scheme and its methodology is not set out in the employment contract, it will most likely not be implemented.

If the incentive scheme is relevant and important to you, you can make it a precondition of your job application and request a transparent policy. For more information about remuneration in Saudi Arabia, read our guide.

Further Information about Consultant Medical Jobs in Saudi Arabia

Candidates interested in consultant jobs in Saudi Arabia in a speciality or family medicine, may register a CV and contact us to discuss opportunities. Advertised jobs can be viewed on our website and applications made by submitting an up to date and well drafted CV.

Further information about working as a doctor in Saudi Arabia can be accessed on our Saudi Arabia section of the website and the Resources section.