Physiotherapy jobs - It's that time of year again.

It's the time of year when people coming to the end of their training courses start to try and promote themselves into a job. Physiotherapy in the UK has overshot its required training numbers by an unknown but significant amount.

This leads to a very tight market in new physiotherapy jobs. It's already tight in the NHS jobs market and that's before this year's crop of 2000 or so new graduates hit the streets.

In my medium sized NHS Trust, an acute hospital of 830 beds, we have had over seventy enquiring letters so far, with the majority I suspect still to come. Anxiety about getting a job in your chosen area is a new feeling for physiotherapists.

Approaches by letter vary quite widely in quality and care. Good presentation is important in a competitive environment. A must is to give an email address, often surprisingly omitted. This makes it much easier, and less expensive, for us to reply.

Some people just promote themselves so badly it's hard to see them managing to persuade anyone to give them a job. The prizes will go to the good self promoters, the flexible, the persistent and the achievers. There'll be losers, unfortunately, who may get less responsible and rewarding jobs for the foreseeable future. It's hard to see what will happen next but I don't expect applications for physiotherapy training to take a dive.