Use our high-quality community to find the best dentist job Northern Ireland has to offer. Whether you are actively seeking out your first job, or looking for a change of scene, we want to help you on your journey.
Read on to get prepared then come back and search here
Getting your first dentist job
Getting your first job dental job in Northern Ireland can be a challenging time. By the time you graduate you will be competent in the full range of procedures, but translating these skills and abilities into practice, while forming a new part of a dental team can be a real challenge. The first thing to recognise is that whether you start work in general practice, or in dental hospital, you will be forming part of a team which you can rely on to support you through the first few years of life working as a dentist.
Starting work in general dental practice
If you choose to start working in general dental practice you should be prepared for the challenges that this will bring. Although you will be competent to carry out most dental procedures independently, dental practice will bring new challenges, with patient management and financial management top of the list. When looking for a job in general practice it will help a lot if you work with a senior dentist who you can ask for advice and rely on for support. You will also find that working with a good team can be invaluable, especially nursing and reception staff, and so you may choose to join a practice which has an experienced and stable team already in place.
How to get to your ideal job
Finding your ideal job in Northern Ireland can seem daunting at first, but the process can be simplified by breaking it down into smaller steps. Dental careers are often remarkable in that there is no traditional pathway for career progression, and indeed no requirement for progression at all! A good first step is to try and decide where you would like to end up working in 15 years. This ideal job may be in a good general practice, or it may be in specialist practice, or even in the hospital. Once you have decided on your dream destination you can make a plan for getting there. Many young dentists make the mistake of trying to get into these practices immediately, viewing their career as an endpoint, rather than as a sequence of progressions, but it is important to recognise how you will need to develop to be able to perform well in these settings. While you might want to end up working in specialist or referral practice, this is usually not an ideal setting for when you leave dental school, because you are unlikely to be able to cope with the demand this places on your clinical and management skills. Therefore, it may be more sensible to start working in a more forgiving environment such as a good general practice, where high clinical standards are encouraged and where you can progress clinically and professionally at your own speed. You should try to work out how you will need to develop to reach your ideal job and develop a plan to that effect. This will involve gaining experience of working as a dentist, but it may also involve completing courses in your particular area of interest, or even doing some work in a dental hospital to gain experience in different aspects of dentistry. As you develop, you may find that you move to a different practice or clinic to gain further experience. When you have developed sufficient clinical and professional skills to be able to flourish in your chosen field you can then apply to your dream practice, knowing that you are armed with all the skills you need to succeed.
How to find the ideal job for you
Finding the right job in Northern Ireland can be easier than you think. Once you have decided where you want to work you should actively seek out jobs using the jobs pages here on our website. A second route to your perfect job can be found by placing your adding your details to our CV bank, so that recruiting practices can see your details and make contact with you directly. A final method of getting our ideal job is to contact us directly, as some jobs are still filled through word of mouth. As a recruiter we try to keep at the heart of what is happening in dentistry – if you contact us directly, we will always try our best to help you find the right job for you!
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