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Not your CV. Reputation is now formally scored — general surgery samples 15+ non-consultant referees and under five valid reports makes you unsuitable 1; cardiothoracic's unit assessment can rule you ineligible outright 2; ACEM's institutional reference is written by the ED Director 3. Lying, being two-faced and being untrainable are what people report as fatal 6.
The scoring has moved to the people you were rude to. General surgery makes you nominate 15 or more non-consultant referees — at least two each from clerical, nursing, allied health, ED/ICU/HDU doctors and junior doctors — samples five, and declares you unsuitable if fewer than five valid reports come back 1. Neurosurgery added a multi-source feedback of 15+ contacts including junior doctors from the 2027 intake, with a minimum average score per question 1. OHNS requires a minimum of 89% on its MSF, the highest bar published anywhere 1. Cardiothoracic runs a Unit Based Competency Assessment scored by consensus across all unit consultants, and "not suitable for cardiothoracic training" makes you ineligible regardless of everything else 2.
Two other published ways to end it. ACEM requires an institutional reference from the Director of Emergency Medicine of your qualifying department, produced after a group discussion with at least four other contributors — withheld, you have no application 3. RANZCOG embargoes discussion of its interview content for seven days and carries a lifelong ban for substantiated breaches 4. Every RACS applicant must complete Introduction to Operating with Respect as a gate 5.
What the people who select actually name. Lying — particularly to cover a gap or a mistake — is the one thing the sub's selectors call unrecoverable 6. After that: being two-faced, refusing feedback, being unreliable, and undermining the MDT 6. A twenty-year director of training says the behaviour he watched for was how people treated their peers and juniors, not their bosses 6.
The counter-argument. None of this is a secret rubric. Most of it is a description of being someone people want to work with for the next decade 6. And some of it is luck — attaching yourself to the wrong consultant is the most-upvoted answer in the thread, and you cannot research that in advance 6. Note also what does not ruin you: resigning from a job and declining an offer are both recurring panics on the sub with no documented consequence 7.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
I think the fastest way to cook your reputation is not be trustworthy or ok to work with.
Selectors are looking for good doctors. We aren't choosing trainees, we are choosing future colleagues.
Being taken under the wings of a consultant (that you didn't know) the medical director hates.
I would especially note people who were obsequious to higher ups and yet treated people at their level (or more junior staff) with disdain.
I put more weight on the advanced trainees assessment of candidates than consultant references.
Asked 7 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was made
asked_count = posts in the 19,145-post r/ausjdocs dump (2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(ruin|sabotage|wreck|blacklist|burn(ed|ing|t)? (a |your )?bridge|bad (reputation|reference|name)|reputation|black ?list|red flag).{0,60}(chance|career|training|specialt|application|job)|(chance|career|application).{0,40}(ruin|wreck|sabotage)/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring answers from the one substantial thread, prioritising commenters who state they sit on selection, with the 'it's just being a decent colleague' reading kept beside the 'it's partly luck' one.