Who Can Apply

You need to be a CFMS member to be able to apply for positions part of the CFMS Recruitment cycles.

Incoming first year medical students at one of our 16 member schools cannot participate in the Spring Recruitment cycle in the calendar year they are starting Med school. Fall recruitment will be their first opportunity to apply for positions.

If you are a University of Montreal, University of Laval, University of Sherbrooke (not CFMNB), or Simon Fraser University medical student and are interested in joining CFMS, you can choose to become an individual CFMS member at the beginning of a school year by reaching out to the Recruitment Coordinator.

Recruitment Cycles and Positions

CFMS organizes two or three recruitment cycles per year: Fall, Winter, and Spring. The Fall and Spring recruitment have the most positions to apply to. The recruitment for National Officers, Leads of Task Forces, and Committee Chairs occurs in the Spring. In the Fall CFMS recruits for General Committee and Task Force Members and any unfilled positions. Winter recruitment only occurs if necessary.

To understand the recruitment process, it is important to know a bit about the CFMS organizational structure. CFMS is divided into the following portfolios:

* Communication * Government Affairs and Advocacy

* Education * Indigenous Health

* Finance * Social Accountability

* Global Health * Student Affairs

Each portfolio is managed by a Board member, the "Portfolio Director (PD)" , and has its own committees (cmte), and task forces (tf). These Cmtes and TFs come with leadership positions like "Portfolio Associate", "National Officer", "Lead", and "Chair", as well as "General (Cmte or TF) Members".

There can be an extra categorie to the eight portfolios mentioned above, e.g. Regional Director Associate(s)

Under the Education Portfolio you will also find "External Representative" positions: As the representative voice of Canadian medical students, CFMS represents medical students to many national medical organizations including the College of Family Physicians, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and others. The CFMS recruits talented individuals to help represent medical students to these organizations and offers a chance to general CFMS members to be involved in shaping the future of medicine in Canada. Volunteering for these positions allows students to learn more about medical education, health promotion and more.

The Process

When applications open, CFMS will announce this in the CFMS Monthly email that goes out to CFMS members who have signed up for it. (If you don't receive our monthly email you can subscribe here: https://bit.ly/ENMonthlySignUp .)
CFMS will also publish a news message on the CFMS website and will promote the recruitment cycle on Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, and X).

A link with the position descriptions (English and French) will be part of those publications. There will be a separate application form for each portfolio/category. The links to those application forms can be found in the file with the position descriptions.

You are welcome to apply for multiple positions, please note that you will have to fill out an application form for each position.

Please make sure to answer each question in the application form. An unanswered question may bring down your application’s average score during the marking phase of the Recruitment process.

If there are not enough applications for several positions, CFMS may decide to extend the application deadline. If you require a personal extension to be able to send in your application(s), a 48 hour extension may be given when you email the Recruitment Coordinator.

When applications have closed the recruitment coordinator will anonymize them. Each application will be assigned 5 markers, who will receive a marking sheet to fill out. Each marking sheet will result in an average mark per application from each marker. The average mark from the 5 markers together will result in a final mark. The marking process takes approximately two weeks to complete.

After processing the marking sheets, the final marks will be shared with the Portfolio Directors who will contact the applicants.

If the position you applied for requires an interview (Leadership positions) you will receive a meeting invitation from the Portfolio Director.

If no interview is required you will either receive an email that will request you to confirm your availability and acceptance of the position offered or you will receive an email with CFMS’s regrets. (In case of the latter we encourage you to apply again in the next recruitment cycle.) You will receive a separate email for each position you applied for.

Who To Contact

For questions about certain positions, please reach out to the PD(s) directly.

For questions about the recruitment process you can email

The Recruitment Coordinator during a recruitment cycle.

The Administrative Coordinator outside of recruitment cycles.