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Interviews

Let's face it. Interviews are scary. Its daunting. But there is a good feeling and it can provide a sense of achievement if you do it well. Throughout our career, we will be faced with interviews after interviews, and ironically, there are not many formal sessions that you will get about how to ace an interview in medical school. Most of us learn through experience and feedback from others (competitors or seniors) which may or may not be helpful to you.

 

Interviews are really a formal procedure of getting a job in the institution that you want. In the medical field, it is usually structured in a multi-stations format. An interviewee will be tested on specific skills and assessed based on the answers provided that will hopefully make them stand out amongst the crowd. Each candidate are asked a set of questions, and are marked according to strict rules predetermined by the interviewers.

 

The nature of the interview and the time taken for each candidate differs widely according to the deanery and specialty that you are interviewing for. This page merely aims to provide a guide for junior doctors/ residents/ registrars to prepare for the interview. The resources and questions that I'll share are real questions used in real interviews that my colleagues and I have been through over the last few years. It provides a guide to preparing for the interviews, and as you will see, there is a pattern to these. 

 

 

 

 

Some advice that I have found helpful (Thank you Dr E. Horsley!!)

  • Have a good CV. It pays to have someone more experienced to criticize and provide feedback. 
  • Know what your referees are going to say about you.
  • Practice being professional. Record how you answer questions (or record the actual interview-it is easy to do with smartphones nowadays)
  • Dress professionally, appropriately. The interviewers already know if they want to hire you the moment you walk through the door.
  • Shake hands with each interviewer.
  • Sell yourself. This is one of the most difficult things for many people, but if you want the job you got to do it.
  • Speak at a good pace and a good volume.
  • Learn how to tackle distractions.
  • Listen carefully, 
  • Good eye contact.
  • Think. Its better to think before answering, rather than mumble at your answers and having derailed train of thoughts when answering.

  • Formulate your answers: 

    • Right length- Interviewers would have been interviewing for hours, and if you trying answering a question more than 2 minutes long, nobody is going to take note of what you are saying, unless you can grab their attention.
    • Be open and direct- Answer the questions, no beating around the bush
    • Structure is preferred: answer the question first, then expand and broadening the answers, and give a conclusion.
    • Be personal: Use "I" rather than "We". Provide real examples about your skills and abilities. Explained what happen, or why you really wanna do a paritcular specialty. What i believe is that if you can speak from your heart, people will be convinced. 
    • Do not bore interviewers with spurious detail. 

  • When asked to provide examples, I always use this mnemonic: STAR

    • Situation: What was the situation/ problem? In what context?
    • Task: As a result of the situation, what did you seek out to do/ achieve?
    • Action: How did you do it? Why did you do it? What exactly did you do?
    • Result: What was the outcome? What did you learn?
  • Know who the panel members are and find out about the institution. Can't stress more the importance of these.

 

Here are some of the questions that I had in the past (mainly paediatrics/ general medicine). Feel free to write to me if you have any questions. Please do not distribute this. Only for your personal use.

In New South Wales (maybe Australia wide), the interviews are divided into 4-5 questions, lasting about 10-15 mins in total. The different topics covered can be broadly categorised into:

  1. Ice- Breaking questions

    • This is the time to sell yourself. 
  2. Clinical scenarios
  3. Conflict/ risk management/ difficult work situations
  4. Quality/ motivation
  5. Research/ teachings/ Audits
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