Written by In any kind of job interview, be it for medical school, a specialist training (ST) program or a consultant post, you need to be better prepared than your competition. It is likely, that if you are shortlisted for the position, that you have the necessary skills to perform well in the job. The purpose of the medical consultant interview is to try to ascertain who will do the job the best. The challenge is that the interview process isn’t robust and if you are better prepared then you can be better than your competitors, even if they were the better candidate.
Preparing for your interview is a thinking process. The person who outwits their competitors is likely to be the better performer at a consultant interview.
Being at your NHS consultant interview is, in some ways, the same as attending any other business meeting that you will need to go to. There are some simple formulas of communicating, that will always help you to get your points across more effectively and you should use those in your interview too.
Signpost your argument by introducing the concepts you want to talk about in your initial blurb. It is really helpful to have some sort of structure to your answer. Your answer should then take about 2 minutes to deliver and should be finished with a summary statement which just reminds your interview panel of the main points and helps to tell them that it is their turn to do some talking.
Your consultant interview should be just like a normal discussion with a consultant with a few, unspoken formulas. It should have the natural ebb and flow of a normal conversation, where the subject matter is something on which you are well versed.
