How To Prepare For A Medical Interview

Using medical interviews to select the best candidate for a post is a poor method of selection, but it is quick and relatively cheap to conduct and so it is likely to be the main tool used by medical selection panels.

Unfortunately, it is not the best candidate who will automatically get selected - it is the candidate who talks about their experience in the most convincing manner that will succeed at their medical interview.

If you have an upcoming medical interview, it may be worth learning how you can improve your level of skill in selling your candidacy. It will take some time and thought, but if done well, 5-10 hours of serious preparation time will definitely allow you to be competitive at a medical interview that you are shortlisted.

With medical interviews, a really strange situation has been set up, in which you will have to talk to total strangers about your background, experiences and personality in an extremely one sided way.

The thoroughness of your preparation will determine the quality of the conversation you will have with the interviewer.

The better your ability to impress and convince the medical interview panel that you are the best fit for the post, the greater your chances of securing the job.

Once you have created the content that you want the conversation (or medical interview) to focus on, you then have to learn how to guide the conversation onto the topics that YOU want them to focus on - and you CAN do this

Once you have driven the conversation to the areas in which you are strong - you need to be able to talk about them powerfully and persuasively

There are a range of ways in which you can do this, but remember to always personalise your answers and use clinical stories to demonstrate your skills.

The minds of human beings are hard wired to listen to stories, and you will find that by telling the interview panel a story about how you explained to a patient that their operation had been cancelled will sell your communication far better than the MAJORITY of your competitors whose "preparation plan" will leave them saying banal comments such as "I have good communication skills"

Remember a medical interview is really a sales arena in which, you are the sales person AS WELL as the PRODUCT. Sales research tells us that you only have 60 seconds to make your point before you lose your listener.

So in a medical interview, allow yourself about two minutes max for every answer. Any more and they will start to get bored, or worse irritated. Any less and you probably haven't sold yourself well enough.

A sound communication principle is the rule of three, which refers to the fact that people tend to remember best in groups of three. You will find that having three, well supported key ideas in your answer will be far more effective than briefly mentioning 10 skills