A senior colleague comes in to work smelling of alcohol for the second occasion, what do you do?
(and subsets of this i.e.regulatory body/fitness to practice)
What is the most difficult operation you have done unsupervised?
Is there a role for unsupervised operating?
Are simulators of any benefit to surgical training?
What qualities make a good surgeon?
How do you get the most out of your training ?(or something with that general impression- I forget the exact wording)
What do you know about non technical skills in surgery?
How do current changes to junior doctors affect training?
Without opening your portfolio, what part of it are you most proud of ?
was that the assessment of one person?
What aspects of your practice would you like to improve upon?
What are your future plans and where do you see yourself in 5-10 Years?
Do you know of any national audits?
Tell us about any audits you have been involved in?
Can you describe the hierarchy of research?
What experience do you have of research?
When do you plan to finish the project and submit your thesis?
What benefits have you gained from your research projects?
How many publications do you have and did they come from the research project?
People to speak to:
Chief Executive
Medical Director
Clinical Director for Geriatric Medicine (and maybe Acute Medicine)
Consultants in your department
Consultants in closely related departments
Personnel department
Junior Doctors
Ward Staff
Secretaries
Others on the interview panel
Interview panel is also likely to include:
Chairperson (often a lay person or non-executive officer)
University representative (in teaching hospitals)
College representative ( to confirm your training is complete)
Reading list (most of this is online these days)
NHS white papers and recent reforms (NHS website)
Good Medical Practice (GMC)
Royal College guidelines / SIGN for your area of interest
National Service Framework for Older People
NICE guidance in chosen area of practice
Health Care Commission yearly report on your trust
The website of the hospital to which you are applying
MMC website
British Geriatric Society recent publications
Major medical journals for the last month or two (Lancet, NEJM, Age and Aging, JAMA, BMJ)
Newspapers, BBC website and radio for topical stories and controversies
Doctors.net.uk forums
Advice on your presentation
Frequently prospective candidates are asked to do a short presentation. Keep it to time and emphasise a few essential points. It is my personal preference not to have a talk written out word for word. That way lies losing your place and grinding to a halt. Keep it natural, use your AV material as a prompt (not as your whole talk) and you should be fine.
Some interview questions follow, again do not have rehearsed answers for each one but be able to talk sensibly about each one for up to a minute.
Consultant Interview Questions
Administrative
Do you have any changes to make to your CV?
When are you available from?
Do you have any courses booked?
How many jobs have you previously applied for?
Do you have any other job applications in at present?
Why didn’t you apply for our previous post?
Do you have a driving license?
Have you looked around?
Have you met any of the panel members?
Do you have any questions?
Personal
Why should we give you this job?
Why do you want this job?
What makes you good for this job?
Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
Why did you become a doctor?
When did you decide to become a geriatrician?
Why did you want to concentrate on stroke medicine?
Do you want mainly to be a geriatrician?
What qualities make a good consultant geriatrician?
What would you see as your role in this department?
What is your special interest in this department?
What can you offer this Trust?
How would you develop the stroke service?
What would you bring to this unit?
How would your appointment raise the profile of this Trust?
What are your strengths/weaknesses?
What is your biggest fault?
What makes you angry?
What do you think of moving area?
How do you feel about living in ……………?
What do you do in your free time?
Tell us of a recent triumph/disappointment?
Training
How does your previous training fit you for this job?
What training do you think you should have to become a consultant geriatrician?
Take me through your training so far?
Why did you do a BSc, MSc?
How has it helped you in your working life?
Do you see any deficiencies in your training?
Is there any post you regret not doing as an SHO?
What courses have you attended recently?
Was it useful?
What courses would you like to attend?
Should hospital consultants have spent some time as GPs?
Who should provide management training?
In what way was the management course that you attended useful?
What do you think of SpR training with respect to general medicine/geriatric medicine?
How would you improve the training of SpRs?
How do we attract the best junior doctors to this trust given the advent of MMC?
Politics
What is clinical governance?
What is NICE?
Was the NSF for Older People a helpful document? How?
What is your opinion of our last Health Care Commission report?
What do you know about the recent NHS White Paper?
What do you think of payment by results in geriatric medicine?
What is your opinion of the recent GMC publication?
What have we learnt from the Bristol heart cases?
How has the Alder Hey scandal changed practice?
Do you think the increased spending on the NHS has been put to good use?
How does foundation status help patients?
Why is acute medicine busier these days?
How should we measure consultant productivity?
What do you feel about the burden of proof shifting to that of civil courts for doctors?
What do you think of the mission statement of our trust?
How will the NHS reforms affect you in your daily practice?
How would you ration healthcare?
Is there any limit to the demand for health care?
What is the future for geriatric medicine?
How can we ensure patients from ethnic minorities receive proper access to health care?
Are junior doctors’ hours now too short?
How will MMC impact upon geriatric medicine?
What do you think of the new consultant contract?
What is your opinion of the GMS contract for GPs?
What do you think about the super-specialisation of geriatrics?
What is the role of NHS consultants in teaching hospitals?
Does general medicine exist anymore?
What do you think about private practice?
How involved should doctors be in management?
What do you think about the CEA awards system?
Management
What are the main roles of a multidisciplinary team leader?
What is the role of a consultant geriatrician as a manager?
What do you know about resource management?
How should intermediate care services be organised?
Are Day Hospitals an expensive luxury?
What are the advantages of Day Hospitals?
What is the biggest area of waste in the NHS?
How would you deal with a 10% cut in your budget?
How would you pay for a new piece of equipment if no new money was obviously available?
How would you spend a £20000 one off grant?
What are the components of a complaints procedure?
How would you assess user satisfaction with your service?
How would you define quality in geriatrics?
What do you know of clinical governance?
What is the difference between audit and governance?
What clinical audits have you done?
Who should appraise you?
How should revalidation be undertaken?
How would you reduce the number of acute admissions?
How might you cut waiting times in your clinic?
If you could change one thing in the NHS what would it be?
What is your management style?
How would you persuade the PCT to continue to purchase your service?
How would you deal with an underperforming colleague?
How would you deal with a colleague who turned up for work drunk?
What would you do if you strongly disagreed with a colleague’s decision?
Teaching
What did you last teach to nurses?
What’s wrong with undergraduate education?
What in geriatrics are the three main take home messages you would want to pass onto undergraduates?
How would you make clinical meetings more appealing?
What will you present on your first grand round?
What is the purpose of a College Tutor?
What makes a good educational supervisor?
How should continuing education for consultants be arranged?
What is the role of a supervisor for an MD/PhD?
How do you see your teaching role with respect to SHOs and SpRs?
Do you find the presence of undergraduates in your clinic a hindrance?
Research
Do you have any current research interests?
How is research relevant to clinical medicine?
Why did you do an MSc?
Explain your MSc in a few short sentences for the interview panel.
What have you presented at an external meeting recently?
What journals do you read?
Tell us about a recent article that caught your eye?
What is the most important advance in geriatric medicine in the last 10 years?
How would you pursue your research interests in this job?
Have you been allocated enough sessions for research in your job plan?
If you haven’t got any research to show after a year should we reduce your salary by 2.5 SPAs?
Do you feel it is important to have published research as a clinician?
Why are you not the 1st author on more research?
Explain how research differs from audit?
Clinical Topics
Can you give an example of where you have encouraged good team working?
What are the current controversies in your field?
What are the main recent developments?
What constitutes an acceptable delay in diagnosis?
Should ‘geriatric’ patients be for resuscitation?
What is the place of palliative care in geriatric medicine?
In which areas do you need more experience?
Who should manage a patient with a stroke?
Closing Questions
Do you have any questions for us?
Would you accept this job if it was offered to you?
We've all been interviewed for jobs. And, we've all spent most of those interviews thinking about what not to do. Don't bite your nails. Don't fidget. Don't interrupt. Don't belch. If we did any of the don'ts, we knew we'd disqualify ourselves instantly. But some candidates go far beyond this. These are actual occurences from a survey of American HR departments:
Said he was so well qualified if he didn't get the job, it would prove that the company's management was incompetent.
Stretched out on the floor to fill out the job application.
Brought her large dog to the interview.
Chewed bubble gum and constantly blew bubbles.
Candidate kept giggling through serious interview.
She wore a Walkman and said she could listen to the music and me at the same time.
Balding candidate abruptly excused himself. Returned to office a few minutes later wearing a hairpiece.
Applicant challenged interviewer to arm wrestle.
Asked to see interviewer's resume to see if the personnel executive was qualified to judge the candidate.
Announced she hadn't had lunch and proceeded to eat a hamburger and French fries in the interviewer's office.
Without saying a word, candidate stood up and walked out during the middle of the interview.
Man wore jogging suit to interview for position as financial vice president.
Said if he were hired, he would demonstrate his loyalty by having the corporate logo tattooed on his forearm.
Interrupted to phone his therapist for advice on answering specific interview questions.
Wouldn't get out of the chair until I would hire him. I had to call the police.
When I asked him about his hobbies, he stood up and started tap dancing around my office.
Had a little pinball game and challenged me to play with him.
Bounced up and down on my carpet and told me I must be highly thought of by the company because I was given such a thick carpet.
Took a brush out of my purse, brushed his hair and left.
Pulled out a Polaroid camera and snapped a flash picture of me. Said he collected photos of everyone who interviewed him.
Candidate asked me if I would put on a suit jacket to insure that the offer was formal.
Said he wasn't interested because the position paid too much.
While I was on a long-distance phone call, the applicant took out a copy of Penthouse, and looked through the photos only, stopping longest at the centerfold.
During the interview, an alarm clock went off from the candidate's briefcase. He took it out, shut it off, apologized and said he had to leave for another interview.
A telephone call came in for the job applicant. It was from his wife. His side of the conversation went like this: "Which company? When do I start? What's the salary?" I said, "I assume you're not interested in conducting the interview any further." He promptly responded, "I am as long as you'll pay me more." I didn't hire him, but later found out there was no other job offer. It was a scam to get a higher offer.
An applicant came in wearing only one shoe. She explained that the other shoe was stolen off her foot in the bus.
His attache [case] opened when he picked it up and the contents spilled, revealing ladies' undergarments and assorted makeup and perfume.
He came to the interview with a moped and left it in the reception area. He didn't want it to get stolen, and stated that he would require indoor parking for the moped.
He took off his right shoe and sock, opened a medicated foot powder and dusted it on the foot and in the shoe. While he was putting back the shoe and sock, he mentioned that he had to use the powder four times a day, and this was the time.
Candidate said he really didn't want to get a job, but the unemployment office needed proof that he was looking for one.
He whistled when the interviewer was talking.
Asked who the lovely babe was, pointing to the picture on my desk. When I said it was my wife, he asked if she was home now and wanted my phone number. I called security.
She threw up on my desk, and immediately started asking questions about the job, like nothing had happened.
Pointing to a black case he carried into my office, he said that if he was not hired, the bomb would go off. Disbelieving, I began to state why he would never be hired and that I was going to call the police. He then reached down to the case, flipped a switch and ran. No one was injured, but I did need to get a new desk.
Asked if I wanted some cocaine before starting the interview.
Just use your common sense.... Interview questions are not designed to test whether you know the ways to manage a type IV ACJ disruption or a complex acetabular #, all they want to know is that you have the common sense NOT to be dangerous.
Therefore if faced with 'What would you do with a young patient with a midshaft transverse high energy tibial #', the answer is NOT about the pro's and con's of nail vs. plate etc... but that you would manage a pending compartment syndrome, talk to the boss early etc....
Think about the question they have asked and then ask yourself again why have they asked it.
I got asked about a Gartland 3 supracondylar fracture. The biggest smile and look over at the other interviewer was when I mentioned that I would show the x-rays and explain the operation to the child (aged 7 in this scenario) as well as the patient as some children can unserstand more than you think. i.e not groundbreaking knowledge of orthopaedics but that consultant would be happy to let me be his registrar on call - that's the question they are asking themselves