Tessa Davis explains why NHS consultant interviews include wildcard questions: abstract prompts designed to see how you handle the unexpected and what they reveal about who you are beyond your clinical skills. Have a plan ready.
Sometimes in your NHS consultant interview, you'll get a wildcard question. This is like a weird and wonderful abstract question that seems like it's got nothing to do with the job itself and can really throw you off your game if you're not ready for it. So although these wildcard questions don't come up very often in a substantive consultant interview, they do occasionally ask them, and it's really important that you're ready and you have a plan for what you're going to say. Most of the time when the panel asks you this, they want to see how you're going to react to the unpredictable. They want to see something about you and learn something about you personally and the kind of person that you are. You might get the opportunity to talk about something outside of medicine, to talk about an interest you have or something from your own personal life.
