Ep 19: Why Waiting for an Interview Date Is the Worst Way to Prepare for Your Consultant Job

Welcome back to our Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast. I am here with Becky as usual. Hi Becky, how are you?

I'm great, thank you. Great to be here.

It is indeed. Let's get stuck in. First off, we're going to look at a question of the week, which is a question from one of our Academy students. What question have we got from them this week, Becky?

So the question is, I'm coming to the end of my training. When is the right time to start preparing for my interview?

This is the big question, hey?

Yeah. I feel like we've got some strong thoughts on this.

Well, I think the main thought is, if you're asking the question, it's probably a good time to start, is the first thing. And everyone preps in different ways, don't they? And people know themselves. I think we can say the least good way to prep is to wait until you get an interview date and then start prepping. That is only going to cause panic. You may get 1 week's notice, maybe 2 weeks' notice, and that is not enough time to prep for the job of your dreams, really, in an ideal world.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think a lot of people want the certainty that they've got an interview date coming up, and then that date is going to be the impetus for the preparation to start. But actually, we're finding more and more that sometimes these things are coming up in a bit of a rush, and therefore, you You don't want to find that, you know, the, the job that you really want, that you've been hoping for for the last however many years, is suddenly advertised. The closing date is, you know, in a week's time. The interview date is a week after that. You're, you're on call. You've got a weekend away, and you've got nobody to look after your kids in the forthcoming period.

Yeah.

Um, it's not ideal. So, I think if you know that you're coming to the end of your training, Just start prepping. You can do that fairly gently at first, but do something.

Yeah, I mean, we have people starting to prep in the Academy when they're in their final year of training, really. So, you know, coming into the last year, and really it's as soon as you start thinking like, oh, should I be thinking about jobs? Or someone says, have you thought about what you're gonna do next year? That's a better time to do it. And it takes the pressure off. And yet, of course, you're gonna have that momentum when you have a deadline and you have an actual job that you're applying for. But the stress and the panic is gonna feel a lot easier if you're already prepped, you know what you need to do. And I think it can also help you with doing some of that initial outreach, some of the scoping that people do before their jobs. If you've started to think about it and you're in the zone, you're gonna start to make these connections as well. It's just gonna be a lot better for you.

Yeah.

And, you know, like you were saying, Becky, about, you've got 2 weeks and you've got stuff to do with your kids and you've got on-calls and all of this. Also during that time, you really want to be able to focus on pre-interview meetings, on preparing your presentation, for example, if you get one, and not on starting from scratch with your interview prep. So, I would say the earlier the better, and ideally in that last year of your training, because you know You're eligible up when you've got 6 months to CCT. So actually, um, you could— a job could come up even when you're not expecting it, and it could be a surprise. So yeah, I'd get going.

Yeah, I mean, look, we— people do do it in a week.

They do.

But yeah, so it's really not— it's not a pleasant week for anyone.

No, that's the thing. It could work out if you wait until 2 weeks. It's possible you can still get the job. You can, you know, streamline your prep, you can cram, you can practice all the time, and you can definitely do it. But if you don't, you're going to have deep regret that you didn't start prepping earlier.

Yeah.

So next up we've got our golden example of the week. So this is a mistake, and the mistake is that it's a malpositioned syndesmosis fixation with a special tightrope device. I don't think we'll pretend we know the ins and outs of that. I think it's something ankle-related. And they needed a revision operation to correct it, and the patient had a good outcome. So I think the mistake here is that they did an operation that needed a revision.

Yeah.

Okay, what do we think about this example?

I've kind of got a number of thoughts about this example. The first thing is I don't actually understand what was going on here.

And I had to Google.

I think you can tell that neither of us are orthopaedic surgeons, and that, that's okay. Now, it may be the case that if you're in a room— I'm assuming this is an orthopaedic operation, let's hope we're really not showing our lack of knowledge here— but let's— maybe if you were in an interview room with a load of people from your specialty, they would completely understand what this meant. But I do think that There are going to be people in, in that panel, particularly on a substantive interview, who number one are not clinical, and number two, maybe not from your specialty. And there may be a lay member on the panel as well. So there's a, there's a few reasons for me why this doesn't work because of that. So the first thing is, if people can't understand it, they may be sitting there going, God, that, that sounds bad. I, I don't even understand what that means, so it must be quite big.

Um.

And then there's another part that's, you know, God, this patient had to go back to theatre. That sounds like quite a big mistake. And, you know, if you're not somebody who, you know, understands what that operation is, I mean, maybe half of the patients who have this operation go back to theatre, I don't know. But if you don't understand that, all of a sudden you're sitting there thinking, God, that sounds terrible. Somebody had to go back to, you know, theatre, that poor patient. And all of a sudden, as a panel member, you're worrying about that rather than the bit that the candidate wants you to think about, which is how they handle mistakes and how they learn from that as a result.

Also, it's not clear what the mistake was. Is it just a thing that happens, or did they actually do something to make that happen? I don't think, from the information we've got, that's not clear. And so, It's a bad outcome, not sure if it's someone's fault or not, and not sure if it's a mistake. And that's why at the beginning, when I was looking at it and thinking, is it duty of candor or mistake? It could potentially be good for duty of candor if a patient had a bad outcome. Let's assume we know the ins and outs, or it's explained in a way that's easy.

Mm-hmm.

They had a bad outcome from a surgery, and your job was to do duty of candor. Might actually be a good example, but for a mistake, you need to be able to say, I made a mistake. It's not clear from this if that was the case, or is it just a noted complication?

Yeah, I think for these mistake examples, the key ingredients are it's a mistake that is relatable. We want people who are sitting in the panel to go, yeah, that's happened to me, or, oh, I can totally see how that would have happened. We don't want it to be something absolutely mega. We need it to be your mistake so that you can take ownership of it. There needs to be some kind of consequence for the patient, but not big harm. And you need to be able to demonstrate at least some individual learning from that, and maybe some wider learning for the team or the department. Yeah, so I think, I think we're saying don't use this one.

Not in its current form. But there could, I think there could be something there, but the way it's currently being presented is, I don't think, the best way to do it. Let's move on to the interview question. So, this is looking at breaking down an interview question that gets asked commonly. This week, we've got the question of, how would you create a culture where people can speak up? So, I would say this is coming up, or a version of this is coming up pretty commonly these days. Yeah, sometimes I think it gets mandated if there's been an issue in the trust or in the service with bullying or whistleblowing or something like that, so they have to ask a question like this. But even so, I think it's quite a sort of current issue across the board, um, so it's not— I wouldn't say it's an out-there question. It's a good one to prep for. How do you feel about it?

I think it's a really good question for this reason. It's gonna stretch people, and it often, you know, allows people to, you know, demonstrate that they are gonna be able to meet the needs of a department that, you know, that's got some challenges around it. And I think often departments that have, you know, undergoing a period of cultural challenge and change and all of this kind of stuff are happy to reference that. But they do want you to demonstrate how you're going to respond to that as a consultant. So yeah, it's a good question, even though it feels quite difficult to answer. So I suppose it's about, you know, how do you do that? So how do we encourage openness, honesty? How do you invite people to raise concerns? So I suppose for me, there would be something in there about how can I demonstrate that I'm somebody who makes it easy for my team to speak up, um, and also then demonstrating that I understand the process of escalation around that speaking up procedure, and that I, you know, if necessary, I can take the whole process as far as whistleblowing, Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, um, and, and the whole process.

Yeah, so it's knowing the processes, creating the culture, and embodying it yourself is probably part of it. And I think some context, like if you know that the department's had an issue, it's some, you know, it's, I think it's reasonable to say, I know this has been an issue in the trust. Only if it's like an open thing, not some inside political hot potato, but just to say, I'm aware that there have been issues with this in whatever team. And it's a broader issue that affects lots of teams across the NHS, unfortunately. So, it's really important to have a culture of speaking up. This is what I do, this is what the team does, this is what the trust can do. So, you could break it up into these ways: yourself, the team, the trust. But yeah, I think it's definitely worth thinking about this before you go into your interview, because it's quite hard to come up with a good answer to this on the spot.

I think I'm just thinking about ways that you could demonstrate that you could do this. So, I suppose, A simple way that you can do that is, you know, if you're, if you're in a surgical specialty, maybe you can say, you know, actually, you know, I do this in theatre. I actively say to people on all of my theatre lists, if you've got any concerns, I'd like to, you know, I'd like you to raise that with me. You can ask me to stop, and I will, you know, and I'll listen to you. And then you might say an example of a time when that happened was, you know, a medical student noticed that Whatever, they raised it, we addressed it, and the patient was safer as a result. Or you may talk about, you know, somebody had raised a concern about some particular behaviour in the department, or maybe a colleague that they were worried about, and they, you know, brought that concern to you and you addressed it appropriately, both, you know, In the moment with, you know, with that colleague, you know, whoever, you know, whoever it was being described, or the person who brought it to you, and then you recognise the steps of escalation around it. Um, but I think wherever possible with these kind of things, try to put an example around it so that it shows that you are actually somebody who not only can talk about it, but somebody who can actually do it.

Yeah, I think choosing the example is really important though, because it's such an easy thing to dig yourself a giant hole of in your interview. This is why you need to think of it before so that you're ready with the example, because otherwise you're going to think of something and then be like, oh, should I have shared that? I don't know if it was too much. So yeah, just be really mindful about prepping a suitable example in advance of this.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. And then we're going to talk about our tip and trick for the week. What tip and trick are we going to look at this week?

So we're going to talk about the timing of your presentation. So, what are your thoughts about this?

Well, presentations, they will give you the length of time, and so you will know how long it's supposed to be. We have— usually it's 5 minutes or 10 minutes. I think we've had a few people that have had 8 minutes, which is a bit weird, but there you go. I don't think— do you think we've had— I don't think we've had anyone longer than 10 minutes. I don't recall anyone who's had longer. So, they'll give you a topic, they'll give you the timing. Some people have been told they don't— they shouldn't have any visual aids, it would just be talking. And particularly if it's a short 5-minute thing, I think that's, that's reasonable. So just make sure you know what's expected. I think it's really hard to prep a presentation in 5 minutes because if you think like your actual interview answers are 3 to 4 minutes, it's not that much longer than it. And they've given you a whole topic and you've got time to think about it. So I think 5 minutes is a challenge. Um, even 10 minutes is not very long.

Yeah.

So what you don't want to happen is that you run over on the day. Because if you've spent time prepping all this content, you're really happy with it, you've worked it all out, and then you run over and they cut you off before you get to the end, it's really going to throw you for your whole interview. And also, there's not— I don't think there's really an excuse for running over when you knew the time frame before and you've had a chance to prep it. So I think getting the timing right is really important. And one of the things that, that we know is that when people practice the presentation, They can rattle through it and get it in 9 minutes 58 seconds, but it's just them and their computer recording, or it's just them and their phone. Whereas in the interview, you're looking at other people, there's just more dynamic stuff that affects the flow of your presentation, and so it's likely to take longer and feel longer.

Mm-hmm.

So usually we would advise people that it should be shorter than the timeframe in practice. So if you've got a 10-minute presentation, should be 9 minutes in practice. If you've got a 5-minute presentation, it should be 4 and a half minutes or less in practice, and it just gives you that leeway. What do you think, Becky?

I completely agree. I think with the— for me, the 5-minute presentation is basically, it can be treated as a standard interview question that you already knew beforehand. Yeah. Um, so you're just gonna— you could use the same structure that you might use for an interview question, an interview answer. Say maybe you'd use a kind of 3 structure to answer the question. But you should be able to smash it, right? Because you know what the question is. So really prepare it and think about how you can bring in your examples of your unique selling points to really demonstrate that, you know, if they've asked you, describe your vision for, you know, the endoscopic service for the next 5 years. So not only have you got to describe your vision, it's got to chime with their vision, and it's got to demonstrate why you are the person to deliver that vision. Um, and that's all in 5 minutes.

That's a lot. That is a lot to do in 5 minutes.

No pressure, but they've given you the question. You can prepare it. But, uh, yeah, I agree, there's no excuse for running over on that. Personally, when I'm interviewing people, I say to them, we've asked you for a 10-minute presentation. I'm going to stop you at 10 minutes. Oh, it's so stressful.

The thought of being stopped in the middle is horrible because this is the first thing in your interview, probably. I mean, occasionally people do the presentation separately to a separate panel or a separate time, but usually it's just what you do before you run into your interview. That's bad. That'll start you off on— you'll be flustered, you won't have said what you want to say. It's not a great start.

Yeah, yeah. Don't, don't risk getting yourself in a pickle. Just plan it within the time that it runs a bit shorter. No one's going to argue if you're running a bit shorter because you don't want to get— you don't want to get cut off on the day. It's just not worth it.

Agreed. Great. Okay, we'll wrap up this episode there. Thank you, Becky, it's been a pleasure. Um, next episode we have lots more great stuff including looking at the challenges where you've been unsuccessful many times in previous interviews, how you can kind of get back into it and build your confidence again. So we'll talk about that next time. Thanks, Becky.

See you soon.