Ep 27: Struggling With Rambling Answers? Use the 3‑Point Structure In Your Consultant Interview
In this episode of the ACE Your Consultant Interview podcast, hosts Tessa Davis and Becky discuss practical strategies for answering common consultant interview questions. They begin by examining whether a "mistake" example should be clinical or non‑clinical, concluding that either works as long as the story is relatable, shows ownership, vulnerability, and learning, and recommending a clinical backup in case interviewers demand it. They stress the importance of pre‑planning mistake examples to avoid catastrophic or overly dramatic stories. Next, they evaluate a sample MDT (multidisciplinary team) example – a pre‑term optimisation meeting – and advise candidates to frame such examples to demonstrate consultant‑level, system‑wide thinking (processes, capacity, governance) rather than merely describing case management. They then move to the classic "project you’re most proud of" question, urging interviewees to pick a project with clear, measurable impact, embed change, and discuss resistance, sustainability, and quantitative outcomes. Throughout, they emphasize the need to zoom out from individual patient or registrar actions to service‑level impact, using numbers and system‑wide benefits to showcase senior‑level thinking. The episode closes with a tip: consistently adopt a "zoom‑out" mindset in all answers, highlighting how this shift distinguishes consultant‑level responses from registrar‑level ones.
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Okay, welcome back to our ACE Your Consultant Interview podcast. Very happy to be here once again with Becky. Nice to see you, Becky. How are you?
I'm very good, thank you. It's great to be here.
So first off, we're going to look at a question of the week that one of our students have given us about their interview prep. And this week we've got a question that I think we get asked fairly commonly, which is about when you choose an example of a time you made a mistake, the question is, does my example need to be clinical? clinical, or will a non-clinical example do? So, what do you think about this?
I think it doesn't really matter whether you choose a clinical or a non-clinical example. I do think there are some key ingredients for this mistake example though, and I think that a few key points are: number one, it has to be relatable. It's got to be something that any of us could have done. You have to be able to own the mistake and show some vulnerability around that, and then ideally there should be some learning from it. And, you know, you don't want to accidentally tell them a big mistake that you've made and throw yourself under the bus, but it does need to be an error with some consequence, albeit small. So I think it could be clinical or non-clinical as long as it ticks those boxes. What do you think?
Yeah, I think it's much, often much safer, feels safer to pick a non-clinical mistake because you can do all these things. You can own it, you can have some reflection, it can be a real mistake, but the consequences are obviously less significant. I do wonder, it depends how they word the question because sometimes they might, I guess they could ask you for a clinical mistake. I do feel like sometimes there have been occasions where someone's started to say a non-clinical one and they've been told, no, no, we want a clinical one. And so I do think it's better to have a clinical one as a backup, even if your preference is to use a non-clinical one. And that way, if they did say, no, no, we don't want a non-clinical one, you're not going to freak out in the moment because you will actually have a backup. But you could use your non-clinical one as a—
Backup.
As a preference.
Yeah, exactly. I think what you don't want though is to have not planned a clinical one and then all of a sudden you find yourself telling the panel about a time you sent somebody home and they died.
Yes, because that's not good.
That is not the look we're going for in an interview.
So this is why it's much better to prepare these, and for all of the examples, but I think specifically for the mistake one more than others, because The risk of oversharing or picking an example that's just the first thing that comes to your mind, which is probably something catastrophic, is quite a high risk in this mistake example. So, you should definitely think about it beforehand.
Yeah. Is it worth thinking about a couple of good ones? I'm just trying to think.
As in what might be a good mistake?
Yeah.
Well, the non-clinical ones are things like, I think, you know, a teaching session that didn't go well, or you were trying to organise teaching and you hadn't booked anyone in for the day, or you booked 2 people in at once and they both turned up, or you went to the wrong room and realised you were in the wrong place, or you'd prepped the wrong topic. So, some— I think teaching lends itself to an easy way to think of mistakes that are— you can own, but you can— yeah, it's not going to be a disaster.
Yeah, agreed. I like those kind of examples. They feel quite safe. I suppose also just kind of thinking about Clinical examples that might work. I think, you know, it's smallish things like, I forgot to label a blood bottle, or I should have added one extra investigation, and it resulted in somebody needing to have additional blood tests, and that caused them some inconvenience. But it's not something that resulted in a life-threatening or treatment-requiring problem.
So, what do you think? Because I know some people have sort of challenged this before, saying like, oh, it's really mislabelling a blood bottle, is that really a big enough deal? And in a consultant interview, you know, is that example good enough? What do you think about that?
Well, I suppose in our world, you know, not labelling a blood bottle for a 3-day-old baby and then having to bleed that tiny human again, and while their parents are both crying, that does feel like quite a big deal to me.
Yeah.
So I think it is about how you How you frame it, um, and around the inconvenience caused. And I, I also think that the point of this mistake example is to show that you've owned it, um, that you've— that you can demonstrate some regret and some vulnerability around it, and that you can show that you've learned from it. And I think that a small mistake allows you to do that.
Yeah, I think so too. That is, it's usually not the mistake is good or bad, unless it's like an absolute clanger, in which case it's bad. But usually it's It's not a mistake, this mistake isn't big enough. It's actually how you're demonstrating that in the interview, because you can demonstrate it in lots of ways. Like you say, if you mislabeled bloods from me, and I'm like, don't worry, it's fine, I know you, we can do it again, kind of thing, it's not a big deal. But if you mislabeled bloods on my 4-year-old who was needle-phobic, and we'd gone home already, and we live 3 hours away, and so on, then it's a bigger thing. So it's usually not the example in itself is good bad, it's how you present it. And then exactly like you say, it's how you own it. So the senior-level thinking comes not in the example, but it comes in how you handle it. So the example itself, it doesn't need to be a consultant mistake versus a reg mistake, but how you deal with it and how you reflect is where you're showing the senior-level thinking.
Yeah, I think those are the key characteristics of a good answer around that mistake.
Yep. Okay, and then we're going to go on to our golden example of the week. So we've been given an example of for the question like, tell me about a time you worked well in an MDT. So this example that we've got is where someone ran a preterm optimization MDT. So assume this was in neonates, someone who's applying for neonates. So they've run an MDT where they discuss all preterm babies, they get all the different teams together and discuss how to optimize their care. And they discuss a number of cases each week, and the person is the person chairing the meeting. What do you think about this for an example of a time you worked well in an MDT?
I think it potentially works well. As we've just said with the mistake example, it is going to be a bit about how they frame it and how they actually demonstrate consultant-level thinking within that example. Because actually, if you think about it, presumably, you know, a good registrar could be running a multidisciplinary team meeting. and it could be purely about, you know, these patients that we've got on the unit, or, you know, a number of specific patients and how we manage them. That's registrar-level clinical thinking. But what we want you to be able to demonstrate in your consultant interview is that you can think as a consultant. So I think as long as you can demonstrate things like system-level thinking, thinking about processes around you know, the MDT. So not only focusing on the specific clinical management related to all of the team members in that meeting, but also, you know, what does this mean for the system? Or do we need to think about capacity here? Are there flow issues? Are we working across different units? Are we working across different organisations in terms of transfers in or out? Have we got a governance process around this? Or, you know, whatever it might be. But just Elevate it so that it's more than these patients in front of us right now.
Yeah. And also kind of leading on from that is your focus, although you're describing the project, the question's about a time you worked well within an MDT. So your best bet is these themes, these things that you mentioned, is drawing them out and saying, this is why the MDT worked well. It's not just you're saying this was a great project and we it's a fact that it was an MDT meeting. You're actually saying, well, thinking about this project, why did we work well as an MDT? Well, we worked well because we made sure everyone had their voices heard, or we made sure we had clear goals, or we had regular dates, or whatever it is. But if you can draw these themes out, then it shows that you're going beyond saying, I was in an MDT and it was great, to actually saying, this is why the MDT works well, because that's the things that you can take on to other multidisciplinary teams that you're in as well. But I think generally it's a good example.
Yeah, exactly. Show the skill set that you've got that enabled you to run this MDT. Yeah. Um, or that you learn as a result of it, and therefore this, you know, fully formed skill set that you are bringing to this post now.
Yeah. And I think we've talked about this in a previous episode, but we're big fans of using something like this for a time you worked well in an MDT versus the alternative option, which this any NATO person could have taken, which is a time a baby was born and they were really sick and they managed them really well and they used the midwife and they used the anesthetist or whatever and everyone helped. Because the easiest thing is to pick a time where you were working in a team to treat a sick patient and you did a great job. But actually, the difference between that example and the example of running a preterm optimization MDT, there's a massive difference because you're able to take a step back to do more senior-level thinking. To show how you can work well in an MDT to deliver quality care to all your patients versus just working well in an MDT to be a great clinician in that moment. And so, it's much better to use a project than use a case that you managed well. Okay, let's go on to our interview question. So, this is where we look at an actual interview question that someone has been asked and think about how we might answer it. So, this week we've got, Tell me about a project you're most proud of and how it has changed your department. What do you think about this? Do you like this question, or how do you feel?
I actually really like this question, and I think it's a gift to anyone who's properly prepared for their interview as well, because you should have a project at your fingertips, at least one, that you can describe in detail around You know, what you actually did and what a difference it made. So, I think this is a great question. You should be really pleased if you got it. What do you think?
Yeah, well, and also, you can control which you talk about. So, depending on how the other questions have gone so far, obviously you don't know what questions are still to be asked, but based on what you've been asked until this point, you might have had a chance to talk about some of your USPs. Others you might not have. So this is an absolute gift, like you say, because you can pick whatever you haven't had the chance to talk about that you really want to talk about, and that's how you're going to answer the question. And you would be pulling out specific things in the project about— to demonstrate why it's good. Because you're not just going to say, this was great, I really enjoyed it, but you're actually going to say, well, why are you most proud of it, and how did you implement that change? And it's important to remember the second part of the question. So you have to have understand how to demonstrate the impact, the outcomes and the impact, and then think about that process of change, which we know can be very difficult in the NHS. It takes time to persuade people of things and to implement changes. So themes around embedding change, sustaining change, resistance to change, I think would be good to bring in this answer as well. And some of these things again are what takes it from being like an average answer where you're just talking about a project that's great to being able to show a greater understanding of how to make change within a service.
Yeah, I, I also think with, with regard to the question, the part about how it changed your department, if you can get some numbers in there, some actual data, um, then it's even stronger, you know, as a result of the new triage process that I implemented, you know, when outpatient referrals come in from GPs, I've now reduced our waiting list from 9 months to 3 months, or, you know, whatever it is. Or we've vetted, you know, 1,500 referrals, or, you know, whatever it is. Put some numbers around it because it just sounds so much stronger if you can give Data.
Totally agree. And sometimes when we hear our students and they don't share the numbers first, and then we ask them the numbers, you're blown away when you hear the numbers because you had no idea. Like, that's amazing. So, it's the difference between saying, we vetted referrals and we reduced the wait time in this project. And you'll be thinking whatever that means to you. But if you say, well, actually, we vetted 1,500 referrals— obviously, none of this makes exact sense, but we vetted 1,500 referrals, we reduced the wait time from a 9-month wait to a 3-month wait. in a 6-month period, then you're like, wow, this is an amazing project. And so yeah, I think it's really important not to undervalue how helpful it is to include numbers because people don't know what you know in your head about your project. They're just imagining their own thing. And so it makes a massive difference to include them where you can.
You just reminded me, on one of our coaching calls earlier this week, one of our students was telling us about a project that she'd implemented around getting a particular investigation done. And she said, when I started, I audited this process, and I realized that for one of our patients, in order to get this investigation done, there'd been an email trail of 27 emails to get this thing done. And now I've got it down to a one-step process.
Yeah, I mean, that's very impressive. I was like, oh my God. Yeah, that's really cool. And often it happens where someone says, you know, I did a literature review, and then you go, well, how many papers did you review? And And they're like, 720? And you're like, wow, that is a lot of experience. So yeah, I think it doesn't do justice to the projects that you do if you don't really use numbers in an effective way.
Yeah.
And then we're going to go on to our tip and trick of the week. So what are we looking at for this week's tip and trick?
I think it's useful to look at how we kind of level up those registrar examples and think about what the panel need to hear from you as a consultant. So I think one of the things you can really do is to think not only about the specific impact on, you know, one patient or a group of patients, but whenever you're describing something, think about What's the impact on the systems involved? What about the processes? What are the wider implications? So, just kind of expand it a bit and sort of zoom out a bit and take a view of what it means for the wider system.
Yeah, so it's thinking about all the patients that your team serves, which is not just the patients that are on your shift in that moment or on your ward rounds or your clinic list, but actually the whole service. And you're thinking about how we can deliver good care to all of them. And when you move from that, what can I personally do, to what I can make sure the team does as a whole, that's a difference. And it's about looking after the patients, it's about embedding change. And it's also about changes that are sustained through the whole service. So if, for example, you got asked, I think we see this quite a lot when you get asked, like, how do you make sure your trainees get a good training experience or something like that? And someone might answer, well, So, when I'm on shift, I make sure we do a check-in in the morning. I make sure that I know what the trainees need, and then I take time to teach them during the day. Which is good. That is good. But actually, the question is, well, what happens when you're not there? Because you're not going to be there all the time. So, the question is actually, how do we make sure the whole service gives a good experience to trainees, whether you're on a shift or not? In which case, it's, we have an embedded system where in the morning we have a check-in process where We make sure that we know everyone's learning needs, or we do a board round every day. These are things that are changes across the board that are embedded in the service. And that's much more senior-level thinking than showing why I'm great and I can make sure my trainees have a good experience when I'm on. And that, I think, is a key difference between reg-level thinking and senior-level thinking. And that permeates throughout all different types of questions and answers that you can give in your interview.
Yeah, exactly. Zoom out.
Zoom out, yeah. And it's less about registrar or consultant examples, and it's more about having that attitude and that zoom out, step back thing throughout all of your answers that you'll show through the whole thing that you're ready. Um, and not— it's not about I've been stepping up as a consultant, or I've been in the locum job. It's actually about showing how that's changed your Mm-hmm. Okay, covered a lot of ground today. We're going to wrap up there, and we will be back next week, and we're going to look at, uh, some more golden examples and share some tips and tricks then. So we'll see you then.
See you then.
