Ep 32: Beyond the Publication List: Nail Your Research USP and Dodge Interview Traps
In this episode of the Ace Your Consulting Interview podcast, hosts Tessa Davis and Becky provide practical interview guidance for medical and clinical applicants. They begin by critiquing the common habit of reciting a long list of publications, urging candidates to turn their strongest research project into a unique selling point (USP) that highlights specific roles, skills, and clinical impact. They extend this idea to PhD work, emphasizing that the degree itself is not the USP; rather, the competencies gained (ethics approval, patient recruitment, statistical analysis, etc.) should be foregrounded. The conversation then shifts to a detailed analysis of a submitted conflict‑resolution example from a NICU scenario. The hosts point out excessive clinical detail, unclear conflict focus, and power‑dynamic pitfalls, recommending a concise narrative that showcases de‑escalation, collaboration, and reflection rather than proving the candidate was “right.” Next, they tackle the tricky “Which trust value do you embody the least?” question, advising candidates to acknowledge a challenging value, describe steps taken to improve, and avoid disparaging any core value. Finally, they outline a strategy for planning a five‑minute interview presentation: keep it slide‑light (max three slides or none), structure it around an intro, three key points, and a conclusion, and focus on delivery rather than technology. Throughout, the hosts stress clarity, brevity, and the importance of demonstrating teamwork and cultural fit over sheer technical detail.
Chapters
Hello and welcome to our Ace Your Consulting Interview podcast. I am here with Becky. Hello, Becky.
Hello, excited to be here.
Let's go. Okay, question of the week. This is where we consider one of— a question that one of our Academy students have asked us. What question have we got this week?
We've got, I've got a really strong research portfolio, How do I stop it just sounding like a list of publications?
OK. So yeah, one of the— the easiest thing to do is to list all your things. I've got 20 publications. I've done 5 presentations. I've done whatever. But I think you need to remember that that's what your CV is for. It's not what your interview is for. And there is a difference between what you're doing in the interview and what you were doing on your CV. So your CV is a list of things. And they might be checking off— I doubt it will be a number of publications required. But has been active in research, maybe on the shortlisting criteria. But this is a different thing in your interview, which is you're not trying to tell them how many publications you've done, although you can do. But actually, what you're better to do is do a deeper dive into the strongest one. And so show them this is where your strongest research project is probably going to be one of your unique selling points. And you're best to do a deeper dive into that rather than listing them. So showcasing one project in more depth rather than listing 20 projects. What sort of things do you advise people to bring out in their research projects?
The kind of thing that works well is things like, I was the associate PI on the X trial. My role was to do X. and I recruited however many patients, the trial findings were blah, blah, blah, and I, you know, was one of the team that wrote it up, and I'm a named author on that publication. But just make sure that you're getting the skills in that you used. And also, I like to hear a little bit about the clinical impact there, because that actually, then the panel can hear how it relates to the specialty if they're not already aware of whatever trial it is. If it's stuff that you've done, you know, you did, you took a year out or whatever and you did a research project, you know, talk about all of the stuff that you did. You know, we've had some students who've done the most amazing things that are totally mind-boggling. You know, I worked with a team of 25 people and we evaluated 15,000 specimens. It's mind-blowing. So if that's the level of it, get those numbers out there. That's really impressive. And then talk about your findings, the implications for practice, and, you know, the skills that you used. Appreciate not everyone will have done that because not everyone's got that strong a research focus, but if you've got a list of stuff, and then this applies to anything, it could be a list of research publications, it could be a list of teaching sessions, But the key point is, add some detail around it so that the panel are getting a flavour of what this actually means, rather than just, I'm first author on 5 publications.
Yeah. And most people have— we talked about education USP in the last episode, and I think most people probably have either research or education for a USP, probably not both, because you don't tend to be so strong in both. And so, yeah, having one of these as a USP, I think, is really good. And I think along those lines, also just think about all these very clever people who've done PhDs, which is that you can say in passing, I've done a PhD, or often what people want to do is talk about the topic of the PhD, which obviously you would want to talk about because that's your area of research. But what we're trying to do is demonstrate to the panel what skills you learned and developed while doing that PhD. And just bear in mind, the panel have zero clue what you did for your PhD. It could have been looking at 15,000 samples in a lab. It could have been recruiting 200 patients, looking at reading 400 papers. But we actually wouldn't know just by the title of having a PhD. So the PhD isn't actually your USP. Your USP is what you did for your PhD. And that's the same with this question around a list of publications. It's not that you've done 2 billion papers. It's, this is the strongest one, and this is how I can explain it to you clearly so you see my experience. And things like, obviously, getting ethics approval, recruiting patients, Doing stats analysis, reading through papers for literature review, a number of papers, writing it up, getting it published. These are all, these are all great things to share, and that's much better than just doing a list of all the titles of papers.
Be specific. That's the key.
Be specific. Yes. Okay, let's go on and talk about the golden example this week. We've got a long one this week. This is, someone has shared an example with a conflict with a colleague.
Yeah.
I'm gonna tell you what we've got and we can see whether we think it's good. So, the scenario is, there is a preterm baby on NICU with severe chronic lung disease on non-invasive ventilation. The CO2 is getting higher, the FiO2 is getting higher, the work of breathing's getting higher. And one of their junior colleagues has a plan to increase the ventilation settings and then wait and review the patient a few hours later. The person telling this example was the senior reg on, and the nurse in charge asked them to review the junior reg's plan. And they were worried. They didn't think it was an appropriate plan to wait for for 3 hours or 4 hours or however long to review the baby, and they thought the baby needed intubated immediately. They discussed it with their junior colleague, the nurse in charge, the bedside nurse, and they came up with some compromise of like a shorter review time. And in the end, the baby got intubated and remained intubated for a long time. What do you think about this, Becky?
Well, the first thing I think about it is that I'm a bit lost. About what, actually?
It is quite complicated.
It is.
This is true. And also, you're like, all the detail about high CO2, high FiO2. Yeah. So yeah, I always think when people include so much detail, what is the goal? What are you trying to get across here?
And also, who's the conflict with? Because I think it's— I'm guessing that the conflict is with the junior colleague because you are going and Unpicking their plan, essentially. But it's not— there's not a clear moment of conflict described.
No. I think, I guess from this, the nurse in charge is saying, I'm not happy with the junior person's plan.
Yeah.
Then you go and have a second opinion.
Yeah. There's a number of things that I'm not keen on here, actually. So, the first is the very long story, because I think the panel's So, the baby was deteriorating, and then what happened? And so, there's a bit of like, it's a long story.
So, you could cut down. I do think you could cut it down, and you could, aside from the other things you're going to go on and say, actually, this first thing about the amount of detail could be cut out, 'cause it doesn't really matter what's going on with the baby, what their problem is or why. The point is that you're— the point of this story is the junior doctor Senior colleague made a plan that the nursing team weren't happy with, and this student wasn't happy with, the senior reg wasn't happy with. And so, it was a sort of intervention because they didn't like the plan. And that you can say that was around the need to intubate a baby early, or the need to wait, the decision to wait versus intubate now. And that's probably enough detail because then you're not thinking through the clinical elements of it. So, I do think you could make the example shorter, but I know you have other concerns.
That brings me on to my next point.
Yes.
Because actually, what you're doing is potentially construed as undermining a junior colleague.
Yeah.
And so, I think that breaks one of our fairly solid rules about the conflict with a colleague situation, which is that you shouldn't have a conflict with a more junior colleague. Essentially, we want this to be on approximately the same level as you. So, I think just be careful around that. If you're basically wading in and saying, you know, this junior had got it wrong, I went and, you know, put it right, and By the way, I was right, because the baby actually remained intubated for a long time. I just think it doesn't land well. It's not the look we're going for. We want to be showing that we can support our junior colleagues when decision-making isn't everything that it could have been, but we don't want to frame that as a conflict.
Yeah.
So, I think, You've just got to be quite careful about that. The other thing with these conflict examples, I think you've got to be really careful about, you know, so they were intubated for a long time, or, well, I knew the CT scan needed doing, and I was right, because actually they did have a whatever.
The patient did have appendicitis in the end. That's the favourite. They said they didn't, but they did. Yeah.
Exactly. So you can't— just don't come across as being that person. See, I told you. Because the problem is, if you don't frame it exactly right, you're going to sound like that person who's like, I told you so.
I think it also kind of misses the point of why you're being asked the question. And I actually think that adding loads of clinical detail is part of the same issue, which is that You might feel that you're trying to show competence and that you know what you're doing clinically, and therefore you're showing, this is all the clinical detail you need to know, and this is the reason why I was making my decision. And actually, in the end, I was right. But it's a distraction from what you're actually trying to show, which is it's a question about conflict resolution. So the question is, can you resolve conflict? Can you address it? Are you going to be a good person to have on the team in these situations?
Yeah.
And if you get sidetracked by showing you were right, that is where you have to overexplain. You have to explain every detail of the scenario to show why you were actually right. And then you have to have that moment in the end where you say, actually, see, I was right. And I think as well as showcasing something about you that you don't really want to do because you're kind of showing, well, it's all about you being right, actually, it's not the point of the question. And you're doing it at the expense of using the time to show conflict resolution. And that's the biggest problem with it, Because you won't get the time to then say, like, how did you resolve this? And how did you reflect on it?
Yeah, this is exactly the point. Remember that in the conflict resolution question, you are being asked to demonstrate skills of de-escalation. So, you know, whatever it was that happened, I went and spoke to this person face-to-face, I recognised that we were having a conflict, you know, I said that I wanted to resolve this, I spent some time listening to them. Maybe then we had a conversation about it together, then we worked out how we were going to—
We had a cup of tea. You always have to have a cup of tea.
You always have to have a cup of tea. I mean, in our place, we just take them in the kitchen, don't we? We have a cup of tea and we get the whole world sorted.
It sorts everything out, yeah. A cup of tea and give them some chocolate and it's all fine.
Yeah, exactly. But then demonstrating that you can then maintain that professional relationship with that person as a result of your outstanding conflict de-escalation. So, you've got to give your Give yourself a chance to show those stages rather than getting yourself tangled up in a whole mess of other detail that doesn't really help.
Yeah, because what's more important than being right is the patient being safe and you being able to get along with your colleagues so that you can keep all future patients safe together and that you have a good culture. And so being right is a sidetrack. And maybe we should just talk a little bit about the junior-senior thing, because I do think people commonly come up up with examples involving a junior colleague. And what we say is that none of these are absolute nos. It's not that you can never— you must never use an example where you have a conflict with a junior colleague. But it is just— it's your choice what example to choose. And what you want to do is choose the safest example possible so that you can focus on the issue at hand, which is conflict resolution or whatever it happens to be in that question, and not have them thinking about how you'll be looking after your colleagues. And exactly what you said, Becky, which is we are trying to show that you would support your junior colleagues if this was a difficult thing that was happening. Actually, that would be a more senior-level thing to do, is to support a junior colleague who was struggling with decision-making or clinical performance or whatever, rather than correcting it and siding with the rest of the team or whatever is going on here. So yeah, just think about how the example makes you look and will help you choose a safer example. Okay, so then we're going to look at an interview question that someone's been asked. I know we've had a bit of a chat about this because I do think it is a tricky question. And the question that we're going to look at is, which trust value do you embody the least?
I mean, if I got asked this question, I would not be happy. But let's—
But it's okay, because now we've discussed it. So you'll be well prepared.
Yeah, nothing can go wrong now. It feels awful. It feels like an awful question. Because normally the trust value question comes up in a very different way than this. How do you demonstrate the trust values day to day in your practice? That's fine, we can all answer that question because we've practised it. So, the first thing, obviously, you do need to know the trust values, that's key.
That's going to be a problem if you don't know them.
I think it's maybe a little bit about turning this round into saying, the one that I find the hardest to embody day to day is X, and maybe talk about some challenges. But how you've overcome it. Um, because I think you can't, you can't be saying, I just don't embody that one, because I think it's a bit rubbish.
Which should we pick? Caring? Yeah, exactly.
But I've already said that I demonstrate that because I give people a cup of tea after conversations.
We've done, we've done tea and chocolate, so we're definitely caring.
Yeah. So I think it's about finding one that, that feels kind of the most challenging, but showing how you overcome that. I'm just trying to think of an example on that. Have you got one?
It's a really hard question, but I think what also you need to remember, it's a really hard question. They know that. They could pick which trust values you embody the most. They're choosing something that's going to push your buttons. So, part of it is to see what you'll do, and it'll be easy to get yourself into Big pickle with this one and just dig yourself a hole. So yeah, I think you're probably right. You'd have to say, I found this the hardest in the past, but it's so important that I've done X, Y, and Z, and now actually it's the one I feel strongest about, or something. I think that's probably what you'd have to do.
I think also just be mindful of the one that you pick. So, If there's one, I mean, they're broadly all the same, aren't they, right? There's something about caring, probably something about compassion, something about inclusivity, something about working with other people. So, you know, those are the broad themes. I would stay away from saying, I wasn't caring on that occasion, and I would certainly stay away from anything that shows that you can't model inclusivity and, you know, valuing equality and diversity. I would just— so I would stay away from those. I think I would probably choose something like, just thinking about our Trust values, collaborative. So I might choose something like that, which is quite a— maybe slightly more difficult to demonstrate, and I would say it's something about It's been challenging to work across particular pathways. For example, when I was doing my work on, you know, insert great USP project here, um, you know, it was challenging to get everyone in the right room.
That's a good way of doing it.
I like that.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, it did take me quite a while to come up with that. I wouldn't have had that long in an interview. Um, but some— something like that shows that it's a challenge I can do it, but I've had to work at it. Um, and this, this is, this is—
and you've got your USP in, which is a great little—
always get a USP in when you can.
Yep. Uh, okay. Yeah, that's it. I like that. That's a really good way of doing it, saying this has been hard, but this is how I did it. Um, yeah, it's a tricky question. It's a tricky question. It's going to come probably towards the end of the interview. Um, you— yeah, you need to just not put your foot in it and say something daft at the end, but knowing that they've picked it because it's hard.
And I think it comes back again to just taking that pause when you get a question, and just instead of going, oh my God, and you're like, I'm gonna have to start saying something, and now all of a sudden I've told you that I don't care about anyone.
Or respect, that is the last stage, respect.
Respect you. So, just take a moment and just think, this is a bit of a curveball. Okay, what can I sensibly say that's not going to show me in a bad light? You know, just give yourself 20, 30 seconds to get your head in order before some nonsense accidentally comes out of your mouth.
Good advice. Okay, let's go on to our tip and trick of the week. So this week we're going to look at how to plan a 5-minute presentation. So, oh, 5-minute presentations. I don't know why they get people to prep such a short space of time.
Yeah. I mean, it seems like nonsense, right? So, and I think the first thing not to do is open PowerPoint and design yourself, you know, 15 slides. So, the way that I think about these 5-minute presentations is that they are an interview question that you knew ahead. That's all they are, because basically you're going to spend 3 to 4 minutes talking on a normal interview question anyway. This is a bit longer than that, and so I kind of tend to think about them in the same structure and probably think about delivering 3 points on whatever this presentation is. They're going to be a little bit longer than your average interview answer points to give you a bit of room for expansion. And there's going to be a little intro and a little summary, and just think about it that way. Because I think if you think about this as a presentation and you write down all of the things that you want them to— want to deliver, then you're in a situation where you've now got a fantastic 15-minute presentation and you don't know what to cut out.
Yeah.
So, I think you've got to approach it differently because it's only 5 minutes.
Yeah, and if you find you've got 10 slides, that's too many.
It's always too many. Again, with these, if possible, I would go slide-free for this.
Yeah, I think 5 minutes, slides are not necessary.
Yeah, I don't want to be faffing around with slides for 5 minutes when I'm going to probably end up eating into my time because I'm managing the slides as well. I'd rather just focus on what I'm saying. If you feel you absolutely have to have slides, then I don't know, do we want to put a max on it? I would probably say 3 is the max. I mean, because I think if people say to me I could deliver it, you know, 1 slide a minute, can you really though?
I think it's, yeah, especially in 5 minutes because you have to have an opening. In any presentation you have to have some sort of intro bit and some sort of close bit. And so that becomes a much larger percentage in 5 minutes. And yeah, I think just trying to rattle through slides makes it too hard. Plus, how many times have we seen people with tech problems with their slides on the day? It's not their fault necessarily. It's the trust. IT doesn't work. And you just— yeah, I think in a 5-minute presentation, you don't actually need slides.
And especially if you're doing it online, I think if you can avoid using slides or any other form of tech, just keep the challenge down as much as you can because you've already got, you know, taken up a lot of your cognitive bandwidth by thinking, I'm in an interview! So, you don't now need to be managing tech and stuff to give yourself additional stress.
Agreed. Okay, should we wrap up there? I think we've covered a lot of ground today. Thank you very much, Becky. We're going to be back next week for another episode chatting about lots more interview stuff, including how to own your role in the projects that you've done and take credit where it's due. We will see you then.
See you then.
