Ep 33: How to Sell Yourself Without Feeling Arrogant: Secrets to Nailing Your Consultant Interview

Welcome back to our Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast. I am here with Becky Platt, as always. How are you, Becky?

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

Let's get going. So, we're going to start with a question of the week. This is a question that one of our students in the Academy has asked us, and this week's question is, I find it hard to talk about myself positively without feeling like I'm bragging or being arrogant. How am I supposed to sell myself in my interview?

Yeah, I totally get this, and so many people say this to us. Um, oh, it's just so cringy having to big myself up for all that time, and you know, it just feels insincere or whatever. But actually, look, the, the reality of this is nobody else is going to big you up in the room. You are going to have to do it yourself. Um, but I think there's also, um, something in here for me about just being authentic and coming across as yourself in the interview, while also making sure that you do sell yourself appropriately. So, for me, this is really about actually just tell the truth, because most people, I would say everyone that we've ever met through the Academy, has actually got a fantastic set of USPs, And you've all done some really fantastic stuff, and it literally is just about telling that to the panel in a way that they can understand what you did and the impact that you made, and you are just honest about it. It doesn't need to feel arrogant, but it also shouldn't be, you know, diminishing what you did, and you shouldn't be talking about we, the team when really you are talking about things that you personally did. So, I think just own it and be honest about it. Be proud of the things that you've got a right to be proud of. Yeah.

It is your interview and you want them to give you a job. That's the reality. You're not just going for a coffee with them, you're actually trying to get them to give you a job. And so, to do that, you have to be able to talk about yourself in a positive way. Because if you ain't doing it, no one else in the room is going to be doing it for you. And your competitors will be doing it for themselves.

Yeah.

So I think, yeah, the first thing is just getting over the idea that you are going to have to put yourself forward. Otherwise, the panel is going to find it really hard to see what's good about you. But then, yeah, it's thinking about— I think using the specifics rather than persuasive stuff helps with this, because you're not saying, The parts that I think are harder are when people try to describe what a thing has shown. This shows that I'm a great team player, or this shows that I can communicate really well, or everyone said I was great and I've got loads of great feedback. That is more of a subjective way to tell people. You're persuading the panel that you're really good. But actually, when you use specifics, and use objective measures to showcase what you're doing, it's just fact. Like you say, you're just telling them the truth, just telling them what it is. And then you're not bragging. You're just saying, this was what I did. I led a team of 10 people. We met weekly for 6 months. We looked at 500 patient data. And we increased the impact of whatever from 10% to 25%.

Yeah.

And so it's fact. It's not bragging. And it's much easier. It's much clearer for the panel. And it's much easier to say. And when you do that, you actually— Often our students find a change in how they see their projects because they know they're sharing good stuff, they feel better about it, actually don't feel arrogant sharing it. So it usually really helps when you bring in specifics.

Yeah. And again, practice out loud. Because actually, if the first time that you're having to do this out loud is in your interview, You won't be able to do it, and you'll probably hear yourself.

Oh, that's awful!

But actually, if you've practiced saying this stuff out loud with the specifics, with the impact that you demonstrated, then it will feel more natural. That the cringe factor will naturally get lower the more you practice this, and then on the day in the interview, it will feel like the most natural thing to do. And as you answer, you'll know that you're giving a good answer. Just own it, be honest, be yourself, and practise doing that.

Yeah, I was doing a one-to-one with a student yesterday who had written down 60 pages of answers and notes on their interview prep. That is a lot of time. And I was saying to them, imagine if instead of doing that 60 pages of writing, you'd actually said 60 answers out loud, you'd practised 60 answers out loud. The benefit would be so much more. Because you're just getting that feel of saying it out loud versus like, what does it matter if it's written down on a piece of paper? That's not going to help you on the day. And so, we really would push. I gave them some tough love and encouraged them to practice out loud before we met next time because, yeah, you need to just get into the flow of doing it. And part of the fear of practicing out loud goes away the more you do it because it becomes less of a big deal each time.

Yeah, exactly. We do like a bit of tough love, don't we?

We do. Sometimes it is. Yeah, sometimes it is needed. And I think 60 pages of notes is probably like a boundary of too much, too much writing, not enough saying stuff out loud. Okay, so we're going to go on to the golden example. This is an example that one of our students have given. So the example this week is a mistake example. It's about a prescribing error, which we do get quite commonly as mistakes, like for examples from our students. So, this example is that they had just moved trust. And there was a different policy about gentamicin trough levels, and therefore, when to stop, hold off until giving the next dose of gentamicin. And at the previous trust, the levels were at less than 1 to be able to give the dose. So, you had to have a blood result of less than 1 to be able to give the next dose. But at the new trust, the level was 2, so it was higher. And so, they didn't prescribe the next dose of Gent for a baby because they thought that less than 1 was the trough level, and they were waiting for a repeat level. They apologized to the family, and it went through a governance process. What do you think about this?

So, it sounds like the baby potentially missed a dose, or—

Yeah, I think it's a delayed, like, probably a bit of a delayed dose of Gent.

Yeah. Okay, so it's— I think the first thing to say is it's a bit of a long story.

Yeah.

But we could probably distil this down into something a bit more concise, and then I think it would probably be actually quite a nice example to use, because I think it— did they say no harm came to the baby?

Yeah, no harm. There was no harm.

Yeah. So, I think as long as no harm came, And the— I think the other key thing is, you know, ideally the student will have identified the mistake themselves. Then I think it's an example that would work well because one of the things that it will allow you to do as part of your reflection on this mistake is to think about how this has changed your practice, you know, why this happened, because you can talk about some sort of You know, process system-level errors, and, you know, different processes moving trust. Now you can reflect on, you know, are there other team members who need to know this too? Do we need to put something in induction about this? You know, whatever else it is. So, now you can think beyond rectifying this mistake and your own individual learning, and just levelling it up to— more senior-level learning and department-level process around that. So, I quite like it.

Yeah, I think it could be reframed to own it a bit better. So, with a mistake, one of the things that I think is common to do is to explain why the mistake happened or why it wasn't really your fault in the beginning. But actually, what you want to do in that when you tell the story is just own the mistake. Because here they're kind of saying they just moved, they didn't know, it was a change in policy, and they were going by a previous guideline. So in that sense, they don't really— I mean, it is a mistake, but they've kind of told you all the reasons why it's happened. But actually, what you would be better to do, which I think would have more impact, is that the story is— that the baby should have had their next dose of gent, but you withheld it because you made a mistake on interpreting the blood levels.

Right.

And then you— that is literally it. And then you say, I realized I'd made a mistake. And then that's much more impactful because then you get to the point earlier. And actually, then when you go on for the rest of the answer and talk about how— because the bulk of the answer should be then how you handled the mistake, how you reflected, with only a small part being the story. You can then explain in the rest of the answer, actually, the reason was because— I just come from another trust where it was a different level. I should have checked the guidelines. I know that guidelines are different in different trusts. But you have that vulnerability at the front where you're actually just saying, I did something that shouldn't have happened. And I think the way it's described currently isn't really seeing that because you're actually saying, well, actually, I did it because of X, Y, and Z.

Yeah, I completely agree, actually. I think I don't mind hearing about the sort of kind of not exactly mitigating factors, but the reasons why it happened.

Yeah.

But tell us the mistake first.

Yeah.

Because then I think the ownership is a lot clearer. So, yeah, I think you're right. And then they can move on to that greater reflection piece that I think is the bit that actually transforms the answer from being okay into being a great answer.

Yeah, and just on that, actually, this is the thing about whether an example is good or bad, that it's not often that they— or junior level or senior level. It's not often the story in itself being good or bad. The bulk of the answer is what happens after. So it's actually thinking about how you reflect on the mistake, saying how you felt, how you had the conversation with the family, why it happened, what you did. That makes it senior level versus a junior level, okay, well— It was no big deal. We gave the next dose, and it was fine. And I checked that I knew the trust guidelines. So there's an opportunity after that makes your answer good and more senior level that isn't actually to do with the story in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah.

OK, so the bottom line is we think this could be a good example. It probably just needs a bit of tightening up. But actually, this is good. It could be a good mistake.

Yeah.

So going on to our interview question breakdown of the week, this is where we look at a question that a student's been asked in a recent interview. The question that we're going to look at is, what are you most proud of in your career and why? This is quite like a standard, broad, general question. What do you— what are your thoughts about it?

Yeah, I think it's a nice question. It's fairly kind of bland. You should be prepared for a question like this, and I think if you approach it right, it's essentially a gift for you. You can lay at least one of your USPs on the table and probably more. So, I think it's nice, but you've got to show them why your USP or whatever you tell them is important. why you're proud of it, and you've got to really demonstrate some impact around that, because that's what will take you to get more points in the interview. So, I think often people default to things like, well, I'm just really proud of getting through my training because I was having a really difficult time and had some family struggles along the way, and I just pushed through. And I'm sure, you know, I'm sure it was tough and I'm sure that is something you should be proud of, but that's not an interview answer. And so, you know, lay out one of your USPs, something that's got some real impact, a project that you did, and talk to them about why you're proud of it. What difference has it made? What have you learned along the way? What's the skill set that you're bringing to them? As a result of that. So, yeah, I think I'd probably, depending on where it came up, if it was later on in the interview and there was one of my USPs that I hadn't yet managed to discuss, I'd stick it in there. If not, I guess you could potentially put 3 different projects out there, depending on how much you want to elaborate. There are 3, actually, there are 3 things and they're related. I'd like to talk to you about this, this, and this.

Yeah. It's an open goal, really, because this is your chance to say anything, which is why talking about a personal proud moment isn't the best use of it, even though it might be the thing that you're most proud of. I guess it's like this— it's the idea of there's things in your life that you want to talk about or are happy with or things in your career that have happened. But then there's also things that are the best examples of these to use in your interview. And so it's not just literally open field for you to share the thing you're most proud of. You're trying to share the thing you're most proud of that will get you the job. That's the difference. And that isn't going to be a personal thing. And this isn't a question— this isn't actually a personal question. This is what you're most proud of in your career. It's giving you— really directing you to showcase a USP. And I think you'd be missing a trick not to show off 1 or 3. I think 3 is a good idea as well, because why not? They haven't said 1 single thing. You can say, actually, there's a few. And like you said, they can be on a theme. The theme is— being amazing. No, the theme is winning. Yeah, the theme is collaboration or whatever, or quality improvement, or making change. And then you give 3 examples. I think it would be a great way to answer it. So I think it's probably hard to go very wrong in this question because it's so broad. But what you could do is not make the most of the opportunity because it's really opportunity to smash home some USPs, particularly ones you've not talked about. This will depend on how far into the interview it's come, um, but, you know, if it came towards the end, this is like a great chance to talk about something you haven't had a chance to talk about as much as you wanted. So it's a nice question, nice question, fairly easy. Just you need to make sure you, you smash it home.

Yeah, view it as the gift that it is.

Okay, and then we've got the last thing, which is our tip and trick. This is our final segment of the podcast. So, the tip and trick that we're going to talk about this week is about doing the background research before your job. The question is, how much should you do of reading on the trust intranet or internet of the team you're applying to? So, what would you advise people here?

I mean, the short answer to this is not loads, because I think the temptation here is to use this research phase as displacement activity for actually getting on with practising some answers out loud and thinking about what it is you're actually going to say. So I think there's a few key things that you need to have researched: the CQC, the, you know, report, the most recent one, any other visits that they've had that are important. So for example, if they've recently had a peer review from someone or something like that, and then there's a few key documents about the trust. You could probably read the latest board papers, you could probably do just a bit of general searching of them on their intranet, or if you're an external candidate, the internet about them. And, you know, I would just kind of quickly Google them to see what's coming up about them so that you've got a bit of an overview. But don't spend hours and hours and hours researching stuff, gathering reams of paper— or not paper, even electronic documents— writing notes on it. You'll actually do yourself a lot more good if you get a reasonable— a bit of information about them, And then practice integrating that into your answers along with your USPs and other examples.

Yeah, I think so. It's so easy to go down a rabbit hole here because there's like— the intranet is a dark place of links to links to links. And you could just— and it also can be quite slow and clunky to navigate. So yeah, you just need to remind yourself what the goal is. The goal is to get a broad understanding of the key issues facing the trust. so that you can drop these into your interview answers. That is the goal. Not so that you can be grilled on being an expert in the trust. You're very unlikely, aside from knowing the trust values, it's very unlikely that you're going to get a direct question testing your knowledge on the trust. But what it means is that you have that understanding and context that you can drop in through your answers and say, actually, I know from the recent board minutes, or I know from the recent chair— chief exec update that this has been something that has been an issue in this place, or this has been something that's been top of your mind. And that's where you can show, oh, actually, you're dropping it in casually, but this person has really done the work on trying to find out about us and get to know us because they obviously care. That's the goal. So don't feel like you're not being interviewed to join the trust board. You're being interviewed for a consultant job. And it's just about showing interest and showing that you actually do care and you do want the job.

Yeah, exactly. I think there's probably one other document I would advise people to read, and that's the National Training Survey results.

My least favourite website to navigate of all time.

That website, if you're listening, sort your website out. So yeah, I would advise people to do that just to get a bit of an overview, because that maybe helps you to play into a question around teaching, education, supporting trainees and so on. The other thing to remember is you can get some of the other information that you need if you're already working in the Trust. You can speak to senior members of the team around things like risk register, recent incidents and complaint themes, but you can also ask some of those things at your pre-interview visit. So I think you don't need to spend hours of your life just trawling the internet for documents.

No.

Because it's not going to help you.

And definitely not at the expense of practising answers out loud, which is what you really should be doing.

Yeah, exactly.

Great. Okay. I think we will wrap up there. So thank you very much, Becky. Another lovely episode. It's great chatting to you as always. We will be back next week with another episode. Lots more stuff to talk about around interview prep, including thinking about the question, why this trust? And what happens when you have more than one trust you're applying to and what you do in that situation. So we will chat about that next week. See you there.