EP 35: How to Answer “Tell Me About Yourself” Without Freezing in a Consultant Interview

One of the common ways we see people go wrong in their consultant interviews is not knowing how to end their answers with confidence. Hi, I'm Tessa.

And I'm Becky, and this is the Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast, where we help you stand out and succeed in your consultant interview.

Before we get into today's episode, if you're prepping for your interview, make sure you're signed up to our free 5-day email crash course. It breaks down exactly what you need to do to stand out, and you can sign up via the link in the description. In this episode, We are going to look at how to stop yourself from freezing at that very first question. We're going to look at a golden example of conflict and whether it's a good example or not. And we're going to look at one of my least favourite, but Becky's favourite interview questions that got asked to one of our students as a bit of a wildcard question. Okay, let's get stuck in. So first up today, we have a student question of the week. This is a question that one of our Academy students has posed to us. So what have we got?

Today's question is, I freeze when they ask me, tell me about yourself. Where do I even start?

Okay. So, it's not a good time to freeze at the beginning of your interview. I think we can say, because this is going to be your first question, probably. I think it's likely to be the first question.

Do—

how— we do sometimes see it not being the first question, occasionally. But it's not very common.

Yeah. I mean, I think the vast, vast majority of the time, I'm going to go as far as to say something like 98% of the time, I would say.

Yeah, I think so. But also because it makes sense for this to be there, because they want to know about you. They want to set the scene. They won't remember anything about you. So you're just like, this is a good way to start an interview. It gets people settled in. It makes the panel understand who's there. So if you were writing interview questions, you would start with a version of this. So, yeah, I guess that's the first thing to say is, you know, it's coming. So, this is something that you should be prepared for. And the worry about freezing and, you know, like them asking you things you're not expecting should be a bit separate from this because this is a question that you can pretty much guarantee is going to come up.

Yeah. So, I suppose it, for me, is this question about I just freeze at the beginning of an interview because I'm in an interview?

Yes.

Or is it, I don't know how to approach the tell me about yourself question? Um, and I think, you know, if you're thinking about the tell me about yourself question particularly, then it's worth thinking about having a strategy for that question. Because as you say, it is going to come up. It can only come up in a certain number of ways. It could— might be something about Talk us through your CV and why you're ready for this job. Talk us through why you're the right candidate for this. Have you prepared for this job? You know, whatever. But essentially, it's a version of, tell me about yourself. So, there's not really an excuse for not preparing for it, because you do know it's coming.

Yeah.

And for me, it's about building an instant connection with the panel, and then making sure that you've got a strategy and a structure for delivering the rest of it, so that the panel are hearing a bit about you and a bit, you know, a reasonable overview of you, your experience, and your USPs, your unique selling points. Um, you're getting those on the table in brief form right from the beginning.

Yeah, so I think, yeah, just, just have a plan for how you're going to get going with it. Um, and you, you might need to adapt it slightly depending on the question, but the essence is the core is going to be the same. So have this prepped, have a ballpark outline for what you're going to go through. You're getting your USPs out, you're trying to build that connection, and then you're definitely making sure you answer the question. So you don't want to— if they ask you a slightly different question, like, why did you apply for this job? And you don't relate your answer back to that at all because you're just reciting what you've prepped for tell me about yourself, then it's going to look a bit odd and it's not going to land as well. So you have to always remember Just refer to the question. Just refer back to the question throughout your answer. I'm applying. I'm applying for this job because you've got a great education program, and actually I have experience doing X, Y, and Z with teaching. So that way it just connects it and shows that you were actually listening to them. But you should be prepping this lots of times. I'd have lots lots of goes of this. Make sure it's tight. Make sure the timing's tight. Make sure you can get all your USPs in and try different versions of the question.

Yeah, you should be at a point before your interview where somebody could shake you awake at 3 AM and you could deliver tell me about yourself. Ideally, that's the goal.

Maybe that's what we should do with some of the Academy students. We'll just do spot assessments in the middle of the night.

Morning, we'd like to hear tell me about yourself.

Cool. Uh, yeah, that's an interesting strategy. We can consider that. Um, but yeah, the— I think the core takeaway is very important question. No, you should not be freezing at this. You should be expecting it. And the, the thing that would make you more stressed is when they don't ask you this at the beginning and they ask you something else, and that will probably throw you off. It'll still be fine, but it would reasonably throw you off because you were expecting some sort of opportunity to do tell me about yourself. But, um, yeah, try to not get yourself into a situation where you're worried about this particular question.

Yeah. Is it worth thinking about the kind of that passion section at the beginning?

Yeah.

Because we, I think we've, I think it's fair to say we feel fairly strongly about not using CAMP as your opening structure, and we prefer PERM, where the P stands for passion. And that is about just making that instant connection with the panel, giving them a couple of sentences that warm them up that make it clear to them that this is the job for you, this is your dream job, and why, you know, working here would make your heart sing. So they need to understand why it matters to you. I was doing a mock interview this morning with one of our students, and she did this absolutely brilliantly. She said, you know, I haven't worked here before, but I've had such a lovely in the pre-interview meetings. You're all so warm and so welcoming. I can tell that you've got a really supportive team ethos, and therefore I know that this is somewhere that I could thrive and make this a lifelong career for me.

Oh, how good is that? That's so good. Imagine hearing that on the panel. Yeah, you would. You'd be like, oh, we— you— because the panel will just be like, yeah, aren't we amazing? And this person realises it, and this is nice. And what a great feeling for them to have at the start of the interview. That's a great example, Becky, because often people who aren't applying to somewhere they've worked before don't feel like they can find the P. But it's easy when you've worked there. You just say how much you love them and you've been there and you trained there or whatever. But when you've not worked there, how can you do it? And that's a great way to do it.

She did it beautifully. And I was like, already? It's okay.

Bring in tissues for everyone in the panel. That's really good. Okay, I think we'll move on to our golden example. So this is where we think about an example that a student submitted that they might use. We've got a conflict one to discuss today. So I think this is a surgeon, right? And the story is that they wanted to add on an emergency case onto a theatre elective list. But the anaesthetic person didn't want to go ahead, or didn't want to go ahead with adding it on because they were worried the list was going to overrun. So, what do you think about this as an example?

I think it works. And I think there are multiple different reasons why it works. The first one is to say, we can all imagine this happening. It's not an example of a conflict where you'd be thinking, how on earth did you get yourself in that situation where you were having a conflict about that. This could happen every day, and this is about, you know, NHS competing priorities, service pressures, everyone feeling a bit stressed.

Yeah.

So we can all imagine how this might have happened. Um, and, you know, it's about then that focus on how do you de-escalate that conflict, um, so that you can show that you're somebody who can work nicely within the team, um, that you can resolve issues that pop up on a day-to-day basis. in a normal way, and that you can continue that nice professional working relationship. And I think the other thing that I like about it is it doesn't take a whole ton of explanation in the incident. We can all understand what happened, and now we can get on with unpicking the de-escalation process, which is the focus of the answer.

Yeah, and actually a good thing about this example, or the way it's presented just now, is we don't actually know what the case was, what the emergency was, and sometimes people have a tendency to, over-explain, you know, this was— the patient had X diagnosis and they needed an urgent something or other, and if they didn't get an urgent something or other, they would need a something, and their potassium was whatever. And you get all this detail to explain why you wanted to add it to the emergency list, but actually it doesn't matter. The why part doesn't matter. That's the conflict part that matters. So you felt, for whatever reason, it's fine that this patient needed to be added to the emergency list. But the anaesthetist had some sort of competing interest or worry, and therefore didn't like that. And that way, you easily keep it away from the clinical elements of like you being right, them being wrong, whatever it is. And that you really are able to get down to the conflict. So, this is why it's so good to take out the clinical stuff. It's easier for us to understand, even if though we're not in their specialty. For the lay chair, they'll be able to understand this. It doesn't need medical specialist knowledge. And so you can really get on with just, how did you address this conflict? And this is where exactly what you were saying, which is you're trying to show that you can see it from their point of view. You're not saying they're wrong or they're mean or they're whatever. You're saying, well, they're probably really stressed and stretched. And therefore, coming from that point of view, you understood them and you were able to work together to find a solution, whatever the solution is. And in many ways, I don't think the solution really matters either. It's about the process of getting to that resolution and how you related to your team member. That's the key of the conflict.

Yeah, it does. It really doesn't matter whether this patient ended up going to theatre or not.

Yeah.

That's not, that's not the point. The bit that we want to hear about is, can you effectively de-escalate this conflict? And form a compromise agreement, um, or at least a joint plan with the other person and maintain the working relationship with them. Yeah, that, that's all we need to know.

Yeah. And, and as usual—

We don't need to hear about, and by, by the way, I was right, because, uh, when we open the abdomen, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, we don't— it doesn't matter.

It does not matter. I think, um, some— a cup of tea and some chocolate. might help as well. That's always good to throw in.

I mean, when does a cup of tea not help?

So, you can definitely include that in your conflict resolution. Because sometimes, you know, people are just busy and stressed, and actually, a little bit of kindness and tea is going to help defuse the situation and allow you to be able to talk about how to get this patient sorted. Good. So, yeah, we think this is a good example. It's explained quite simply. I think it'll make a good conflict example. Okay, so next we're going to talk about an interview question that someone's been asked. This is an interesting one. I have polled a lot of people around whether they like or hate this, and it is a bit Marmitey, this question. So, what is the question that we've got today, Vicki?

Okay, so this question is, um, what 3 emojis would you use, uh, to describe our trust and why?

Are you in the love it or hate it campaign here?

I love it, actually, but I, I am also a Marmite lover.

Yeah, that's true. I'm not a Marmite lover and I don't love this question, so maybe it is directly proportionate to how much you like my way.

Yeah, we could do some sort of study on who likes this and do they like my way. But I think the reason I like this is because it's a bit of a wildcard question, and I think one of the functions that these questions fulfil is, how will you operate under pressure? What are you going to do when you get a question that you couldn't have predicted? Have you got a strategy for it? I think they need to see that you're somebody who can hold it together and produce some sort of answer. Also, I think if you kind of think about this just for a moment, there are actually quite a lot of different ways that you could answer this question, and I think in some ways you could treat this as a sort of values question.

It is, it's values as expressed in image form.

Yeah, I mean, it's just so great. Um, obviously you need to be a little bit careful with the emojis that you choose.

I know, the immediate thought that goes through your head is like hundreds of inappropriate emojis, like, don't say this, don't say that, don't say this.

Exactly, exactly. Because I think, I mean, I'm kind of reflecting back on when we were messaging about this and, you know, cash emojis and stuff like that. I think maybe just steer away from those emojis. Also, probably, you know, the skeleton, the coffin emojis, again, probably a no-go.

I'd give them a miss.

But there are actually some really nice ways that you could answer this.

Yeah, so you're going to try and— you could broadly mirror the trust values, essentially, and that would be a way, because this is going to be, I assume, an alternative to a trust values question. A bit pointless asking both. So yeah, I think it's a good chance to show that you know the trust values because, yeah, it just shows you've looked them up, you know them. You don't need to literally find one for each value, but I think mirroring them in some way will help. And broadly, that is going to be what you're going to do.

Yeah.

I don't know about, like, if something that you think will go down well and is vaguely amusing comes to you, there is an opportunity, I think, because this is a slightly lighthearted question. It is, but you just need to be careful not to, like, say something ridiculously silly, as it's likely to be towards the end of your interview. You may be getting a little tired at this point, so you need to just hold it together.

I think, yeah, if you can show them that you've got a sense of humour, that's a nice thing. Look, you could use— there are various things that you could use, aren't there? You could use something to describe inclusivity, you could use a group to describe teamwork, or like a you know, like a family feel or something about smiling, happy people.

You want people enjoying them, the team enjoying themselves, the patients being safe, everyone being collaborative and, uh, you know, working together. I think that's probably— yeah, avoid finances, um, anything controversial.

Yeah, also avoid the emoji that's the kind of screaming face.

Yeah, as I was saying, just someone screaming at someone else. Yeah, that's not going to go down well. Um, I, I don't—

I like it because it's kind of, it's sort of, it falls in the potentially really awkward category. It is. Um, it is because you could also have some fun with it.

I bet the range of answers you get, like, from candidates would be hilarious. Yeah, I know.

I'd love to sit in on that interview and just kind of gauge that a little bit.

Yeah. Now, there was a second part to this question as well, though. Wasn't there?

Oh, yeah.

As if the first part isn't bad enough, he needs another part. What was part 2?

Which one will you get rid of?

I don't even know why they've added this because you've just— they've just asked you to find them and now already you're ditching one.

Yeah.

So this is kind of—

I think that's the opportunity if you've chosen the poo emoji.

Yeah, it's time to get rid of the poo emoji now because it was a bad decision that you deeply regret. Well, I think they've started to ask this a bit with trust values. So rather than just saying, which trust value do you embody the most, the kind of spin on it is, if you had to get rid of one of the values, which would you get rid of? So I suppose it's just a version of that, but I'm not sure why they needed to add it onto this because it's already quite a challenging question. So it's a bit unfair.

True.

Yeah. So hopefully by this point—

It doesn't really matter which one you take out.

It doesn't.

Just tell them why the other ones are more important.

Yes. And I think also it's what you're saying, which is they want to see how you're going to react when you're taken by surprise. Because there's probably— well, now you've watched this podcast episode, you will know, or listened to this podcast, you will have heard it before. But really, you probably wouldn't have thought about this before. So they're picking something that you can literally not have thought of before to see what you do in the moment. Yeah. So in that way, it's a good way to test. I still think it's a bit unfair. It's a bit of an unfair question.

I think the strategy, essentially, for these unforeseen, random questions is, it's fine to acknowledge it.

Yeah.

Oh, okay, that's an unexpected question, or, I wasn't expecting that one. Obviously, you can't say that if they ask you, tell me about yourself.

No, yes, no, that's not going to work there.

BBC disgust. But then, I think, then you just say, okay, I'm just going to take a minute to think about that. And then just take a few seconds to think about what, what, what good can I get out of this?

Yeah.

And that essentially comes down to, again, think about your USPs and ways that you can demonstrate good stuff that you do. And then, you know, are the questions like this representation type of questions? Think, think about, you know, the Trust values, and can you add something in there about the values and your USPs, or what a great person you are and why you represent You know, the, you know, mermaid emoji or whatever you've chosen.

Is there a mermaid emoji? I suppose there probably is.

I can't believe you've just asked that question.

Yep. What does that say about the Trust? This is why it's such a stupid question.

It says that we can be many different things because we can be you. Human and we can be a fish.

Human and a fish. Yep, just like the trust.

Great.

That's the one you're going to ditch when they ask you part 2.

That's the one I'm going to ditch because it was a bad idea.

Yeah. Okay, anything else you want to add about this question? I think we've probably covered the extent of it.

I think we've probably covered it.

Hopefully this will not come up in the average interview, but it has come up recently in someone's Okay. So the last section of this episode is looking at tip and trick. And this week we're looking at how to end your answers to make sure that, yeah, it's over and they know when it's over. And I think this is something that is commonly a challenge, but it's not that hard to get right. But you need to be mindful of the fact that you should end your answers. They don't just wither away into silence or awkwardness. It's really important that you do this because if you don't end your answer, if you don't know how to end your answer clearly, the panel might not know when it's over. And so, they then might jump in because they think you're finished, even if you're not.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then you're in this awkward moment of, oh, I did have something else to say. Should I still say it? And then you go, oh, and they go, oh, sorry, have you not? And then it's just really, really tense and eek. So, I think that the strategy here is, well, we, you know, obviously we like a 3-point structure, don't we? So I would just come back to the question, you know, something like, in— so in relation to how I meet the clinical governance agenda day to day, I've discussed risk management, audit, and education.

Yeah, and you don't want— so that's very nice short summary that just reflects back what you've said. And you don't need a whole 45-second summary of what you've said. So sometimes people go back over their points. So I've said point 1, and then do a line of summary, and you're basically doing an answer after an answer. That's not the goal. The goal of the end is to have a clear ending. If you want, you can recap so then, you know, you're kind of signposting them again, like in the 3-point structure. If you think you've been clear enough in your answer and you've signposted it well, I think you can also just reflect the question back. to them. So, so that's the time I made a mistake, so that's a bit about me, whatever. It's just one, because that takes a very short amount of time and it's clearly the end. Um, but yeah, you don't need a full summary, but you do need something. It's just really stressful for the panel, um, and could end up just cutting you off when they didn't mean to. Uh, and also you won't feel confident, like, see, then you don't know what to say and you're just like, oh well, that's it. Or it just—

yeah. It's like when people are delivering a talk and they haven't really planned the ending and they just go, so, um, Yeah, I think that's about it from me. Just find a way to end it.

Yeah. And unlike a talk, it doesn't need to be a big finish. Just do a very simple end and it will make a big difference to your answers just to have that clear start and end point. And then the more you practice doing that, the more natural it will become because you'll just get used to that's what you have to do at the end of each answer. Good. Okay. I think we will wrap up there and we will be back next week looking at more golden examples. We've got one of a mistake next week that we'll be talking about whether it's suitable or not. So I will see you there.