EP 57: What to Do If You Get Offered Your Backup Job First

2 days from now, doors open on our next Academy intake, and this week's episode is exactly the kind of prep that gets people their dream job.

This week, we're going to look at what to do if you get offered one job while you're waiting to hear about your dream job. We're going to tackle a question on avoiding burnout and protecting your own personal wellbeing. And we're going to look at how you can create interview conditions during your prep So that you can prep to best effect.

Quick reminder before today's episode, our free live webinar is this Wednesday. If you're serious about nailing your consultant interview, this is where we walk you through exactly how to do it. Links in the description below to grab your spot. Hello, welcome back to the podcast. Hi, Becky, how are you?

I'm good. It's great to be here.

It's great to have you. Let's get going. Okay, we've got our student question of the week. This is a question that one of our Academy students has posed to us. What is our student question this week?

So, I have 2 interviews within a couple of weeks. The second one's the one I really want, but I would take the first if I had to.

What am I going to do if I get offered the first one?

I feel this is increasingly a thing that comes up with our students. It's funny, there are interviews like they're like buses. You wait for them, and then suddenly they all come at once. I don't know why people end up having like multiple ones within a pretty short space of time. It is stressful, but I think you need to remember that that's just that's what happens. It's an interview process. They're not the only person who's advertising, and that's that's fine. Part of it is what is polite and reasonable to. do, and part of it is what you need to do that's the best thing for your career. So you want the job you want. And so yeah, there's, you can do things in a, as clear a way as possible, but in the end you want to get the job. Like, this is your job for life, probably. So you want to make sure you get the one you want. Um, so I think it, part of it depends how close they are together. Because what you're essentially asking people to do is to hold an offer for you until you hear about the next interview. That's kind of the ideal. Otherwise, you would be accepting the job and pretending to them that you're not applying for another one, and then in X weeks when you get offered the next job, you would withdraw. And that will really annoy them if you do that because, yeah, it's just very— it's a big deal for them to have to re-advertise, get a substantive panel together again, interview everyone again, and it'll, it'll be annoying. Um, so I would say I would err towards not pretending it's not happening. Um, would you agree?

Yeah, I think so. I, look, I think people recognize, especially in the current climate where jobs are— it's probably a bit more of a competitive process, and often there's a lot of people going for each job. Um, people recognise, you know, employers recognise that people need a job.

Yeah.

Um, and so I think it's, it's generally honesty is the best policy. So you don't need to tell job 1 that they're not the dream job. I think that would be a step too far. But I, I think it's okay to tell job 1 that you are also applying for job 2. And to say, you know, this is, you know, this is difficult. You know, I'm, I'm, I really do want your job. I also recognize that, you know, lots of people want to work here. It's highly competitive. And so I have applied for another job.

So you would tell them before? Would you tell them before? I don't know if I'd tell them before.

I don't know. Would I?

I, I think if sometimes this comes up in the pre-interview chats. And people, people say it. If you know them, I think you can say it.

If you know them, I think you, you would need to.

They probably know anyway.

Yeah.

Also, it's quite a small world, right? Especially some specialties, everyone knows what everyone else is doing.

Yeah.

Um, in which case, I'd probably just be upfront about it.

Okay. The only— my only worry with being upfront is that it would, like, cloud their decision. Because if they're like, oh, Becky's good, but Tessa's good too. Becky really doesn't want this job. She really wants to go somewhere else.

Um, yeah.

You know, if that would give an edge in the decision.

Yeah, I know. It is a, it is a tricky one.

I, I would, I would normally say that you don't need to mention it until you get offered the job. And then at that point say, look, really happy, very excited. Just want to be open with you that I have also applied to X job and the interview's in a week. Would you consider holding the offer for me till then?

And, and I definitely—

yeah, I mean, you are basically saying to them, obviously this isn't my first choice, but, uh, by then they've offered you the job.

By then you've given a stonking interview and they, they want you, so that's different. I, I think, I think, yeah, that, that— yeah, I think that bit is fine. I, I don't think you should accept it if, if you've got doubts about it and if you're going for another one. I think you should ask them to hold it.

Yeah.

And then they, then they can decide Whether they hold it or not.

I think the problem is if it's 8 weeks later or something, or you've just— you've applied but not been shortlisted for the other one, because I don't think they would hold a job for like 4 weeks for you. Um, and so it puts you in a much trickier situation. Um, I think, yeah, it would be harder in that case. But in this, this question, it's 2 weeks. Uh, my advice would be just to go to the interview, not mention it, but then when they offer you the job, say, uh, thanks, I've got this other one. Um, would you be okay to hold, hold the offer?

Yeah, yeah.

I, I think if they— if it's likely that they already know that you've applied—

Yeah, if they already know, you should just say.

Then, then it's—

it might be better to address it head-on.

You can, you can just work that out. If they don't know, then I would, yeah, do that strategy. Give an amazing interview, wait till you're the preferred candidate, and then at the job offer stage, just say, look, I had to apply for a second one because— and I'd actually really like to see the outcome of that too.

Yeah, and we've had students who've had a good relationship with both jobs they're applying for and been open with them, with both, and it's worked out fine. Equally, we've had students that have held the information until they needed to, and it's been fine as well. So I think this is the— I guess the important thing to know is this is a very common situation to be in.

Yeah.

And it probably needs a tailored decision based on what you know about them, how big the specialty is, are they in the same geographic location, you know, there'll be a lot of factors. So I would think through what we normally think through with the students in their particular situation, but broadly that's how we would approach it.

Yeah, I think what you don't want to do is just mess people about.

Yeah.

Because people have got quite long memories about stuff like that.

They do, yeah.

And you don't want to be that person because also, you know, consultants from, you know, everywhere do meet together and they're like, oh no, well, they did accept a job with us and then they just didn't come for it. And it's not the look you want.

No. It's a hard part to navigate because in the end it's also your career. And so, you don't want to do your career just because you don't want to upset someone.

No.

And end up taking a job in a place you don't want. So, there's a lot of difficulties that can come up around this particular thing with timing. The thing I would say is not to pull out of the first interview because you really want the second one, because it's a competitive environment out there, and I think you'd be just letting a potential opportunity go. You've got no guarantee that you're going to get the second job. So I think it would be— you'd have to be supremely confident to, you know, just not go to the first interview. Let's move on to our golden example. This is an example that one of our students have given us. We've got an example today of a time you made a mistake. And the example is this: I saw a patient in haematology clinic. They were referred for further investigations because of mildly raised Platelets. I took the history, examined the patient, and requested the appropriate investigations, which included genetic mutations to investigate for an underlying bone marrow disorder, which required special forms. I filled out the form, but instead of putting my personal bleep number, I accidentally put the clinic extension. I saw the patient 2 weeks later, and they hadn't had the test because there was an issue with the form, and the lab had tried to. Contact the number, but there was no response because I'd given the wrong number, and this was not escalated further by the lab. What do we think about this?

Okay, there's quite a lot in there, isn't there?

Yeah.

A little bit difficult to follow.

Okay, there's a couple of things that's just jumping out at me.

One, there's quite a lot of clinical detail.

Yeah, we don't need that, do we?

I can't really follow that.

No.

And I think probably a lot of people on the panel won't be able to follow that, and they'll be like, what? Platelets?

BOMO?

And it's probably not adding anything, that clinical detail.

Because the main thing is it's a special— it's some sort of important or a special test that needs a special form. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so I think cut, cut the clinical detail, then we can all understand what's going on. Now, the other thing that's jumping at me, I'm going to be honest, why didn't the lab just find another way to contact you? Because, you know, it's— if it's a special test requiring a special form and a special process, that says to me Doesn't happen very often, it's probably quite important.

Yeah, yeah.

I just, I don't, I'm not, I don't want to start blaming the lab here. I'm sure they're busy, etc., but I'm just, I don't know whether this is exactly what we're going for here. What do you think?

Yeah, um, yeah, because whose fault is it? I mean, you made a mistake, but it's not like you put a fake number. You put a clinic number. I assume someone is there anyway some of the time. Um, so yeah, it's kind of on the lab. Um, I would agree. Yeah, so I'm not sure about it.

One of the most important elements with the mistake example is that it's your mistake for sure.

Yeah.

And you can own it, and you can then rectify it for the patient or, you know, whoever else the mistake involved. And then there's some personal learning from it and some potential, maybe even some sort of team learning as well.

Yeah, because even the wording at the end of this example is the team tried to contact— the lab team tried to contact the number, but there was no response, and this was not escalated further by the lab— is like, well, the lab could have done something about it. And so I think when people have this idea that Yes, overall it was their fault at the root because they put them, you know, they should have put their own number. But really, you're really thinking like, come on, you could have done something else to help. Yeah.

Therefore, it's not enough. If the net learning here is now I write down my own personal bleep number, it's not enough.

Yeah.

I think there just needs to be a bit more to it. than that.

Yeah.

We always look, we don't want these mistake examples to be too big either, but I think there's an issue about, is this really yours? And also, what did you really learn from this?

Yeah. So, we think you can come up with something better for this. It's along, it's sort of along the right lines, but it doesn't quite get there, I think.

Yeah, dig a bit deeper.

Dig deeper. Let's go on to our interview question. This is a recent question that's been asked in an interview. The question is, how do you balance the demands of clinical practice with your personal well-being? What do you think about this as a question?

I think it's actually reasonably common, um, or a version of this in terms of some— it's something like How do you manage priorities? How do you, you know, balance work and home? You know, these kind of things.

Yeah.

So, and I think it's a really easy question to just be a bit sort of nebulous on. So I think what we probably want to hear is a bit of actual strategy about how you organise yourself.

I personally like to hear a little bit about the person in here and what they do to, to keep themselves healthy, well, you know, functioning normally.

Um, I don't know, do you— what, what do you think about that? I like to see a bit, a little bit about who they are.

Yeah, I mean, it's a nice question because it's about you. There's no— there's definitely no right or wrong, so you're— you have the opportunity to share your own strategies and also your own kind of thinking about how you manage to keep, you know, sane and healthy, um, even though you're working under a lot of pressure, and acknowledging the demands of the NHS, the service, whatever's going on in your specialty. So yeah, you can pick anything really, um, that shows a bit about you. You just want to pick— I would pick a range of 3 points that show different elements of what you do and bring in specifics. But yeah, I don't think you can really go wrong in this question, um, because yeah, there's no— they don't know the right answer, you know the right answer. So yeah, yeah, should be fine, I think.

I think often when people do this well, there's something about, you know, how I, um, organise myself at work, you know, how do I make sure that I'm doing the things that I need to do at work. And, you know, maybe even it's something about diary management, planning my day and my week, or whatever it is. How do you do that? Maybe there's something about, how do I cope with difficult cases? Do I reflect with a trusted colleague? Do I go to debriefs? What do I do? Do I do some journaling? Or what are the things that help me to put down the heavy stuff? And then maybe something about, and then, you know, I draw a line and I actively carve out some time for myself each week where, you know, I go and climb a mountain, walk the dog, do some yoga, whatever it is.

Because then I think then they're just hearing a little bit about you and who you are and they're going, oh, that's nice. You know, Tessa seems great.

Okay. Yeah. So I think it's, I think this is a Not uncommon question, should be fairly easy to do, um, and just as an opportunity to show a bit of you. But always you're showing a bit of you in a structured way that you've thought about and that you back up with examples, I think.

Yeah.

Okay, and then we're going to go on to our tip and trick of the week, which is, um, so this is about practicing, um, and one of the things that I think we see quite a lot is students who do answers, but they're not really doing them as live because they think about them a lot and they, you know, I don't know, plan it a lot before they actually do the answer. So, what's our tip and trick of this week?

So, get somebody to shout out random questions to you.

Yeah.

And then you just have to answer the thing.

Yeah.

Um, and what we often get our students to do, because people are, you know, recording answers and sending them us— sending them to us for review. So, one of our students' daughters is helping her with this, and we've had people's partners helping them as well. So they start the video, they shout out a random question to the candidate, and then the candidate takes a small pause as they would in the interview, 20 seconds maybe, formulates a strategy for the answer, and answers the thing.

Yeah.

It works so well. It's so good for her. And also, 'cause she's used— her daughter's using the question bank that we've got, 'cause we've got a— there's like a practice mode on it where it just shows up a question and then you can click to the next one. So she, she, the student wouldn't have seen the questions before. They, they are truly random from previous— it's, it's all from previous consultant interviews. And so it's like a really good way. For her to just get a question with no prep, not allowed to think about it, and the recording— you know, you're recorded from the moment you're asked the question, so you're— the pause, any thinking time's recorded as well, and then you go for it. Um, it's a great way to do it.

Yeah, look, anyone can answer a question. You know, if I, if I gave you, you know, tell me how you integrate clinical governance into your day-to-day practice, If you could think about that for 4 hours, make some notes, um, record it 3 times until you were happy, uh, and then send it to us.

Yeah.

You could— anyone could produce a pretty good answer there, but that's not how it's going to be in the interview.

Yeah.

You're gonna have to think on your feet. So this is why it's really important to do all of the preparation so that you know what your you know, unique selling points are. You've got all of the detail around that. You can integrate it into your answers.

You've got some solid examples you can use.

And then when somebody gives you a question, you go, oh, okay, which ones of my USPs can I use here? What's the, uh, you know, structure that I can use? Put the two together, go for it.

Yep, it's a great plan. And that, that's— we're going to miss that student's daughter firing questions at her when she's done her interview.

I know, I've actually really enjoyed that.

I know, it's been— Hint that she's gonna smash it and get the job, so I don't think we'll be seeing those.

No. Um, okay, well, we will wrap up there. Thank you for another episode. I will see you next time.

See you soon.