Tessa Davis breaks down NHS consultant interview prep into manageable steps: start early, use spare minutes to rehearse answers aloud, and focus only on material directly relevant to the role. She offers a free list of 15 common questions to get started.
Don't be in a panic 3 days before your NHS substantive consultant interview. Instead, just start prepping in advance. The first thing that's important is to know that you should think about it early. Most people actually start thinking about their consultant interviews when they're coming up to the end of their training, because this is the time where people might start asking you, what is it you're going to do after training? People might be talking to you about jobs that are coming up, and you might be starting to think about your career prospects as well. Commonly, this is when people start mulling over what their options are and thinking about the beginning of their prep. But other people, they actually don't start prepping until the very last minute. Don't be that person. These people wait until not just that the jobs come out, they wait beyond that. Even after they put in the application, they wait until they actually get shortlisted and get a date for their interview and then start prepping. And that's a surefire way for you to get into a panic because you might get 1 week's notice or 2 weeks' notice, and suddenly you're gonna have to prepare for a very important interview for your dream job that's gonna give you job security. So instead of waiting till the last minute, start thinking about it early. It's important, you know, we, we want to get this substantive job so that we're not having to move around every 6 months, that we're able to plan for our future, and it's important that we do the prep. So as soon as you start thinking about it, That's your time to consider yourself starting prep. But the big question is, how much time is the ideal amount of time that you should have to put into prepping? And that's what we're going to look at in this video. Before we go on to the next piece of advice that I've got about when to start your prep and how to prep, I've actually put together something that will help you get started now. If you'd like to get a sneak peek at some interview questions, I've put together a list of the 15 most common questions that are being asked in in NHS substantive consultant interviews this year. You can download them for free at the link here in the video, and it's also in the description underneath the video. Happy prepping. What's the next key to knowing how and when to prep? Well, you need to make the most of the time that you have available. Commonly, even though you might start to think about your interview prep, you actually don't prep because you put it off, put it off. Put it off because you're waiting for the perfect day. Next week or next month, I'm going to have a full day or a full weekend, or maybe even an afternoon free, or I need to wait until I've got 3 hours free. There is no perfect time to start prepping. Actually, you can prep when you've just got 2 minutes. You can prep for, by practicing one answer for 2 minutes in between patients. When you're walking to the bus, when you're sitting on the toilet, you can think about some examples that you could share in your interview. So, You don't need to wait for the perfect day because I know we've all got competing interests. We've all got lots of things sucking our time, commitments at work and outside of work, and it is really hard to make the time to actually prep. So don't wait for like a bulk amount of time. Just start going when you've got a couple of minutes to spare. The next thing is that importantly, you need to streamline your prep. So when you're putting your precious time into prepping, Make that time count. That's what's really important. Don't waste time reading and reading and reading things that don't matter. A common thing that people spiral into is reading endless NHS reports or endless documents about the NHS structure. This isn't going to help you. No one is going to quiz you on the structure and funding flow in the NHS. If you know some information, some general information, then you might be able to include it in your answer. But that is a classic time-wasting thing to do because it makes you feel like you're doing something, but actually it's not going to help you. So what's important is to streamline your prep so that you're only prepping what you'll need and not wasting time. And this kind of leads on to my final point, which is that in order to prep, you have to practice. And that is another thing that people put off. And reading, reading, reading NHS reports is a common way to put that off. The other way to put that off is by writing and writing and writing and writing. Everything that you want to say in your interview. So writing all your strengths, writing all your examples, just writing, writing, writing down all the answers that you would have to questions. But that is not the same as actually answering a question. So when you're prepping and when you start to prep, just start practicing answers. What you don't want to do is to put off practice because I know it's stressful. I get that it's difficult to do. Put that off really until you're actually in the interview chair. Because for sure, if that's the first time or near the first time that you're actually answering questions under pressure, you're not going to do a good job. It's not possible. It's just like anything that you do in your professional life is the more you do it, the better you get. And that's what you're trying to do with practice. And all of these things that we've discussed in this video are ways to help you get going. So if you've just got 2 minutes, use that 2 minutes to practice a question. You can do it now, even if you've never done a question before, just look at a question. And set your stopwatch and just practice answering it. You'll start to get a feel for how to answer questions, what your flow's like, where you're struggling. Is it— are your answers too long or too short? All of these things will start to become more apparent as you practice, and they're going to get much easier the more you do it. So now you know how to make the best use of the time that you have available. There's still a problem, because knowing how to use your time is only part of the solution. What you really need to know is what to expect from the interview itself so that you actually go in prepared. And that's exactly what I'm going to explain in this next video, and you can watch that here.
