How to Own Your Mistakes and Impress the Interview Panel

Hello and welcome to the ACR Consultant Interview Podcast. I'm Tessa Davis.

And I'm Becky Platt.

And if you're a final year trainee or a locum consultant and you want to prep, not panic, then you're in the right place. Okay, welcome back to our next episode of our podcast. Great to have you here, Becky. How are you?

I'm great, thanks. How are you?

Great. Shall we get right to it? Okay. So first up, we have a question of the week, which is a question from one of our students. And the question that we've got this week is this: I'm softly spoken and it comes across during an interview like I'm not confident. What can I do about this? So what do you think about that?

I think that this is probably a kind of reasonable concern about, you know, as in a reasonably common concern about how you're going to come across to the panel. And I think the first thing to say about it is the panel are looking for a variety of different people to have on their team, and people who are loud and, you know, come across as being, you know, much more confident naturally are not the only people that we want on our teams. So actually, it's fine to go into the interview and be yourself, and that, that's what we want you to do. I think if you prepare well and you've got interesting things to say and you're coming across with, you know, nice examples and good delivery, being softly spoken is absolutely not a barrier to success.

I think one of the things here is, was there some feedback that someone gave them as well? Because sometimes when you get a piece of feedback like this from a previous interview, It knocks your confidence itself. So if someone said, oh, you seemed really quiet, or you seem very softly spoken, you should speak up a bit or something, it may be that that's what they're holding on to, and it may have been unfair feedback and based on other things. And I think it's probably a good reminder of the impact of one person's feedback and how that can affect people's performance going forward, and that not every piece of feedback you get necessarily is right or needs to be taken into account, and it's up to you to make sense of that. Just that the panel— every panel is going to be different. It's all made up of human beings. One person might have thought that they were not confident or too quiet, but the rest of the panel may not, and no one else might again. So yeah, I think it's just being mindful of the context of feedback and, and whether it's important and meaningful feedback or not.

Yeah, I think that's, that's really true, isn't it? Because actually, with any feedback, you've got to really decide whether there's anything in there for you. You know, is this something that I need to take account of, and how am I gonna develop from it? Um, and actually, is this feedback about your— you know, you don't come across as being confident because you're softly spoken— is that actually kind of a proxy for something else?

Mm.

And it was maybe easy for them to say that rather than to deliver some feedback that was actually a bit more specific. So I think if you've had that feedback about some— something about your communication and delivery, then work out, is that actually true? Or was it actually about my content? And therefore, and maybe it's easier for the panel to hang it on this. So I think, yes, as you say, work out whether this feedback is actually valuable to you.

Because content makes a difference to how you come across as well. It's not so much the volume, your volume, being softly spoken or not, but the reason we kind of hammer home so much with our students about having clear structure and signposting is that it projects confidence. It's like, I've got this, I know where this question's going, I know what I'm going to say, here's what I'm saying, and here's what I've said. And that gives confidence. You have your own confidence because you know where you're headed, but the interview panel do as well. And so sometimes if your answers are all over the place, or they're unstructured, or you don't know where you're going, the panel feels that as well. And so it kind of is a version of what you're saying as well, Becky, which is that they're hearing something that doesn't sound confident and then taking from that, well, this person is not confident. And then, yeah, just saying, well, you came across as not confident and you were very softly spoken. But usually, I think it would be unusual for someone to be told that their volume meant that they weren't confident. In an interview or, you know, in an interview situation, it's just, I don't think it's very likely. So I'd probably dig deeper into how you prepped and actually how you felt. So did you feel confident for the interview and did you feel well prepared? And if you can change that and go in with a clear plan, then you will come across as confident whether you speak loudly or quietly. So should we go on to our golden example of the week? So this is an example that one of our students have given us for a tell me about a time when scenario. What have we got for this week's example?

So, the example is, I was the medical registrar on call covering the inpatient wards of a busy hospital. At handover, I introduced myself to the team, including an SHO I had not worked with before. Halfway through the night, I was contacted by a nurse to report that the SHO was taking a long time to review patients. When I spoke to the SHO, it became clear they were not actually ready for this busy shift. were not trained to perform some of the basic tasks such as ABGs. I realised that I'd made a mistake by failing to properly understand the skill sets and experience of my team at the start of this shift. Okay, what do you think about that as a mistake example?

Well, I think one of the things that we really impress on our students is that the mistake, you need to own it. It needs to be your mistake, genuinely your mistake. one of the particular categories of things that we say to avoid is the buck stops with me mistake, which this probably falls into, which is, it wasn't really my mistake because I think we all know this was the SHO's fault, right? This is the SHO doing a job that they are not competent to do. Now, I know there'll be lots of factors that led to that happening, but really in that moment, you're being called because the SHO is underperforming. And when you find out that actually the SHO can't do their job, so it's really their mistake, not yours. But in order to make it your mistake, you're saying, The buck stops with me. I was responsible. It was my job to find out. And there is truth to that. It is, it is, the buck does stop with you. Well, I mean, it technically would be the consultant or their educational supervisor. You know, you can keep going and keep going, but you're missing a chance to genuinely own a mistake and be vulnerable because it's not really, it's not really vulnerability here. So although it's not technically wrong, I think we would say you could find a better example than this.

I think you're right. I think that ownership and that vulnerability bit is important. They need to show that— sorry, you need to show that you're human and that you can, you know, take responsibility for your own mistakes. And so, you know, when people deliver that mistake example, it's then really useful if you say, you know, I realised that I'd made a mistake by doing X. I felt absolutely terrible. I realised that this had had a significant effect on one of my patients, and I, you know, that bit of vulnerability, humanity, is actually the thing that connects you with the panel. Then you can go on and talk about what your learning is and about how you're going to avoid that next time. And if you're reflecting on you know, taking responsibility for one of your juniors, you can't really do that in exactly the same way, and I just— it's not as strong.

Yeah, so I think we would say try and think of another one. If you genuinely can't, then I suppose it's within the bounds of— it does— you could say there's learning, you know, because it's about your reflection on leadership, but realistically you're not going to do a full, like, CV checklist with all the juniors at the start of every shift. It's just not going to happen. So it's a bit— yeah, I think, I think it's a bit lacking in authenticity. Um, so I think, yeah, you could push yourself. And this one, you know, it's always really hard for people to come up with a mistake because you don't want to be vulnerable, you don't want to show something where you've messed up. Um, but the, the gold is, is that connection with being human. And so, um, it's very common that the first example you come up with It's really got a bit of a wall around you that's like showing that you're actually very good, but you want to push yourself beyond that just a little bit, not too much, because you're not— remember, we're not going to get them to overshare, of course, but we want them to push themselves a little bit more.

Back to the drawing board on that one, we think.

So next up, we've got an interview question that we're going to look at. So this is thinking how to answer an interview question, and the question that we're looking at today is, How do you balance the needs of trainees alongside service delivery? Now, I think this is a pretty common question. I do think it comes up reasonably regularly. Do you like this question? What do you think about it?

I do like this question. I think it gives you a bit of chance to kind of stretch yourself and deliver a nice breadth across your answer. This is a real opportunity to show some really great senior-level thinking. So how are you going to support your trainees? And also some system-level thinking around, but we do also need to make sure we keep things moving for our patients, you know, meet those KPIs and all the metrics, which you're also going to be talking about in your interview. And so I think there's, there's a nice opportunity. For delivering a bit of breadth here. I think you can probably think about, you know, how you integrate training opportunities and teaching into your day-to-day practice. So what do you do daily that provides a great training environment for your trainees? You know, maybe give an example of a nice teaching session that you've done, or, you know, How do you integrate your trainees into the board round or ward round in a meaningful way? And then also, you know, thinking about— I also like it if people discuss, actually, part of the way that we train people should actually involve recognising how to run the service. So particularly for our trainees who are a bit further along in their career, actually part of their training is Thinking about how do we keep the service running whilst also meeting people's training requirements. So, if you can add that on as well, I think that that elevates your answer in terms of consultant-level thinking.

Yeah, because I think when people hear this question first, they often think, like, I have no clue, like, I don't know how to do this. But the reality is, this is what we do every day, because you're working in a busy service, you're trying to make sure that Anyone who's junior to you still gets good quality teaching and training. So it's really just thinking, right, what do we actually do in practice? And so to remind yourself that, you know, this is like bread and butter stuff. It is that, you know, even though it's phrased in a senior level way, and you might not have thought— I think often people aren't thinking at reg levels so much about the service delivery side, But that the reality is, that's what we're doing when we're trying to teach people as well as see the patients. I do think there's a difference depending on the wording of this, because it comes sometimes in 2 ways. Because this, the way this one's phrased that we're talking about is, how do you balance the needs of trainees? But often it's, how do we balance the needs of trainees? Or how do we ensure trainees have a good experience? And I think there are 2 different ways to answer that. And it's important to make sure if you get this question that you're addressing the right one, because— How do you balance the needs of trainees? That's exactly what we're talking about, which is, well, I do teaching in the middle of whatever. I do a board round. I do teaching in the middle of a case or whatever it is. I do 5 minutes at the beginning. But that's a question that's specific to me or to the interview candidate. If they're asking, how do we ensure, then that's a more broader level question. So that's thinking how, as a team, how can we do that? And so I think if you answer the as a team question as me by saying what I do individually when I'm on a shift, missing that senior level, you're potentially missing that senior level thinking element as well. So, what you want to know in the how do we balance the needs of trainees is thinking about, if I'm not there, if it's not me on a shift, how do we still ensure that the trainees get good teaching? Like, I can say, oh yeah, I'm great when I'm on a shift to make sure I do all of these things, but what happens when I'm off? And so, that's about embedding things in place. So, we make sure we have a board round every day, we make sure there's protected teaching time. We make sure that everyone's got an educational supervisor or whatever it is. And so, yeah, I think it's just important to be aware of these 2 sides of this question.

Yeah, I like it. I think it gives you a nice opportunity to talk about multiple different things. It also gives you an opportunity to bring in, you know, some of your USPs. If you've got a nice USP around a teaching programme that you've set up, That's brilliant. Also, you know, if you've got something, you know, that maybe you've done where you've facilitated a trainee getting involved in a service improvement project, for example, or helping them, you know, run the shift one day or coordinate a clinic or something like that, that's an example of balancing the service delivery needs with training. And I think it just shows that you're actually thinking about this on a higher level.

Yeah. And the other thing is the GMC National Trainees Survey could probably get a mention here. So, we tell all our students to look up the GMC National Trainees Survey. It's published once a year in July, August. And you can drill down and look at the exact department, the exact hospital you're applying for, the exact department, and look at what the trainees' feedback is. It's a like terribly clunky website. It takes absolutely ages to get to wherever you want to go. So you need to set aside a good hour to be able to get to the right place and try and not throw things at your computer monitor. But you will get there eventually. And if you can look, you'll get a picture because they will know their GMC results because every hospital, if they're outliers, they will have to respond to it in some way to the education teams in the hospital and potentially further up as to how they're going to rectify it. So they will definitely know if they're outliers. So have a look through and you'll be able to see, well, actually, I know that you're really strong at this. For example, I know that your service does this really well, or I know that people had an issue previously saying that they weren't allocated educational supervisors or they weren't able to attend regional teaching. And so one of the things that we could do is X, Y, and Z or whatever. So use the stuff that you've seen in the GMC training survey that you can also talk to them about in the pre-interview meetings to get an idea of how they're responding to that. And then you could drop that into this question because I think Yeah, that would be a nice way of showing that you've done your research and that you know them. So, I think that would help strengthen the answer too. We're going to go on to our tip and trick of the week. What have we got this week?

Okay, this week we've got a subject that I think we could probably, like, fill at least, I don't know, 10 whole podcast episodes with on its own, but let's just try to stay focused. So, the tip of this week is, Start preparing before you get an interview date. Tessa, go for it.

Oh, okay. Where to start here? This is your dream job. Okay, I know that I— so we, you know, I know that everyone's got a lot on. You're finishing your training, you've got your ARCP or your CESR, you've got— there's loads of other stuff going on, life, whatever, all of these other things. But it's not a surprise that your consultant interview is coming up because, you know, you've been coming to the end of your training, you're eligible, you've had At least a year's warning, but you don't know the exact date, but you've, you know that it is coming up. And because this is your dream job, and because it, depending on what specialty you're in, you know, there may be just one place that you can work within your geographic area. Otherwise you're looking at missing the opportunity for years, potentially forever, or having to move your family or having to work somewhere you didn't want to. So if you know that this is your dream job, There is no reason not to just put everything you can into it. And if you think about how much prep you do for your exams, you should be putting even more because your exams, you just, you can do again if you, if you don't get them. This could be once in your lifetime that this job comes up. So there is no reason not to start prepping in advance. And it can be really stressful for people. I know, because it happens all the time, but when people Suddenly they've got an interview, it's two weeks, and they haven't done any prep, and it's for their dream job, and it's just a really crappy place to be because it feels really stressful. And then yeah, it just really affects your prep in the time you've got and your performance.

So you don't have any strong views on this?

I've never thought about it before. It's just a wasted opportunity. Don't you think? It's just like such a wasted opportunity, and it's like, oh no, like, why? Why? Of course you could do it in 2 weeks, you could. And we see lots of people prep in very short spaces of time, there's no doubt about it. You can definitely do it and you can get the job. But what you just don't want it to be a regret, like you come out and you just think, oh, I wish I'd have just started earlier.

Gina, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because, um, I always think, you know, that there are some people that come out of their interview, and they often contact us before they know the result, because we're in close contact with people, and we love that. And they'll say, do you know what, I know that I did everything I can, and whatever the result, I couldn't have done any more. And I think that's the position that you want to be in. So, you've got to put yourself in the position that whatever happens, you know that you gave it your all. Um, and, and actually, as you say, right, you know the job's coming. We also know that, that money's really tight in the NHS at the moment, and things are happening in weird ways. So sometimes that means departments that say, we've got no money, we've got no money, we've got no money, and then all of a sudden we've got some money. Now that we're advertising the job, we're telling you the, uh, interview date, and oh my God, the whole thing's happening within 10 days.

Yeah.

And then you, you look and you're like, But I'm on call for 7 of those days, and I'm going away for the weekend. What am I going to do? So, and, you know, just start preparing.

I know we're possibly labouring this point, but what we want you to do is start preparing. No, this is not labouring. This is important. This is the most important thing that you could do, is not wait until you get your interview date. And start, even if it's a small thing. I think it's also hard to motivate yourself when you don't have a date. Like, you've got a date for your exam, so you know when it's coming, but this you don't. But you know the ballpark, and even if you can start with small steps, you know, going through prepping your USPs, prepping your exam, something, starting to say answers out loud, and then you can ramp it up near the time, but it won't be a total surprise, and it's just going to make you feel so much better about the whole thing, and your chances of success are much higher.

I think we made that clear.

On that note, I think we will wrap up. So, we will be back in the next episode with lots of great stuff, including what to do if you're the internal candidate and how to add value to what you bring to the interview. So, thank you very much, Becky, and I will see you again next time.