Inside The NHS Stakeholder Panel: Who’s Really In The Room?

Hello and welcome to the Ace Your 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. Welcome back to our Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast. I am here with Becky. Good to see you, Becky. How are you doing?

Great, thank you. Great to be here.

Let's get going. First up, we are going to talk about our question of the week. This is a question that one of our academy students has submitted, and the question this week is, I've been told I have a stakeholder panel for my interview. I have no idea what this involves. Can you help? What would you say, Becky?

Yeah, we definitely can help. And I think these are reasonably common, um, stakeholder panels, focus groups. I think they kind of generally mean approximately the same thing. Um, So the, the general setup is often this happens earlier on in the day than your interview. Sometimes it happens the day before or in a couple of days before. We've often seen that as well. What it involves is you being in a room with a group of people, stakeholders, who are not the same people as the people on the panel. So there'll often be people who are, who've got, you know, an interest in this post. So it, you know, for a consultant post, it's likely to be people like maybe service managers, senior nurses, and other allied health professionals. It may also be people from services who interface with yours. So for example, if you're going for a surgical job, you may have somebody from anaesthetics on your panel and vice versa. And their role is to basically see whether you're a good fit for the department. So they'll ask you normally a question each. They'll probably have some sort of scoring mechanism for those. And then once that's finished, they will give their answers to the chair of the interview panel, and that will— they'll use that to inform their final outcome. The important thing to say about this is you're in there on your own, so there are not other candidates in there with you, unless you're going for a chief exec job or something like that, when you often are in the same room as all the candidates. But at a consultant interview, it will be you and the stakeholders. So often 5 or 6 of them, I think, that type of number.

We've had a couple of paediatrics who've had panels with children and young people on them, and so you can get some left-field questions in these. One of my favourites, as you may remember, Becky, was when they got asked, have you ever stolen one of the black biros we have in our department? Which I think is an excellent question. I wouldn't expect to get this, but I thought it was a brilliant question. So yeah, you could get questions that are a little bit left field, but mostly I think they just tend to be stakeholder panels that ask similar questions to what you would get in the interview.

Yeah.

And they don't choose the candidate. They don't choose who's going to get the job. But like you say, they can make a recommendation to the chair of the main appointments panel. And they would consider that when they're making their decision. It's not that they give a score and that your score necessarily counts in the same way. The appointments panel will make the final decision. But I think if they said, like, Becky was terrible, we absolutely don't think you should employ her, then it would be very hard for the appointments panel to ignore that. So, it's just bearing in mind it's not the be-all and end-all. The main thing is your main interview. But you want to impress these people because if they make a strong recommendation in your favour, then it's going to be a massive advantage to you.

Yeah, and I think about who's on your stakeholder panel and what their interest is in it. So, you know, whenever we think about stakeholders, whether you're talking about a change project or whatever you're talking about, what is their interest in this? So in this case, what is their interest in the consultant post? What do they need from it? How will they be interfacing from it, with it, and therefore what do they need to hear from you? So for example, if you get a question from, you know, the head of nursing or the matron, you've got to think about what does the matron and what do the nursing staff need you as a consultant to be? And what therefore do you need to demonstrate in your answer? Similarly, if you get asked a question from a service manager from an adjacent specialty, what do they need from you? How does your service impact on their ability to deliver their service, and therefore, what do they need you to say? So just be really mindful in the way that you prepare for that and in the way that you answer those questions around making sure that you give people You know, what they need to hear. So, you can still use your USPs and all of the things that you've prepared for your main interview, but you might tailor the answers in a slightly different way according to who's answering it and what their interest in this panel is.

Yep. And I think the other thing is just you can ask before your interview, you can ask for more information. There's no harm just to reply to the HR person and say, can you tell me who's going to be on the stakeholder panel or what format it's going to take? And they might say, no, we can't tell you, but they might tell you something. And so it's always worth asking. But yeah, these are— I think I feel like they're becoming more common. You will know in advance if you're going to get it. It's not— you're not just suddenly going to walk in the room and it'll be there. They will tell you, so it won't be a surprise. So yeah, you just get yourself prepared for it and try and get as much information as you can. Absolutely. Okay, so we're going to look at our golden example of the week. This is an example that a student submitted to use for one of their tell me about a time when scenarios. So what have we got this week?

Okay, so this is, yeah, a golden example around a conflict with a patient. So, the patient was at the end of life. The patient's family had a violent grief reaction, and were lashing out at the team caring for the patient. They were really aggressive and verbally abusive towards the whole staff, including the nursing team and the doctors. They were also recording the encounter without the consent of the student and the team. What do we think? Is this a good example of conflict with the patient?

I mean, this is a really sad situation, isn't it, really? You know, the family are stressed, it's end of life, there's a lot going on for them. They're clearly under a lot of pressure and are not unreasonably emotional about it. I think, um, it's not one that I would use as a conflict with a family for, for that reason, in, in that there's so much more going on that it's a complex situation. It's not clear, um, to be able to say this is, this is a conflict and this is how I resolved it, because this is not going to be resolved really, because it's not really about the conflict. It's about what's going on with their— loved one. And so it's just, there's too many layers to make it a good example, I think. And then you've kind of added the recording without consent as an extra thing. Now, if you've got that as its own thing, there was a family who've come in with whatever, something very minor or common, and they were recording without consent, and whatever it was, you asked them to stop, then you could potentially, that could be a conflict with a family. But because of all the background I think there's too much going on, and it's too sensitive to say simply this was a conflict. What do you think? Do you agree, or what do you reckon?

I think no family, no human is at their best when one of their loved ones is dying. And I think, much as we're not going to tolerate, you know, physically aggressive behaviour or whatever, We've got to cut people a bit of slack around those times. And I just think you risk coming across as somebody who's kind of missed the point and is a bit intolerant and unsympathetic. So I think this, where we're talking about recently bereaved relatives or, you know, grief responses, or where we're talking about people who are behaving aggressively because they're mentally unwell, those are no-go areas for conflict examples, really, because I think we've— yeah, as you say, there are too many layers to this. There's multiple reasons why people are behaving that way when they are, and, you know, either incredibly unwell or very recently bereaved. And that's not particularly something that we should be calling out. That there are multiple other times where you will have had conflicts with patients. Let's be real about this. You can pick one of those that will just be safer and won't risk you coming across as somebody who's just a bit hard. So, I think no.

And just thinking about, like, our specialty as an example, thinking about paediatric emergency. So, conflicts with families might be parent getting very annoyed that they've been waiting for several hours and their kid's sick and they want to be seen, or they're annoyed that waiting to see one of the specialties and they've been waiting for hours and other people seem to be getting called in and they're waiting. Or even we've told them the blood sample clotted and we need to take another sample and they're annoyed at that. So these are simple conflicts where we are going to have to use our conflict resolution skills, but they're much simpler than this scenario where, you know, their relative is dying and they're finding the whole thing very stressful.

Yeah, I think just, just play it safe. Don't, don't risk coming across in the way— in a way that you didn't intend to.

Yeah. We're going to look at the interview question of the week. So, this is an actual interview question that you might get asked or that people have been asked. This week, the question is, how would your colleagues describe you in 3 words? What do you think of this question, Becky?

You can probably tell by my face that I don't— I mean, clearly I shouldn't be ever trying to play poker. I actually really hate this.

Yeah.

I think it's a really naff question, and I think it's got the ability to make you just answer in a really kind of naff way, just a bit sickly and a bit horrible. It's got cringe written all over it for me. So I suppose with that in mind, how would we answer it? So again, I think you've got to, you know, you want to show a bit of who you are. But you've also got to, you know, talk about some attributes that are palatable to the panel, clearly. Sometimes people align themselves with the trust values when they do that.

I was just thinking that, I'm accountable, I'm respectful, I'm caring. I know it's a bit cringey.

I'm compassionate, I'm caring, I'm inclusive. I think I personally would avoid that, because I think it just feels like you've crowbarred in the values, and it's just, I just think it's cringey. I would go for something that, that's honest. I would try to show a bit of myself. I would try to give some examples of, of why my colleagues would think that. Um, and, but I think it's got to come across as honest and authentic as well. Um, I guess for some people injecting a tiny bit of humour into this might work. Um, I don't know, what, what do you think? I need to stop cringing, so I'm going to see what you think.

I can't, it's so hard, but then you just need to embrace it. I think that this is a cringy question. Everyone's going to give a slightly off answer. I think, yeah, you just need to accept it's a weird question. And the fact that they're saying 3 words, they're pushing you to just choose a soundbite. And so it's really hard not to be too naff about it. But yeah, I think backing it up with examples, and you could bring in your USPs. Like if you said, well, you're innovative, for example, and then you showed a USP that backed up that you did some amazing amazing thing. Or even if you did say you're collaborative and that you've worked on this committee, been in this national committee role, and you have meetings every quarter, there's 12 of you on the team, and your role is to do— then you're kind of taking it from fluffy to more specific. And it sounds— although the buzzwords might still sound cringey, at least you're backing up with some specific examples. So, I think that's probably the strongest way to do it. What do you think? So I'm just going to raise the issue about MSF feedback here, because I don't love it when people talk about their MSF feedback, because inevitably your feedback is excellent, because that's how MSFs work. Because if you've got any common sense, you will only send it to people who will give you good feedback. So the fact that you say, oh, my MSF showed that everyone thinks I'm great, or I'm a great team player, I never— I don't feel carries much weight, but I know people do say it. What do you think about using it? How do you feel about it?

I don't love it either. You know, again, probably massively politically incorrect, I don't particularly think that MSFs add a whole load of value anyway, for the reasons that you've just said. I think that people send it to their mates, Uh, and there's a general expectation that everyone says something nice on it.

Yeah.

So like, if I said, are you happy if you send me your MSF? Yeah, I'll say something great about you. Cool, send me mine.

Yeah.

No. Um, so I'm going to try this, just take this, just standing down off my MSF-related soapbox. Um, I, I actually, I don't love it because everyone's had an MSF. everyone's got some nice feedback on it. So dig deeper, find something better than that. So, you know, if you want to demonstrate something, talk about some feedback that a patient gave you. You know, talk about, you know, somebody, you know, who did a great X about you, or, you know, did whatever the trust-specific, you know, way of you know, awarding stars to people is, or whatever. Or, you know, give an example of something that you've done, you know, for one individual and they gave you some lovely feedback on it, or from a team or something like that. Make yourself a bit different, make yourself stand out. Anyone can talk about MSF feedback. So find something that's unique to you and just make yourself sound a bit more interesting.

Yep. And hopefully this question won't come up because it's a really annoying question. But if it does, now you know how to answer it.

Absolutely.

All right. And our tip and trick for this week is about the value of timing yourself when you're practising your answers. So we put a lot of emphasis on this for our Academy students, don't we? Because I really— well, first off, answering questions out loud, we put massive emphasis on. So if anyone listening or watching is in the boat of putting off practice, just push yourself to do it. It doesn't get better the longer you put it off, and there's no right time to start. There's no, I'll practice once I've done X, Y, and Z. Just do answers now and get yourself started. And the timing of them is really important because you will start to realize if you're very short— some people just give very short answers, they're 90 seconds and then it's done, and some people go on and on and on. And actually, you won't know which camp you fall into Until you start using that stopwatch and timing yourself. What do you think the other advantages are of timing yourself in practice?

I think it's basically just that, understanding what it feels like to talk ideally for kind of 3 to 4 minutes on a particular subject. And, you know, thinking about the way that you structure your answers, the way that you break them down. And I think striking that balance between, um, giving enough depth and using your examples well to make, you know, to demonstrate to the panel that you know what you're talking about, whilst also, um, you know, giving some sort of breadth across your answer and not going on so long that they need to stop you. Um, so, and, and actually, most people will never have done this.

Mm.

Um, lots of people haven't had to do an interview for many years. And therefore they just don't know what it feels like to talk. So, you know, we generally say to people, your general interview answers should be 3 to 4 minutes. So think about what that looks like, you know, an introduction, a brief summary, and, you know, then the main body of your answer is going to be, you know, somewhere around the 2.5-minute mark, probably. So what does it What does it feel like to talk for 3 points and 45 seconds on each one of those? Just watch the clock while you do it, see how it feels. And once you can consistently do that comfortably, then don't look at the clock while you're doing it and look at it at the end and check whether you're still in the ballpark. I think that it's a really powerful way to aid your preparation.

Yeah, and once you've done it loads of times, you just, you know what it feels like to talk for that length of time. At the beginning, you've no idea. So definitely just putting in the reps and working out, you know, how to get your answers to that time. In reality, on the day, it's probably not going to be the exact same as in practice, but if you've got that muscle memory of this is what it feels like to talk for 3 to 4 minutes, you're much more likely to get closer to that on the day.

It's just one other strategy that you've got for preparing yourself, getting yourself in that zone, and reducing your stress on the day. So, you know, making sure that you've got all the, your examples prepared, you understand how to apply them to questions, you know how to use the structure, and you've got the feel of what that time length feels like. All of a sudden, that, that's, you know, that's a few things that you're not having to worry about on the day. So now you can just focus on bringing your A-game and your best self to the interview. And you've minimised the stress before you get into the room as much as you possibly can.

Yep. Solid advice. We shall wrap up there. Thank you very much, as always. We will be back in the next episode with more great stuff, including thinking about timing of presentations. If you get given a presentation for your interview, how to manage the timing of that. So thanks very much, Becky, and I will see you next week.

See you next week.