Why There Being A ‘Favourite’ Won’t Stop You Getting The NHS Consultant Job

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 the Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast. Becky and I are here today to discuss some more ideas around how to prep effectively for your interview. And as normal, we are going to kick off with our question of the week, which is a question from one of our academy students.

Not an uncommon question. I have 2 interviews within a couple of weeks. The second one's the one that 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?

Yeah, it's a bit of a stress, isn't it? Interviews, they're like buses. You wait, you wait, you wait, and then suddenly people— lots of people have lots at once. So, you're not in a unique position here. It does happen. It's okay. And what you're trying to do is be sensitive to being courteous to people and professional, but at the same time, you also need to do what's best for you. So, what I think would be the probably least sensible decision is to say, well, I'm just not going to go for the first interview because that's not the job I want, and I'll just pull out. And then go to the second interview because you could be shooting yourself in the foot, and you don't know how the second interview is going to go. I mean, maybe it will go fine, but you don't know. So I think it's a bit silly to pass up another job, assuming you you would take that job as your second option. So then it's just thinking about transparency versus what you actually need to say, and there's no right or wrong with this. So in the end, you're going to have to be open with someone if they offer you a job and you. You're not sure if you want to take it. So, if you go to the first interview and they offer you a job, but you have another interview in 2 weeks, yes, you could say, yeah, great, I'm going to take the job, and then 2 weeks, 3 weeks later, pull out of that first offer. That's going to really annoy people if you do that. It's really going to rub them up the wrong way. It's not that you can't do that, and to be honest, by 3 weeks after, you're probably not going to have signed a contract yet anyway, so you could just turn around then and say, no, I don't want the job. But you have to accept they're going to be very annoyed with you, and that's because it's a, it's a massive inconvenience getting together a panel, getting the job advertised, approved, getting together a panel, spending time shortlisting. They've, they've offered it to you, they've turned down the other people who didn't get it. It may not be within a window where they can offer it to them, or maybe that other person's accepted another job. It is an absolute pain, and they will be annoyed. And, uh, You you would need to accept that, and I don't think that would be the right right way to handle it. But technically, you could do that. What you can also do is when they offer you the job, say, "Fab, I'm really excited. I just want to be honest with you that I do have another interview coming up in two weeks. Would you be happy to hold the offer and for me to let you know my decision in two weeks' time?" And then you're you're honest with them, and it's it's up to them what to say. So. What I think is that there's not much benefit to them to say, no, you have to tell us now, because then they're essentially in that first situation where they're forcing you to say yes, but actually you really want another job and you might turn it down in 2 weeks. So that's going to leave them in a worse situation. But you'll need to see what they say. And I think often, Becky, when we have students in this situation and they ask to hold for 2 weeks, normally someone will say, yes, that's fine. We're happy to wait for 2 weeks. Would you agree?

Yeah. People do, yeah. I think generally most panels, they might feel a little bit aggrieved about it.

Yeah.

But they're not gonna, you know, it's, it's more inconvenient for them to have to, to, to start all over again. Um, I suppose the— I think the other thing to say about this is don't, don't tell them this before the interview.

Yeah.

That there is something about, you know, let, let's be honest, but let's not shoot ourselves in the foot. It shouldn't be taken into account during your interview, but let's face it, they are a panel of humans. So, I think don't tell them this until they offer you the job.

Yeah, and it's interesting because we had a student recently who was very transparent before, and actually felt that worked in their favour because they had— everyone knew about everything and they didn't need to feel stressed about it. And in that situation, they knew both the teams very well, and so they were able to gauge how it would go down. I wouldn't say it's an absolute. There are situations where you could be transparent, but exactly like you're saying, you don't want to go into the interview telling them that actually you prefer a job in 3 weeks' time, because if it's neck and neck between you and someone else, then whether they're supposed to or not, who's to say that's not going to sway? Surely you would give it to the person who definitely wants the job rather than someone who might turn it down in 3 weeks. So, I also think that it's better just don't— you don't need to tell them this beforehand because you don't want it to sway their decision. But once they offer you the job, then you should tell them. And there may be exceptions. Obviously, it's not an absolute rule, but in general, that's what we recommend to people, and that seems to work pretty well.

Yeah, I think so.

And next, we've got our golden example. So, this is looking at an example that a student's given us that they're going to use. And this situation is, An example, tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a colleague. So the example they've given is that they got feedback on their MSF from an allied health professional that said that it felt that they needed to listen to opinions from the wider MDT during inpatient MDT meetings. So Becky, what do you think? Is this a good example of a conflict with a colleague?

I think the first thing to say is, you know, is it actually an example of conflict at all?

Yeah.

Um, because I, I think it's actually an example of some feedback, uh, that you got, um, on your MSF, which, okay, you know, should, should be anonymous. Um, and therefore we can argue about whether they are or not, but that's, that's the way it should be. If you think about the reason why they're asking you to tell them about this conflict with a colleague. What do they actually want you to demonstrate? And we've talked about this in a previous episode. Actually, what they want you to be able to demonstrate is your expert ability to de-escalate conflict. But in this particular example, you're saying, I've got some negative feedback that I didn't really like.

Yeah.

But it doesn't really demonstrate conflict.

No, and of course there is no way to resolve it, is there? Because you don't know who it is.

Yeah, it's all sorts of awkward. And I think the other thing for me is there's a bit of a red flag around this, isn't there? Because actually what this member of the multidisciplinary team is saying, you know, the allied health professional is saying, actually, this person doesn't listen to me in the MDT setting. I mean, that's a red flag right there, isn't it? You don't want to be telling the panel that kind of thing. I think any examples that show your communication in a negative light are just not for sharing at interview.

Yeah, because this is a chance to show your communication in a positive light. It actually isn't asking you for a negative at all in this question. It's a scenario where you had a conflict, and you can actually choose a safe conflict that wasn't your fault or anything like that, and it's just about how good you are at resolving conflict, whereas By choosing this example, you're just showcasing some negative feedback. They didn't even ask for any, and you're just saying, oh, well, my colleague doesn't think I'm good in an MDT. So, I think it's totally shooting yourself in the foot unnecessarily.

Yeah. I think it comes under the heading of throwing yourself under the bus. Just don't do it. It's unnecessary. So, I think we're saying, don't use this example.

Don't use this example, but remember that actually it's important to do these steps before your interview. Because if you're just plucking it out of your brain on the day, this is the sort of example that you would pull out. But the fact that you're thinking about it before, and you can filter that and say, right, that's not an ideal example, let's find another one. It means that you'll have the examples that you know are safe and good to use for the day, so you can be more confident going into it. So definitely better to go through this process. And it's common to pick bad examples first and then have to cycle through them. That's fine. But you should be doing that process well in advance of your interview.

Should we think about an interview question then that one our students has recently had. Okay, so the question was, how do you bring honesty and integrity into your working life? What do you think?

I don't love this question, I have to be honest. I guess it's come up. I don't think it's the most common phrasing of it, but something around professional standards or professional conduct probably does come up. So, it's asking, bringing honesty and integrity into your working life. I think it's thinking about, always thinking, how can you bring specifics into a non-specific, potentially non-specific question? And talking about being honest, being a good person, all of that is very subjective. And actually, what you want to do is bring in the objective measures that you can. And so, I think referencing the GMC professional standards is important. So GMC Good Practice Guide, thinking about, right, well, this is actually a way that we can objectively say that someone is meeting professional standards. And you could pick 3 elements of that to focus on. And so that's thinking about transparency with your patients, keeping yourself accountable, maybe looking at auditing your practice, making sure you're delivering best patient care, working well in teams. So there's lots of elements to it. And what I would do is rather than listing loads of things is pick a few things that you that you can showcase evidence with rather than having to explain, I'm really nice because lots of people say they like me, or, I've got really good MSF feedback. Actually picking something specific. So, I make sure I deliver evidence-based care. I go to conferences. I've published 5 papers or something, or I've published— just did this study that looked at 1,000 patients. That is much stronger than just saying, well, I make sure I look at a recent guideline. So I think choosing projects that showcase how you are demonstrating the GMC professional standards would be good. And you probably got some of these thinking about how you know you deliver quality care, because being— showing integrity and honesty is also about delivering quality care, but then owning up when you make a mistake. And so part of it is, how are you part of a patient safety process, of an open disclosure process? So you could bring in an example of a time you did duty of candour here.

Yeah.

Because I think that is a chance where you're showing honesty, you're showing integrity, and you're owning up, even if it's not your mistake, to the team's mistake, and being part of that governance process with patients. So I think these are the elements that I would pull out. What other things do you think you'd put in, Becky?

Yeah, again, I don't absolutely love this question. I suppose you could talk about something where you've challenged a probity issue or where you've contributed to some sort of open culture working. I guess it could be something where you've signposted or supported somebody through a whistleblowing process. I would suggest not an example where you've been the person who blew the whistle because we wouldn't want to address that in an interview.

No, and similarly, not the time when you were the person at the centre of an essay. Or something like that. Because again, they're not asking you for a negative here, they're asking you to show something good. So don't throw yourself under a bus by saying some awful situation where you made a terrible mistake and then you had to apologise to the patient.

So, so I think it's, as you said, you know, thinking about GMC professional standards and 3, you know, kind of varied examples along that. Um, yeah, I mean, it, it, as you say, it could be a time where you have delivered duty of candour But we don't need you to share a time where you were honest about one of your mistakes because that's not what they're asking you to do here. So, just remember, just keep this a bit contained. We're not looking for you to confess all here.

Yeah, I think people forget that because in the end, it's still your interview. You're trying to be you, but you actually want them to give you the job. So, if you fall into the trap of oversharing or just confessing to all your worst things that have happened in the interview, it's not going to help you. A little bit of honesty is fine, but you don't need to overdo it. You want them to employ you, you want them to think you're a safe pair of hands and a great team player, and that's what you're trying to demonstrate throughout the interview.

Be the best version of you.

Yes, exactly. Be yourself, but just not, maybe not your full self. You can hold back some of the worst bits, and they'll have the pleasure of finding out all these bits over the next 20, 30 years, so it's fine. There's plenty of time.

Exactly.

Great. Okay. And then we're going to talk about our tip and trick of the week, which is how to deal with this, which is one of the most common things that people say to us when they apply for jobs is, there's a favourite for the job. It's not me. There's someone else who's a favourite for the job. So, we hear this all the time, don't we, Becky? And what advice would you give to people who feel this way?

I think this is kind of awful, and this comes up fairly regularly, either that people feel that there must be a favourite, and this commonly comes up when there's a locum in the post, and it's not me, so they must be the favourite, or maybe sometimes, there's all this chat about, oh, it's so-and-so's job.

Yeah.

That's a common one, or even worse, they've been told, actually, we pretty much earmarked this job for someone else. That's awful.

It is. I don't know how that happens, but it does. It does happen. Um, yeah, I know, it's bad.

So, I think that the first thing to say is, if it's a job that you want, you've absolutely got the right to apply for it. Um, and once you go into a job, particularly if it's a substantive interview job, Once you are in that room in the interview, it's a level playing field. Um, though, so they should have, you know, a robust, um, and transparent way of scoring that. Um, all the panels should score you, and then, you know, the, the job should go to the person who scores the most on the day. So it shouldn't matter that there was a favourite for the job, uh, because it should depend entirely on what you say in the room. Now, I suppose it's important to recognise that if somebody is in the locum post, or they are, you know, the favourite for one reason or another, they may have more knowledge specific to that job than you've got. So it's your job, therefore, to do your due diligence around making sure that you've got as much information ahead of going into that room as you possibly can.

Yeah, because they might have—

It's yours for the taking.

Yeah, exactly. They might have been the locum, you have the knowledge, but you still need to be able to use it during your interview. They could be the locum and a terrible interviewee, and in the end, it's set up to be fair. And that, in a substantive panel in particular, that's why the layperson's there, that's why the college rep's there, is to make sure that it is a fair competition and it's not just a case of, oh, we really want Becky, so we're going to give her the job. The whole system's set up for that not to happen. But I don't know, I can't say that it never happens. It shouldn't. But in the end, you just need to assume that people are there to make sure it's fair game on the day and it's a level playing field. And the only thing that you can't control, well, lots of other stuff, but you can control how well you perform on the day. And in the end, if you perform better than the other candidate, whether they look better on paper or not than you, if you score higher, you're the person who's going to get the job. And how often do we see, Becky, one of our candidates gets the job over who's supposed to be the favourite, the locum? It happens all the time. Every week it happens, you know.

Great achievement. What a coup to get the job over the favourite.

Yes.

So, I think it's an open process. You can apply for it. You should do all of the prep that you possibly can do to put yourself in the best position, and don't let yourself be psyched out by the fact that there's a favourite. And then just go in there, do the best that you can, smash it on the day, and then you can still get the job.

Yep. Okay, great. I think we will wrap up there. So, thank you very much, Becky, as always.

Thank you.

Absolute blast talking to you. And next week, we're going to be covering some more great topics, including this question around what happens when you get an interview day and you're actually away on holiday. And what do you do when you're overseas, but the interview is happening? So, we'll chat about that next week and look forward to seeing you there.

Great. See you soon. Bye.