Hints and Tips for Completing Application Forms - South West ...

South West Peninsula Deanery
Career Planning Service
Interview Techniques
Introduction
Assessment centres for hospital specialties currently include interview stations. Some
interviewing may specifically be aimed at exploring your level of competency in a variety of
key skills. How can you prepare yourself for this type of interviewing?
The Basics
Know the job description and person specification as both documents will give you a
good idea as to the competencies required for that specialty at a specific level
Ensure that you have ‘quizzed’ people already training at that level and beyond as to
the skills they use on a regular basis and details of their daily responsibilities
Know your portfolio inside out so that you can recall appropriate examples to use
when demonstrating your competencies to your interviewers
Talk to doctors who have already been through the process and have secured a
training post. This will give you a feel for the range of questions that were asked
previously. Do not expect the same questions to be asked at your interview, this will
just give you a flavour of styles of questioning and some of the competencies that
were explored
Do not develop ‘stock’ answers as you do not know whether your answer will fit the
question asked. Have examples you can draw from so that you can tailor your
answer to the question
Develop techniques to help you structure your answers and keep them concise and
to the point
Suggestions for Structuring Your Answers
You may already have developed a technique that will help you successfully answer the
competency based questions – great! On the other hand if you find that you are struggling
you may find it helpful to familiarise yourself with the STAR Technique described below.
STAR
This particular technique has been used by many people for applying for jobs across a
variety of professions and has proved to be an effective way of getting an answer across in
a logical, efficient and effective way.
Cate Bennett – Career Planning Manager Page 1
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S T A R
Situation
Task
Action
Result
Break your answers down in the following way:
1. Situation/Task
a. Provides the interviewer with the context for the ACTION
• Make your description CONCISE and INFORMATIVE
• Concentrate only on RELEVANCE to the story and message you are
trying to communicate in your answer
• Only give clinical information if directly relevant to answering the question
Example (using an old GPVTS question)
Give an example of a situation in which you had to deal with a difficult
colleague. What did you do? What was the outcome?
Briefly describe the situation and how the colleague was being difficult.
2. Action
This is where you demonstrate and highlight the skills and personal attributes that the
question is testing.
• Explain what, how and why YOU did it.
• Demonstrate what you did i.e. talk about YOU not everyone else
• Give some detail, but beware of giving clinical information unless it is necessary to
your example.
• The actions you describe should highlight relevant skills.
3. Result
• Explain the outcome of YOUR action
• Describe what YOU accomplished
Cate Bennett – Career Planning Manager Page 2
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Skills\Interview\Interview Hints n Tips\Interview Techniques 06 11.docx

• Reflect on the situation by stating what you have learnt – this adds the personal
element and will show that you can think laterally and fully about a particular issue.
Explain what you have done since e.g. implemented new procedures or protocols
and give some idea of their success. This will help you ‘close the loop’.
Practice your Technique
• The South West Peninsula Deanery career planning service runs interview technique
workshops and/or 1:1 mock interviews. Contact judy.hollett@southwest.nhs.uk
• Ask a friend or colleague to put you through your paces, video yourself so that you
can see and hear your performance
Useful Resources
• Specialty Assessment Centres -
http://www.peninsuladeanery.nhs.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie
w&id=104&Itemid=117
• Hints and Tips for Compiling Your Portfolio -
http://www.peninsuladeanery.nhs.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie
w&id=468&Itemid=405
Cate Bennett – Career Planning Manager Page 3
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Skills\Interview\Interview Hints n Tips\Interview Techniques 06 11.docx