NS podcast Interviews

This Nursing Standard podcast episode focuses on how to prepare for and succeed at interviews. It discusses the importance of informal visits before the interview, practicing answers out loud, and using storytelling to answer interview questions. The episode also provides advice on coping with common interview questions and emphasizes the need for thorough research and preparation. It highlights the significance of practicing answers out loud and making a good first impression through body language and appearance. Hello and welcome to the Nursing Standard podcast. I'm Clare Lomas, Career Development Editor at RCNI and this episode is all about how to prepare for and succeed at interview. So should you go for an informal visit before your interview, practice answering your questions out loud and how can you use storytelling to help you answer interview questions? This episode will answer all these questions and more with advice on how to cope with some common interview questions such as the classic icebreaker, tell us about yourself. This is a recording from a seminar delivered at one of our nursing careers and jobs fairs held in Manchester. Good morning. Thank you. A bit of audience reaction, that's what we like. Welcome to this seminar on how to prepare for interviews, how to succeed at interviews. Just to get a sort of temperature from the people in the audience, who really looks forward to interviews and loves them. No, no, no. Who's a little bit nervous? Yes, a few people. Anyone terrified of interviews? One or two hands going up. Okay. Interviews is the thing when we think about going to the job market that most people's heads go to, because it's the most scary bit, because you've got to sit in front of someone and tell them how good you are. And most people don't like telling people how good they are because we don't like selling ourselves, do we? So, a little bit about the RCN. As I say, I'm an affiliate career coach with the RCN. Things that we can help with. So, if you're an RCN member, you get this as part of your membership. It doesn't cost you anything extra. We can help with CVs. We can check your CVs, your personal statement. We can help you when you're just feeling stuck in your career or unhappy. We can help, obviously, with interviews. That's what today is all about, or this morning. And we can do general career coaching as well. But let's talk about interviews, because we've only got half an hour, so we've got a lot to cover. And I want to share lots of top tips with you, and two particular tips that in over 20 years of career coaching, people consistently come back to me and say that made all the difference, not just to how successful they were, but to how they felt during the interview. Okay, so we'll come to them as we go through. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about what happens before the interview, because what happens before makes a huge difference to what happens within the interview. So, we talk about how to prepare. Of course, we need to talk about the questions that you're going to be asked and the questions you might want to ask of people. And we'll talk a little bit about what you're going to do after the interview. So, let's start by talking about what happens before the interview. And we've got five key tips that you might want to make a note of. So, the first one is about informal visits. Who's done informal visits before? Anyone here? Yeah, one or two of you. It's a really good idea. If you're applying for a job, ring them up, ask for an informal visit. And even before that, most organisations are really open to you having an informal visit. And it gives you a chance to create a good impression on them before you get anywhere near probably applying, but certainly going for the interview. So, they're already on your side. It also gives you a chance to see whether you've got a good impression of them as well. Because remember, interview is a two-way process. It's not just about, are you right for them? It's about, are they right for you? So, it allows you to gain insight by asking questions about fear. What sort of set off in an interview? What's it like working here? What sort of skills and qualities are you particularly interested in, in the people that work in this department? So, it allows you to do that research beforehand and to ask questions and to think about also, at that period, what's important to you about work? What do you need to get from it? So, in other words, your sort of career values, that's something that you can ask about to check, is this a place that I even want to apply for or even want to interview at? Tips on what they're looking for at interview, what sort of things it will be beneficial for you to say or research ahead of an interview and maybe even if you're doing it early enough before you get to an application form. And I suppose the overall summary of that is, it kind of breaks the ice because it means that when you get to interview, you possibly have already met the people that are interviewing you. So, it makes you feel a lot more comfortable when you're in that interview room. So, make sure you do your homework. You've got the job spec, you've got the person spec, the job description, you may have people that you can talk to outside of doing an informal visit. Who do you know who's worked at that place or maybe knows people who work at that place? Go and talk to them. Allow them to tell you what's in there and get those insights for the interview. And it's a good opportunity for you to sort of revise your statement. Make sure that you look, particularly if it's a personal statement or a CV, you've probably sent several to lots of different places. Make sure you've revised exactly what you've sent them because that's what they know about you at this point. So, the bottom thing there talks about employer values. Now, values are a big thing, particularly in healthcare organisations. So, you need to look up, if it hasn't come through in the job pack, look at their website, speak to people, find out what their values are and think of examples of how you match the values of that organisation. Research can happen, as I say, through talking to people but remember the internet's there, remember the job pack. Research all of these things so that you understand about not just their goals and their vision but what's the community that they serve? Do they serve a very local community? Are they an international type of organisation? So, you understand exactly what their organisation is like. So, more questions. We're going to talk a little bit in a little while about what are the questions that you're likely to be asked at interview and how will you answer them? But ahead of the interview, you can pretty much predict almost everything that they're going to ask you and you can prepare your answers for those things. So, you need to look at the job description, look at the person specification, look at the things that you've put on your personal statement or on your CV and make sure that you've got examples so you can talk about those things and give them examples of how you match the job description. It's no good just sitting in there and saying I've got good leadership skills, I'm a good team player. You need to be able to give examples and a lot of those examples you will have started at least on your personal statement or your CV. The other thing to think about, we'll come on to this again a little bit later on when we talk about what happens in the interview, is what questions are you going to ask them as well? So, it's important to think about that and I'll share some ideas with you but it's important to think about what do you need to get from work to know what questions to ask them. And the final thing is practice, right? Practice, practice, practice. It won't be the last time I say this, we've only got 20 minutes left and I will say it again, it's one of the most important things you can do. Now a lot of people when they map out their interview answers, some people write it as a script first of all, some people just make some bullet points, some people draw a mind map. Do what works for you as you prepare your answers so that you can remember them, you'll know what works for you. If you don't, experiment with different ways of doing it so you find out what works. But what happens for a lot of people in their head that they read through their answers or they're just sort of reading it through in their head, the most important thing with practice is do it out loud, all right? You must do it out loud. As I said at the beginning, there are two things that people say make the difference and this is what people say to me, it's not what I'm just saying because I think it's a good idea, this is what people I work with have said to me consistently for over 20 years. Practicing out loud makes all the difference when you get into interview. Right, so do it in a room on your own, do it with your partner, with friends, book a session with a career coach at the RCN, whatever you do, practice out loud speaking your answers and it's a bit like when you play a sport, drive a car, play a musical instrument, you get that muscle memory. What happens is people say and these are phrases that people actually use, they say oh it's like magic, I almost knew what I was going to say before they finished asking the question. Now I wouldn't recommend that you just launch in with an answer until you've listened properly to what they've asked but it does make a difference. So practice and practice out loud. So we've done all of that preparation and now we get to the actual interview. So we're going to talk about the sort of the pre-bit I guess as you come into the interview, that body language and making a good first impression and we'll talk about the questions that you're likely to get asked and we'll talk about some of the common questions that come up and I'll give you some ideas of how you might answer those questions. So first impressions, I mean I'll just put these up here because they all kind of link together. So it's about making that good first impression, it's about how you look as much as what you say and how you look is not just how you're dressed, I mean which obviously you do need to look smart and whatever for an interview but it's about do you have a smile on your face? Are you engaging with that conversation? The first impression is not a big interaction, right? You're probably meeting with them, you're going hi thanks for inviting me for interview, I'm really looking forward to finding out more about this job. It's a little thing but that first impression, whatever it is and you'll know this because you meet people every day, whatever that first impression is somewhere in your mind even if it's subconsciously you're trying to back up that first impression for the rest of the interview or the rest of the meeting. So make sure you talk about it in a session like this, if you need to you can practice it but I mean when we talk about it in a session like this it sounds like oh my gosh there's something new I've got to know, well you haven't because you all do this all day every day especially in nursing, you're all out there meeting people, greeting people, making first impressions, you're already really good at this, just make sure you continue to be good at it when you're in the interview and when we talk about first impressions remember it's not just the interviewer or interviewers, right? Everybody you meet during that time and that interview process could have an input on whether or not you get the job, right? So people who are on reception, where you sign in security, whatever that's called in that organisation can have a big influence on whether you get the job. They are very often asked by interviewers what did you think of the people we had in today? I'll give you an example, not from nursing but it applies in nursing as well, so I knew a guy who runs a carpet company, he's got 30-40 employees, he needed a new salesman and he interviewed a number of people and he got this guy and he said that is the best salesman I have ever interviewed but when he went to his PA and he said what did you think of the candidates we have in today? She said that that particular person was condescending, talked down to her and on that basis even though it was the best salesman my friend had ever interviewed he didn't get the job. So you've got to be able to show that you fit in an organisation, so just bear that in mind. Okay and yeah I suppose the other thing is show some enthusiasm when you make that first impression, right? And you need to do that throughout the interview, get across why you're passionate about what you do and about the job that you're interviewing for because a lot of the interviewers they know you can do the job because they've seen your personal statement, your CV, your application, they've seen that's why they've invited you in for an interview because they know you can do the job and they want to check that out but they also want to know are you passionate to do it? Are you really interested in working here or is it just for the money? Body language, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this and yeah make eye contact that isn't staring at people in the face all through the interview because it's a bit creepy all right but it's like make contact around the face area, when you're making a point look someone in the eye, when you're greeting someone look them in the eye and it's just a really good way of creating some rapport with people. Smile, it's okay to smile in an interview, it's okay to be enthusiastic in an interview because actually that's getting you across and that's why all of that preparation we talked about is really important because when you've done that it allows you to relax a bit in an interview, it allows you to smile, it allows you to let your personality come through and I'm not saying it'll happen for you but I have worked with people who've come back from interview and said I really enjoyed that and actually you know this is about you creating the next step of your career so you know why shouldn't you enjoy it a little bit and the stuff about hands and things, I haven't got a seat up here today but yeah if people, I've heard people say this to people who are going through an interview, don't wave your hands about, don't use your hands, hold on to the arms of the chair or sit on them or something like that, it's rubbish, if you use your hands to communicate then use your hands all right, if I was sitting on the chair holding on to the arms I would very quickly struggle to get my words out so if that's how you communicate, communicate, that non-verbal bit of communication is as important as that verbal bit of communication so let's sort of talk about who's done video interviews, anybody here done video interviews? Three or four of you, not many of you, it's becoming an increasing part of the job market is video interviews all right so a few things to bear in mind when you're doing a video interview and obviously still make sure that you're still smartly dressed and I know they can only see this bit but make sure that you're suitably dressed all the way down as well just in case for some reason you have to get up because and I'll give you an example of this all right one of my colleagues worked with a guy and this was a young guy and I'm not saying it would necessarily happen for us slightly less young people but I have come across it he's in the interview and the interviewer said can you just close the curtain because I'm getting some reflection from the sun sun coming in from the side so he had to set and he had his boxers on nice shirt though nice shirt right it doesn't create a good impression I'm just saying you know make sure that you create an environment where you can feel confident so make sure especially if you're doing this at home but it applies if you're doing it at work as well make sure you're in a room where nobody's going to disturb you make sure that everybody around you in the house if it's at home at work knows they are not to disturb you unless the building's actually on fire not to start streaming massive video games that interrupt your connection not to start playing loud music so that you can concentrate on doing a good job on that interview and just make sure as you set the the interview up and listen you can practice this so log yourself onto a zoom get yourself on your smartphone check that the lighting's good if I'm sitting over there with the window behind me all you'll see is a silhouette they need to see your face and the other thing with with video interviews is when you want to make eye contact remember the screen is down here the camera is usually at the top if you're looking at them on the screen to them you're looking down if you at the points where you want to make eye contact with them look down the lens of the camera okay I think we've covered that yes right let's get into the the questions that you're likely to be asked we've created three particular sort of categories for questions broadly there are the open-ended questions and there are competency-based questions and there are the scenario-based questions that will be particular about the type of job that you do and relevant to the role that you're going for so let's look at those open-ended questions they are often as it says on the screen they are often the icebreakers but what they're trying to do is find out a little bit about you as a person it's an opportunity for you to tell them a bit of a story that gets across why you do what you do why you're passionate about what you do that you have a good match for what they're looking for and that you really want to work for them so that although they're they're sort of the sort of question which you might go oh I don't know how to answer that if you're asked it and you haven't prepared if you have prepared they're some of the best questions that you can get asked because you've got control of what you say and how much you say in those answers so that a lot of the answers to these will be quite similar so I'm going to focus on the top one there tell us about yourself now there are some ideas up on the screen here about things you might want to include so I want to talk about how you might structure that answer so first of all if you haven't prepared it's like missing an open goal if you have prepared this is the best question that you can get asked at the start of an interview and if you've prepared well you might be talking for two or three or four minutes it's a big answer and I think what we need to do as interviewees is to take control of that situation and say okay I'm going to choose how to answer this because we don't know really what they're after but what we want to do is maybe start by building a brief picture of your career background so it might be so I qualified as a nurse in 2001 and my first roles were in these areas and these areas so talk through briefly your career which led me to and then get into your most recent job and this is where you're going to spend the most of your time and that's about talking about the things that you do that match the requirements of the job so with a bit of planning you can give an answer where you pretty much touch on all of the key points of the job description so by the time you've finished talking they're thinking wow this person's got a really good match for what we're looking for and that's what they're trying to back up for the rest of the interview then so it's a really good opportunity to create an answer that matches you specifically to the job refer to some of the things you've done maybe some of the benefits and the impacts and the difference that you've made and the other thing to include here that will really help you stand out is why are you in that interview why did you bother to come along in other words why are you enthusiastic about working for this trust this organization and why are you interested in this role and why do you think you could be successful in this role okay so it's a big answer but with a bit of preparation it can be the best one you ever get best answer you ever give at the start of an interview because it pretty much sells you into the job the other thing that with this answer because it's big and these open questions are often quite big is you're talking for maybe two or three minutes as I say and what happens as an interviewee particularly at the start of an interview is we may be still feeling a little bit of nerves and we get to the end of this answer and yes you're my interviewers I've given you this answer and I stop talking and there's a silence because as interviewers you're probably making a few notes or you're thinking what will I ask about next and as an interviewee I'm thinking there's a silence here I don't feel comfortable with this what I do is I just start talking again whatever I say because I did all of that preparation and practice is not adding any value I'm usually either repeating stuff I've already said or I'm adding stuff that isn't really relevant so it's like watering down my answer so when I stop a good trick for you to use in an interview is ask a question back to the interviewers so I might give that answer I talked about and then say is there anything else you wanted to know about me that I haven't talked about in relation to the job or have I answered that question fully for you so just a little question and what it means is that they know and you know that it's their turn to talk next all right so it gives you a chance to just sort of have a little breather go okay that went all right it's all okay okay so let's talk about competency-based questions there is a competency style of interview that a lot of organizations use and it's you will have if you get to that stage a competency profile for the role and there will probably be a couple of people one asking you questions about competencies questions like these on the screen and the other one might say nothing and just be making notes as you talk just so you know if you come across those types of questions but there is a really good strategy for answering these questions that actually will help you in pretty much every other question you're asked in an interview and the reason who's heard of the staff technique before anybody okay no hands went up right this is the other thing that people say makes the biggest difference when they're going for interview and when they're in an interview all right it's called the staff technique this is a framework that allows you to create stories about things that you did and give examples without feeling like you're selling yourself so you're just telling a story the framework does the selling so staff stands for situation, task, actions and results so let me give you an example so describe a time when you've had to resolve a conflict in the workplace so situation a relative so this is where i'm giving a specific example all right so think of specific examples if you can a relative was complaining their mother hadn't been discharged and was shouting loudly on the ward task so what did i have to do about that i needed to diffuse the situation and minimize disruption to the other patients on the ward so the situation task is just setting up my story it's usually really really brief but what it says to the interviewer and the interviewer's brain in particular is i'm about to hear a story human brains love stories so then we find um it says i assured the relative uh i'd look into this invited them to a side room to discuss i listened to their concerns whilst remaining calm empathized with them speaking calmly i advised them the delay was due to the doctor being called to emergency and apologized for this so listen we haven't got time for a big story on a uh or room for a big story on a small slide but your actions bit is the big bit of your answer this is where you talk through step by step how you did it and what happens then is not only do you answer the question but they pick up on lots of different skills and personal qualities that you've got that you might not have mentioned by name so they would describe it as an interviewer i've got a good feeling about this person right so in this story they will pick up things that they said empathy things that they haven't said dealing with difficult situations communication skills so these are skills that come across so there are loads more in there and the result is just making sure that you talk about what happened as a result of that who benefited and how so talk about achieving the result also talk about any other benefits that came out did you learn anything from it did anyone else learn anything from it did anyone else benefit so scenario-based questions again i will be using the star format to um to answer this but the scenario-based questions are likely to be situations that you've come across before a lot of the time you can get hints about what they'll be from things like informal visits so again do that prep do that research and some common questions that that come up you can see them here on the screen we haven't got time in half an hour to go through how to answer all of these particular questions but if you look on the rcn.org slash careers you'll find that help in there for all of these questions you will also find that you can book a session with a career coach like me to go through and do some interview preparation and it does make a difference so there are some difficult questions that come up of course we've put a few of them on the screen here these are things that are worth preparing for i think the one that most people focus on is what are your weaknesses because it's the one that we kind of like well what do i say to this because i don't want to rock up there and go i haven't got any weaknesses i'm perfect but also i don't want to go rock up there and go i'm so pleased you asked that i've got a nice long list of weaknesses here so how do we deal with that again it's a little bit like a star story so think of a time when you've had to learn something new develop some new skill overcome a difficulty and introduce that so in this case i used to have a tendency to try and take on too much i've dealt with this by learning how to delegate responsibilities etc so talk about how they did it so there's a situation task bit there's an actions bit in there remember to add the results which we haven't got on the screen here but what was the result of you doing that thing tell them that you resolved the problem that is no longer a problem so it could be something like this that's more about the way that you operate it could be something physical like doing better excel spreadsheets or something like that find something in your background and sometimes things like performance appraisals are good places to go because there's often little things in there where you've had to develop new stuff so it's a great place to go for your answers okay this is important actually because remember we said interview is a two-way process it's as much about are they right for you as it is about are you right for them so think about what's important to you when you go if you've got log on if you're an RCM member go to the careers portal it's one of the best ones out there and I say that as an independent career coach not just as an affiliate of the RCM there's a lot on there about career values and those are the things that will tell you what you need to ask about to make sure that this job is going to fit with your lifestyle with the way that you like working with the way that you like being managed in addition to the questions that are on the screen here other good questions if you don't know it already can you tell me about the makeup of the team can you tell me about the challenges facing the team at the moment what's the first big bit of work you've got lined up for me or what's the most important thing for me to focus on when I come into this role if you choose me another good question to ask is to find out what their success criteria are so I might ask them if you choose me for this role how will we know in three months time that I'm being successful so it gets me their criteria also notice I use the phrase if you choose me for this role so by using that phrase I wouldn't use it in every question but I'd use it once or twice when I use that phrase they have to imagine me being in the role in order to answer the question so it's a nice phrase to slip into some of your questions okay so after the interview it's all about reflection what went well what questions was I asked what could I do better I mean we can sum up what's on the screen here by asking two questions firstly what went well make a long list of the things that went well and then what if anything could make it even better so one or two things that will help to make it better do ask for feedback I know and some of you would have experienced this it's really difficult to get feedback sometimes that some organizations are not as good as others at giving feedback but it can be very useful and if you want to and someone I worked with recently had had two interviews for a particular role hadn't succeeded on either she came to the the career service and we had a conversation we talked about using star and the practicing out loud and some of the other things we've talked about today and she emailed me on Monday this week say she's got the job now so it makes a difference if you need to talk through stuff to practice use the career service because it's part of your membership if you're an RCN member but whatever you do get someone to help you if you do get the job pretty much the same thing of course wait for the contract read through the contract decide whether you want to negotiate on it and either go back and accept or go back and negotiate we haven't got time to talk about negotiations here but again we can talk another time so I've talked a lot about how the RCN can help I hope that what we've covered will be useful to you if nothing else hopefully it'll be useful to you as you talk with people out here about jobs that they've got that you could potentially do make sure that you tell them examples of the things that you've done and tell them why you're interested in working for them and in a careers fair like today ask them what do they offer you as a potential employee so thank you for listening these are the RCN contact details my linkedin is at the bottom if you want to connect with me on linkedin please do just put a message with it and say I saw you at the RCN at iCareers fair we're just over time if you're staying for the CV talk starts in a little bit under 10 minutes if you've got questions hold them till after that talk and we'll deal with them then all right thank you very much thanks very much for listening I hope you picked up some good tips about how to make your next job interview as successful as it can be I think my key takeaway message is practice practice as much as you can before your interview including answering questions out loud and don't forget to dress smartly even if your interview is online you