Advice on NHS interview

[chayah]

Hi to all, i'm new on this thread. i have few interview in the NHS this month. I was working for the NHS back in London, I'm new in West Midlands. Haven't been to a interview since 2007. I really need advice, i really need a job. For the literacy and numeracy test i do not have any problems. I just need the questions that they may asked on the interview day. I went to an interview on Friday but no one called up, i guess i wasn't successful.

Thanks for all advice.

[Superworm]

What type of job -nursing, admin, midwifery?

[tribpot]

When I conducted interviews in the NHS we did competency-based interviews based on the role description. Read that careful - the essential competencies are the ones you need to demonstrate. The interview questions should be structured around it, and we would avoid hypothetical 'how would you handle [x] situation' (since the answer would be 'I would be awesome at it') in favour of 'can you give an example of when you've done [x]' (in our case as it was IT it might be 'when you've been selecting a database technology and what you considered when making the decision'). If you hadn't ever selected a database technology you might pivot the question to other technology selections you'd made.

If you're interviewing for a role similar to the one you were doing in London you should be fine for bringing up relevant examples from your previous work.

The fact no-one's called about an interview on Friday is not at all unusual, assuming you mean this Friday just gone. No business days have even elapsed since then and you don't know if they had other candidates to see next week. Then there's the usual inordinate amount of paperwork to be done for NHS jobs, it can take a while for you to hear anything one way or another. We would always try to let candidates know what the likely timescale was but occasionally we would forget, and it's a good question to ask at the end (there should always be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end) just so you know what to expect. Good luck!

[chayah]

Hi superworm, it's admin, medical records.

[chayah]

Thanks a lot tribpot. They ask me questions about equality and diversity. how would i fit in this role. About workload. My weakness, that is the stressful part.

[tribpot]

Hmm, well I certainly wouldn't have asked the weakness question as I think it's stupid. Too much risk of people saying 'I'm a perfectionist' or (as someone I know genuinely once did) 'I have no weaknesses'.

And how would you fit in the role - did they expect you to say anything other than 'I would be an excellent fit for the role now cough over the contract'? Very silly. For the weakness question I might ask whether there's a particular occasion at work where you now wish you'd done things differently. On the fit question I might ask what part of the role you thought you would find most challenging. So I might be tempted to throw scenarios in to support your answers even if they're asking you what look to be very closed questions.

As to equality and diversity - I hope the question was not 'do you think it is a good idea' but more 'how have you ensured E&D policies are adhered to' or something like that!

Btw my comment above 'Read that careful' was meant to say 'Read the job description carefully', god knows what happened there!