As a premed student the stress of attaining interviews is overwhelming. For me this was no different. I remember putting together spread sheets with the percentage of people who were admitted and calculating the chances of me getting an interview and accepted based on how many schools that I applied to. I want to write this post because there are plenty of failures on my part but also success. I was eventually selected to a medical school and also accepted to a residency program. In my residency program I was asked to help interview applicants to our program. This experienced gave me a different perspective on the entire interview process.
I first want to talk about a huge failure. My very first interview invite was beyond exciting. I will never forget the feeling of reading the e-mail invite. In the weeks between the invitation and my actual interview I did what every good premed does. I over analyzed and over prepared. The mission statement of the medical school was readily accessible on their web site. Perfect, they are showing me their cards. I know exactly what I need to say for them to like me. They are very primary care focused. Great, I am not 100% sure that I want surgery. I certainly can pretend like primary care is something that may interest me. After all, I have little to no exposure to the medical field. Maybe primary care is something I am interested in. I rehearsed beautiful responses to all the typical interview questions. My stress led to anxiety and my anxiety led to a very unnatural interview in which I most certainly did not come across as genuine.
When interviewing medical students for a surgical residency, it was very nice to be on the other side of the table. I was able to study the applicants and learn from their errors. It was painfully obvious when people were telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. I was looking at my younger self sitting across that table. It was amazing to me how transparent and the disingenuous answers were.
My first medical school interview resulted in being waitlisted. Looking back and examining myself, this was actually quite generous. Nonetheless, this was a huge blow to my confidence which forced me to take a significantly different approach on my subsequent interviews. I ultimately was successful but did not understand fully the errors that I made until after I gained the insight of interviewing residency hopefuls.
My advice
-Do not try to guess what the interviewer is looking for. Be as honest as possible and if there is a question you don’t know how to answer, just say so. The people sitting across the table from you will be intelligent and experienced in the whole process. You will not be able to trick them. Just be genuine.
-You are starting your career. It is very acceptable to not have every aspect of your life planned out. It is important to show some commitment to the field of medicine and to explain that you have given your career choices serious thought. However, it is always concerning to me when a medical school applicant just knows that they want to be a pediatric neurosurgeon specializing in starfish to human brain transplant on the International Space Station. You likely do not know what specialty you want. Please talk about different experiences you had that interested you but being completely decided on a specialty before even entering medical school will be a huge turn off to your interviewers.
-The easiest way to break tension and be natural is to talk about aspects of your life that are natural. For me, I had little to no experience in medicine. In my most successful interview we talked about my jiu- jitsu nearly the entire time. The interviewer can elucidate a lot of information they need about you from speaking about other experiences not related to your application. Do not get worried if you don’t spend a ton of time talking about your countless hours spent volunteering at the soup kitchen or your medical mission trip. The most valuable information they can get from you is just you talking about your life.
-The most important question you will get will be regarding your ability to work in teams. This question will come either directly or indirectly. An example of a direct question would be something like this. Tell me about a time that you had to work in a group yada yada yada… It is boring and pretty straight forward. I do suggest you have a well thought out mature answer for this type of question. The more challenging but fun question is the indirect version of this. Student Doctor Applicant, you are on call over night and the nurse calls you and tells you about ( insert problem that is way beyond your current knowledge or ability to take care of) and needs your help. What do you do. It really doesn’t matter what you say in regards to the actual medicine. You must go evaluate the patient yourself, talk to the nurse, and then call your senior medical students, residents, or attending. This question is simply to determine if you can think clearly and if you value teamwork. Another example of a question you may be asked regarding teamwork would sound something like this. Your senior medical student or resident comes in and unfairly treats you. You do not know where this is coming from because you previously got along with this person very well. It is about a situation that you know you are the correct party. What do you do? The most mature answer that I have heard for this question actually does not deal with the situation at all. The applicant told me that he/she would be concerned that something was wrong in the life of their coworker. The applicant reported that they would put the situation at hand aside momentarily to discuss with the coworker what might be wrong. This shows that the applicant is able to think critically and does not get caught up in the emotional aspects of a tough situation. This showed maturity.
-My parting words are going to be somewhat nebulous. There is no one correct way to interview. I do encourage you all to find a way to present the most accurate representation of yourself to the interviewer. You want them to see the correct portrayal of you so that they can determine if you are a good fit for the program. You need to be in the program that suits you best.
Opereight 