Career Planning
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Preparing for Your Interview
Prepare Your Interview Answers
Interviews can be quite different from one program to the next.
Some may be highly structured, multi-day events, others may be a few brief meetings with several key members of the provider group.
Ideally, your visit agenda will include the chance to meet as many different members of the care team as possible.
Interviews can be quite different from one program to the next. Some may be highly structured, multiday events, others may be a few brief meetings with several key members of the provider group.
Ideally, your visit agenda will include the chance to meet as many different members of the care team as possible.
Who You Should Meet With
You will, of course, be meeting with the Medical Director and/or Department Chair as well as practice providers. But also meeting with sub-specialists, nursing leadership, bedside staff (RNs, RTs, therapists), and hospital administrators will give you a much broader perspective on the big picture of the position.
Either the director or a Human Resources representative should be able to answer questions about salary and benefits. A local real estate expert is often utilized to give you a community tour and overview.
How to Prepare
Before you go, think about the types of questions you will be asked by these different disciplines. While you don’t want your responses to appear too rehearsed, you do want your interviewers to feel that you have given some deep thought into what your priorities are in your life and career.
Confidence, while still allowing for flexibility, is often just the type of candidate your prospective employer and colleagues are looking for.
Every Moment Counts
Always remember that EVERYONE you meet is interviewing you. Always be pleasant, and always keep your game face on. How you interact with administrative assistants, ancillary staff, even cafeteria workers, is all on display.
A wise recruiter or admin assistant will be noting how you communicate and treat those you meet throughout the interview day. It can be a telling insight into how one will behave after hire.
To help prepare you for your interview responses, review the questions you may be asked listed below each section.
The Position
Specific questions about the position, practice, or hospital are designed to see if you did your research and have thoughtfully considered your fit for this position.
Be sure to do your homework beforehand and learn as much as you can about the position, the practice, individual physicians, and the hospital itself.
Your goal should be to explain how the group can benefit from hiring you. Be able to articulate why you believe this program is a good fit, and demonstrate your unique attributes or skills to complement the group.
Your level of preparedness is how you will differentiate yourself from the other candidates.
- Why are you interested in our Practice/Health System?
- How did you learn about this opportunity?
- What do you know about our hospital?
- Why do you want to move to _____?
- Why do you think you will be a good fit here?
- What are your deal makers and deal breakers?
- What other practices are you evaluating?
- What special skills or unique experiences would you bring to our group?
- What do you want to know about us and our practice?
- What would you expect in a physician mentor if you were to come on board here?
Career Choices and Aspirations
By now, you’ve likely been asked numerous times why you went into medicine and specifically neonatology.
If you don’t already, try to have a creative response and be able to articulate where you want to go in your career. Demonstrate your motivation, initiative, and ambition.
Be sure to remember why you enjoy taking care of neonates and be able to share some of the compassionate or service-oriented aspects of why you heal tiny precious lives.
- What drove you to go into medicine? Neonatology?
- Tell me about your notable achievements.
- What are your long-term professional goals?
- Aside from patient care, where do you like to spend your professional time?
- Where do you see yourself in five to ten years?
- What clinical cases or specific conditions interest you most?
- How did you choose your fellowship program?
- What do you enjoy most in clinical practice? Least?
- What has been your best experience as a fellow? Worst?
- What about neonatology do you enjoy most?
- What do you feel are the most important contributions you have made to neonatology?
Personal
With the focus on recognizing and preventing physician burnout, assessing a candidate’s personal priorities has become more common. You can expect to answer questions about how you enjoy your free time.
Prospective colleagues will want to know whether the community and region will mesh with your personal pursuits, and and will want to make sure your personality will be a good fit within the group culture.
Again, by being prepared, you can demonstrate your knowledge of the region and all that it has to offer. This is your chance to show some enthusiasm for things other than your job.
Allow your prospective colleagues to see a different side of you and showcase how you can be fun-spirited and balance your work life with your personal life.
If you are truly interested in the city and certain aspects of the geography or region, don’t hesitate to highlight these interests as they are likely the same aspects that drew others to the group.
In fact, you may find similar interests or hobbies to talk about.
- What are your personal interests?
- If you had one day off in two weeks, how would you spend it?
- What is it about this city that attracts you?
- Describe yourself in 3-5 words.
- What has been the greatest non-professional achievement in your life?
- What has been the greatest non-professional challenge in your life?
- What are you passionate about?
- What are your pet peeves?
Teamwork and Communication
An important component of your effectiveness as a physician is your ability to work within a team and communicate to nursing staff, interdisciplinary teams, and parents.
Be sure to consider and recall situations where you have demonstrated your proficiency in these areas.
The program will be assessing how well you will be able to lead the clinical team as well as your ability to work closely, compassionately, and effectively with parents and families.
- How would you describe your communication style with parents and families? Nursing staff? Colleagues?
- What would a patient parent or family member say they like best about you? Least?
- How would parents describe your ability to communicate complex information?
- Do you prefer to work alone or with a team?
- Describe how you run your rounds?
- How would your cofellows describe your practice style on rounds?
- How would you describe your personality?
- How would your peers describe your personality?
- Give an example of how you managed an angry family situation.
- Give an example of when you and the bedside nurse disagreed about the plan of care.
- Give an example of when you and your attending disagreed about the plan of care.
- Describe the most difficult feedback you’ve received from an attending? From a family?
- Describe a time as a new member of a team you needed to get buy-in on a change or implementing a new idea.
- Describe a situation in which you led a team to achieve a goal.
- Describe a situation in which you recognized the work of others.
Clinical Practice
Most fellowship programs do an excellent job of arming new neonatologists with the clinical knowledge they need to provide quality, contemporary care.
But any savvy fellow recognizes that their learning curve remains steep when embarking on actual practice.
You should feel confident in expressing your clinical qualifications, but be sure to remain humble, especially when interviewing with senior members of the group who have been around long enough to see a few of the zebras from those hoofbeats.
Be honest about the type of clinical workload you are hoping for, but also be realistic that at the end of the day, you’ve taken an oath to provide care for your patients, and there may be times when that workload seems never ending, and the patients still have to be seen.
- Describe your clinical experience to date.
- What volume of work are you comfortable with?
- What work/call schedule do you hope to establish?
- How many patients do you like to see in a day?
- What clinical skills would you say are your strongest? Weakest?
- What procedural skills do you excel at? For which ones will you need mentorship?
- Do you have a clinical topic or area that you want to be known as an expert in?
- How would you describe your clinical judgement?
- How do you react in high stress clinical situations?
- What has been your most challenging clinical case?
- What was your most recent feedback from an attending about your clinical care?
- What clinical areas to you need to still improve on?
- How do you self-evaluate your own clinical performance?
Salary and Benefits Expectations
Discussions about salary and benefits can be challenging for a new fellow. Details are sometimes described by the Medical Director, or sometimes by a Physician Services or Human Resources representative.
From an appearance standpoint it is best to wait until this information is brought up, rather than directly asking.
You don’t want to appear as if you are only interested in the money. But if the end of your interview is approaching and the subject hasn’t been broached, it is not inappropriate to ask what information regarding salary and benefits will be provided.
Be aware that, more and more commonly, there is standardization of compensation contracts, particularly for employed physicians. You may not have much flexibility to negotiate starting salary.
In cases where the following questions are asked, however, you want to have realistic responses ready and data to back them up.
Be sure to consider the non-salary compensation as well (bonuses, profit sharing, performance incentives, retirement matches) as they can in some cases end up being a significant component of overall comp.
Non-comp perqs (insurance, child care, schedule flexibility, sabbaticals, leadership training) are important to consider as well.
Be prepared to state what you expect to make, either with a specific amount or a general range. Make sure you do your homework on salary expectations, consider a full benefits and compensation package, and appropriately prepare your negotiation strategy.
- What level of compensation are you seeking?
- What kind of salary are you looking for?
- Are you comfortable with an employed physician contract?
- Are you looking for a partnership track?
- Is tenure important to you?
- Do you have student loans, relocation expenses, or other financial considerations?
- Do you need health insurance coverage or is it provided already by a spouse’s policy?
