Preparing for your interview at NHS England

In my previous article I gave a few pointers in how to apply for our user-centred design (and possibly others) roles at NHS England. This time, I wanted to do the same for how to prepare for the interview.

This is my personal advice, but I have also discussed and gathered feedback and comments from my colleagues in user research and content design, so am confident this covers our user-centred design job roles. I cannot guarantee it will work for every role at NHS England or for every person who will be interviewing. Following these tips won’t guarantee you to be successful at an interview. But I do believe these points will help, no matter which job you’re interviewing for.

Sending questions to applicants prior to the interview

For our user-centred design and product management roles, we have recently changed our approach and started sending interview questions to candidates five days before their interview. We believe this approach will make our recruitment process more inclusive and equitable.

Sending the questions beforehand helps those who might find interviews stressful and thus not perform at their best. They can take their time to prepare what they want to say and take time to really understand the questions.

We have not seen evidence of the misconception that this approach will allow candidates to have someone else write their answers or making interviews too easy to pass. We still ask follow-up questions to delve deeper into their experiences, which will reveal anyone who does not have the experiences they are describing.

Instead, we’ve heard from candidates with dyslexia and other cognitive impairments who value the extra time to read and process the questions on their own and prepare well thought-out answers.

The result is that candidates seem more relaxed, are better prepared, and can focus on giving examples without feeling overwhelmed by the interview environment. It’s not about performing poorly because of nerves; it’s about showcasing their abilities effectively.

However, we have also seen over-confident candidates who “wing it”, thinking they don’t need any preparation. Not a good idea.

We have sent you the questions beforehand, use that to your benefit and read carefully what we are asking you about, and then prepare your answers to that question. We don’t ask trick questions and we always try to be as clear what we are after.

I hope the following points will help you to prepare for your interview and, be successful in getting the job.

1. Tell a complete story — concisely

It’s important you get across your answers in a way they are easily understood. On top of that, they need to be concise (more on that later), and clearly describe the part you played.

There are many different structures you can use, but most often we recommend candidates to use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) model, and will help you to structure your answer to be complete:

• Situation: Start by describing the context or situation you were in. Provide enough background information for us to understand the scenario. This could include details such as the company you were working for, your role, and anything else relevant about the situation. Keep this section brief!
• Task: What was the specific task you were faced with in that situation? What was the problem you were you trying to solve, or what was the goal you were trying to achieve? Be clear about what was expected of you.
• Action: This is the most important part of the STAR structure; what actions did you do. What challenges you faced and how did you overcome them. Focus on you, and the actions you did as part of a team, what did you enable to happen, who did you influence, what made a difference? It is important, you focus on what you did, not what your team did. We all work as part of a team and that’s important part of how we work, but in an interview, it is all about you.
• Result: What was the outcome of your actions. What happened because of what you did? Did you succeed, or did you face some challenges? Try to quantify your achievements if possible, using metrics or specific examples. Reflect on what you learned from the experience and how it has influenced your approach to similar situations in the future. If you had to move to another project before the end, or it is not yet finished, what would you have done to evaluate it?

Have your notes with you in the interview but try not to read straight from them. You should know your example well enough so you can talk them through without your notes, and your notes serve as a reminder, just in case you can’t remember everything. Consider your notes as helpful prompts to jog your memory if needed but try not to rely on them all the time.

I would also recommend you prepare couple of examples for each question. This allows you to easily use another example, in case the first one does not quite hit the mark.

2. Manage your time

During the interview we will keep time and may have to ask you to move on to allow us to ask all the questions and to leave time for you to ask any questions from us. But time keeping should be a crucial part of your preparation as well.

You can see what the total allocated time for the interview is, and you will have received all the questions and tasks we will ask you during that time.

With these at hand, you can estimate how long will you have for each question:

• Estimate 10 minutes at the start for introductions and us telling you how the interview process will work.
• Leave another 10 minutes at the end for your own questions and us telling you about the next steps.
• Subtract any blocks of time for presentation or practical exercise and leave 5 minutes for questions at the end of those.
• Divide the remaining time with the number of questions and you’ll get an idea how long your answers should be.

3. Give us just enough background information

This is one of the most common mistakes applicants make; they tell us too much background information (or Situational on STAR model) and waste time to which would be better used to talk about what they did (Action on the STAR model).

You only need to tell us just enough background to give us the context, but we don’t need to know absolutely everything — even if we don’t know the field you’re describing, we are much more interested in hearing what you did.

If we need to know more about the situation or environment, we’ll ask in our follow-up questions.

4. Tell us your story and then stop talking

This is the second most common mistake applicants make. They keep talking and filling in the time. If you have structured your examples using STAR model (or any other way), you should have all the information you and we need. Tell us that, and then stop.

This will give us more time to ask follow-up questions to get to the answers we need to score you. If you fill in the time with your chatter, we may not have the time to dig in deeper to the areas we need to know about.

5. Keep to the given time

If we ask for a 10-minute presentation, we mean 10 minutes; aim for 8 when you plan and practice. You’ll probably overrun a little anyway.

Giving clear and concise presentations will be part of the role you are interviewing for, which is one of the reasons we ask for a presentation. If you go massively over the given time, we may score you down, but the very least we will have less time to spend on the other questions we need to ask you. Either way, going over on your allocated time may negatively impact your interview score.

6. Don’t assume we know — tell us

One of the common issues we face is that candidates assume we know something, and they don’t explain it to us. For example, recently one candidate explained to us how they had designed according to standards “you know, the GDS standards”, but didn’t explain to us any more than that.

We don’t know everything, but even if we do (like GDS standards) we need to hear that you know what it means and how you have used them in your work. It is too easy to throw in e.g. names of standards, or different methods of doing user research, but if you don’t explain to us how you used them, it’s difficult to us to evaluate your skills in using them.

7. Prepare questions for us

This is probably the most common advice given to interviews. But it’s often said in a way that “it makes you look good that you’re interested”, but there’s so much more to this advice than that.

Interviews are a two-way process; we interview you, but you will also interview us. Are we the kind of people you could work with? Do you like the sound of the role and the environment you’d be working in? What are the challenges, and what is rewarding in our work.

Think about what is important to you in a new role and prepare to ask us those questions. We are more than happy to tell you, and we’ll be honest. There’s no point getting someone in, who does not like it in the end. Knowing this benefits both of us.

It isn’t an assessed part of the interview so don’t feel you have to think of something to ask, if you genuinely haven’t got anything you want to know that is fine too. Just don’t miss out on the opportunity to make sure the job and us are right for you.

8. Practice your interview

As always, practice your interview answers with a friend, family, or a colleague. Don’t be afraid of asking people’s time, many of them do want to help! Ask them to pay attention to things like, did you answer the question? Did they understand the point you’re making? Did you keep in time? Ask them to time your presentation; did you go over the time limit?

Do not hesitate to ask us for adjustments. We will do everything we can to make sure the process is as inclusive as possible, and every applicant can have the opportunity to present themselves at their best in an interview.

Good luck!

I have also published this article on Medium: https://medium.com/@teropsv/preparing-for-your-interview-at-nhs-england-4de1500f3fb4