I would like to share my experience of passing

Dear Friends,

I would like to share my experience of passing on an interview and I hope it will help other members of the group. I am so thankful to some of the members of this group who helped me a lot (I’m not certain if I can tag them here, so not mentioning their names). An emotional support is extremely significant when your fellow colleague doesn’t make his or her target or achieve success. This group truly does a job of offering quite a great deal of support, hence I would like to suggest the admin to change the group name as IMG UK support group.

Applications: I began applying for job applications through trac from the month of October for Anaesthesia / Intensive care medicine. Almost 30-40 applications failed to cut through a mark of shortlisting criteria. Three months waiting is quite frustrating. Out of so many applications, only one assessor sent an email that he has disapproved the application with an explanation that he can’t give a feedback on my CV and its eligibility.

News on being shortlisted for interview: I remained firm on my efforts till mid December and then I got my first interview call. I started requesting you all for guiding in the preparation for interviews. Some of you gave excellent suggestions and beyond that, the moral support received by one member is unforgettable, she’s a really good friend of mine now. The first interview planned date was deferred by the hospital and that made me to take that incident with a very negative review. After discussing with my friend from this group I gained confidence again, meanwhile I got invited for a second interview.

Interview preparation: I started utilizing the resources listed in this group for 15 days before the due date of interview. It aided me to prepare my answers as per my work experiences related to governance, complaints, audit, research, communication and ethics. Bringing out threads from your past clinical scenarios and roping it with the questions stipulated in the book is all that is required.

The day of the interview: I realized that many of the HRs are not kin in sharing their direct numbers. I phoned up the hospital directly 30 minutes before the scheduled time and spoke to the consultant who’s supposed to conduct the interview. He was very welcoming and friendly. My Skype ID did not work at the final moment and finally the consultant directly called on WhatsApp video call and completed the interview along with one more Anaesthesia consultant and HR present in the room organizing the interview.

Questions: 1. Greeting each other and Initial introduction both ways followed:
a) First question “What made you consider applying for this job position and select this hospital?”- Since I had already read the Job description well and the information about the department well, I could highlight what all could be advantages in working at this hospital in UK (work pattern, limited beds, level of ICU and number of consultants taking lead individually taking governance responsibilities).
b) What are your career goals and which way you believe you would be progressing ahead? : informed my long term career goal to complete FFICM and efforts to be a consultant in Intensive Care medicine.
2. Passing through my CV: The consultants went through the CV and specifically asked about few queries in the CV which were related to governance (formation and administrative aspect of the current department)
3. Practical scenario: difficult airway management. A case scenario was given and discussions progressed till the time I reached appropriate step in the algorithm correctly.
4. Ethics and communication: Have you fixed any mistakes at your workplace, what was my experience, how I communicated and handled it? : Described one such situation about vascular access complication causing critical limb ischaemia, its communication with family members, a senior colleague, nurse in charge, vascular surgeon timely and appropriate intervention.
5. Stress management: how did I handle myself due to stress happened during managing such critical incident. Sharing news with supporting colleagues and seniors, understanding that, it’s fine to make an error, but not pardonable if you do not acknowledge and make efforts politely to handle the situation well. Taking a day away, doing mindfulness practice and doing what you really like (talking with dear friends unrelated to specialty and spending time with patients on palliative care to remind that life has much worst challenges that what I faced and I should not get dejected at this point).

My turn:
I was given the opportunity to ask questions related to the task and the workplace. I asked them on succeeding lines.

  1. Personal disclosure: I had to make personal disclosure specific and essential demand to seek further workplace support. The consultant could clarify that very considerably
  2. If selected, what this position will offer me in achieving my goals: consultant shared about tier 2 visa and sponsorship information and his willingness to look into it along with other opportunities at the workplace.
  3. If not selected, can you give a feedback on my CV and interview to help me build up and ready for the following opportunity.
  4. The interview ended there.

Received an email from the lead consultant within ten minutes that I am selected for the opportunity.