What NOT to say in your Medical interview
Hello future doctors,
Your medical interview prep consists of micro and macro strategies. Micro strategies include details and tactics for specific interview questions. I covered these in my previous articles. Macro strategies includes higher level training. These are principles that should be applied across your interview. An example is phrases or actions not to do. Or guiding principles to make a good impression.
Build macro habits
Your macro interview prep should include actions and forms of speech to use on auto pilot. These are like habits you should apply to your interview. They can be split into things to do, and things not to do. This article is dedicated to the second bucket. Things NOT to do. The next article will be dedicated to the first bucket. Things to do.
The power of macro habits
Steve Jobs trained the staff in Apple stores in macro strategies. They were trained what not to say.
"Unfortunately" → "As it turns out"
"Crash" / "bug" → "An issue"
"Hot" → "Warm"
Things NOT to say #1- naked claims
When you make a statement (especially a cliché), do not leave it as just a statement. You need supporting evidence. Without this evidence, it's a naked claim.
"I love medicine" is a naked claim. It's an assertion with nothing underneath it. Back it up with evidence/ story.
"I love medicine" -> "I love medicine because it is a career that involves lifelong learning. I first realised how important lifelong learning is to me when…"
Things NOT to say #2- "unfortunately"
Never say "unfortunately, X happened." It paints you as a victim, to whom circumstances happen. Instead, say "X happened. This is what I learned from it". Or "X happened, here's what I'd do next time." Now, you take back the initiative. You become an actor in your own story.
Things NOT to say #3- "I don't know"
The other phrase to avoid is "I don't know." If a question catches you off guard, avoid replying "I don't know". Instead, walk the interviewer through your thinking out loud. Even if you do not have an end answer in mind.
2 things may happen this way: 1) you arrive at an answer and/ or 2) you show you're capable of critical thinking under pressure.
For instance, you might be surprised by the question "If you could be a fruit, what would you be?". Instead of surrendering with "I don't know”, start with a bedrock of logic, and build upon that.
I would be a coconut. Coconuts are nutritionally expensive. They need a lot of nutrients from the soil. So it does not help they grow next to their mother coconut tree. After all, the two trees would compete for resources. What the mother coconut does to prevent this is send her child as far away as possible. The child coconut floats in a body of water (or rolls until it finds one). After a lot of floating, it finds land and grows there.
I think I am very similar to the coconut. Just like the mother coconut's planning, I think in advance about the negative impact of a decision, about what could happen after I take an action. I try to be strategic with my decisions.
In this example, I just picked a fruit and started free styling from there. I did not know what connection I would make to the coconut, but it came to me while I was speaking.
If you need more guidance for this question, I answered it and 5 others in a previous article.
Concluding thoughts
Improve through subtraction. Mess up less.
This is the sixth article in my medical school interview prep series. Past articles have looked at specific interview questions in depth.
Got an interview coming up? Get the Free Interview Prep Guide. I'll respond to every one of you with a notion page.
Michael
First-year AUSoM medical student,
Future Swiss doctor
Prefer to watch?
