The most difficult questions in any interview for a nursing job are those designed to throw you for a loop. When an interviewer asks you what your worst trait is, and you’re not prepared, things can be disastrous. So, you need to have a game plan for these questions as well.
You have two options:
1) Pick a positive that could have negative impacts, and emphasize the positives. If you’re hard-charging and sometimes miss details, you can focus on your single-minded determination. Or, if you are very blunt, you can show how your honesty benefited one of your previous employers.
2) You can choose an aspect of your personality, and see how it rings true with the interviewer. Some firms don’t mind as much if you’re a bit cantankerous, or if you may have some negative traits. They may focus simply on the fact that you’ve chosen to be honest.
To figure out ways to turn a negative into a positive, use your past superiors for help. At review meetings, they may have brought up a negative trait of yours, and talked about how it was still useful. Or, you can even think to conversations with friends and family where it’s become the subject of a joke. Use these, and see what positive aspects of them have come up, similar to what was mentioned above.
If you don’t have any negative traits, please don’t tell an interviewer that. Again, look to what friends and family joke about, or what previous co-workers have said. And if you are still having trouble, come up with something. Even if you’re perfect, no hiring manager wants to hear that you are.
Another set of questions may feel like they are tough to practice, the so-called “theoretical” questions. In reality, half of them are fairly easy to imagine. Most companies that ask about hypothetical scenarios are asking about how you would perform duties that are related to your work.
So the nurse who is asked to deal with a disruptive patient may be a common concern, as would a seemingly improperly prescribed medicine. If you are concerned about these questions, simply list a range of scenarios that would be described as “worst case” and come up with ways to answer them. If it feels somewhat difficult to come up with specific ways to deal with problem situations, then take a step back.
Tags: Interviewer, job interview, Nurse, Nursing Position
