Health Interview Questions & Answers

Following a very detailed online application form, I was instructed to attend a group task (of 5 others) lasting around 1hr. We were told to save one person from a total of 8 fictional people from a cave, and come up with an order of which to save first. The task involved discussing and justifying between all group members as to their choices. Following a 10min presentation, I was then interviewed in front of the same panel of 3. The interview lasted around 45mins, in which I was asked both personal and generic questions regarding how I'd react in certain situations. I was first in the interview process, which helped for me as some people waited all day for theirs. Very friendly interview staff really helped my nerves which were quickly diminished.

Give an example of how you would improve student retention at university.

Make sure you prepare thoroughly. If you've graduated from university already make use of their services while you still can, book out pointers for presentations to make you look extra organised. I used 'prezi' which also gave me the edge on my presentation, which is considerably easy to use (search for it online). If you are subject to a group exercise, don't be afraid to butt in to other people's ideas. By all means don't be rude, but look as if you're building on their ideas while secretly forwarding yours, otherwise it's hard to speak over the more outspoken members of the group! Other than the above, I went into the position before the interview to get to know the staff and get inside tips. It makes you sound super keen and organised.

Kept as a whole group for the group session, where we were given 30mins to prepare and 30 to discuss our justifications. We were then split into individual time slots in which we were interviewed (45mins) and presented our presentations (10mins).

This is one of the most difficult telephone interviews that I have had. However this was my second time in 3 years having a telephone interview with them. The first was for an industrial placement, whilst this was for a graduate programme. From this I can confidently tell you that they do not change the questions.

First off there is the application form as normal. They took over 2 months to get back to me until the telephone interview, but thats only because I continually emailed them asking for updates. Therefore keep emailing them until they get back to you, because sometimes they can be a bit slow.

The telephone interview starts off as normal with the interviewer explaining the process and asking basic information to confirm it's you. Then the competency questions begin. There were 3 competency questions in total:

- Tell me about your greatest challenge.
- Tell me about a time you worked with someone difficult.
- Tell me about something innovative you have done.

This was then followed by a set of 10 true or false technical questions. Below are what I managed to write down:

- If the pipe diameter is halved the flowrate doubles
- U^2 is directly proportional to delta P
- If the velocity of a substance is doubled its thermal conductivity doubles
- Flooding can be reduced by lowering the gas velocity
- Something to do with minimum bubbling point
- On a VLE curve, the curve for the azeotrope lies below the equilibrium curve

Following this there were 2 more technical questions:
- Describe the procedure for a risk assessment
- GSK has been manufacturing a tablet and it is showing signs that the dissolution rate may be decreasing. What are the possible reasons that this is occuring and what actions would you take to rectify the situation.

The most difficult question I found to be was the final question regarding the dissolution rate:
- GSK has been manufacturing a tablet and it is showing signs that the dissolution rate may be decreasing. What are the possible reasons that this is occuring and what actions would you take to rectify the situation.

Remember to use the STAR approach. If you do not know the answer to a technical question, tell them you don't know rather than making something up.

Didn't make it through to the assessment centre, although I was placed on their waiting list for it.

The interview started with the normal questions of: why specsavers, why optometry and what I can add to the team. They aren't a big fan of model answers which sound robot. They like to see that you have personality and really mean what you are saying.

I was asked about conversion rates, given scenario questions of angry customers, non tolerance areas and what to prescribe to patients, tests on visual fields and the retinal pathways and asked my ability on contact lens practice.

Teamwork was a big part of the conversation and my CV helped due to having been part of many teams in the past. Overall specsavers wants a hard working student who can have a slight authority to work solitarily as an optometrist however also has to be a team player.

The most difficult questions were about conversion rates, what could be improved in Specsavers, dispensing and non tolerances areas would be hard to answer however I read up on them before the interview.

Apart from the normal dressing smart and preparing the usual predictable questions, from experience of 3 specsavers interview where I successfully got all 3 jobs, I would say:

Know the background
Know how to dispense
Know what a conversion rate is and what you would do if yours is low and your colleagues are high
Know your non tolerance areas with regards to refracting patients of different ages

No assessment centres.

The interview is computerised, which means that you will see a question on your screen for up to one minute preparation time and then have a certain period of time to give your answer. After the preparation time has passed, your camera and microfon start recording and you can see a countdown informing about how much time you have left to answer the question. At the end of the time, you get to see the next question and so on.

Questions were mostly competency based, however one skill based. The last question gives you the opportunity to add anyting you like, for example add something to one of the questions you might have forgotten at that point or would like to add.

The questions are not difficult, but long. They give you lots of guidance about what they would like to hear, which makes sense as there is no interviewer who could ask you follow-up questions.

While it sounds stressful to only have a limited amount of time to answer the question, it was sufficient. Do not stress yourself about it too much as you can rely on knowing that HR knows what they are doing.

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The interview was in Derby, a little way away from me in Manchester. The day was very well organised and each individual was only there for s short space of time. The interview process was more of an assessment center day. I started at 11.00 and was done for the day by 2.30.

The day consisted of;
1. Short presentation on how you thought 'health care providing agencies were failing to meet the needs of the elderly'
2. A 20 minute group exercise in which you had to choose one thing to do to make the care home you were supposed to be managing better for the residents.
3. A short interview with 2 people in the room.

The wasn't really anything that was that difficult. It was just simple past experience questions really.

They hadn't informed me in advance that they were looking for a person to start in March. I couldn't do this as i am yet to graduate in July! everyone else I interviewed with had graduated. So if you are ever invited, it may be worth asking beforehand when they want you to start.

The group that reached this stage was very small, about 8 of us in total. We were asked to pretend to be managers of a care home that was going to implement something new to make the care home better. The board had given some proposed ideas that they had already costed and it was up to you as a group to choose within 20 minutes which you would go for and then you would feedback to the board- who were the interviewers.

My interview took place in a cafe in a central location which I travelled to from the other end of the country. All my travel costs were covered. The panel consisted of the client who I would be working with, their current PA, and an agent from their representative agency. The interview was largely informal and I felt at ease. I wasn't expecting so many standard, skills related questions to accompany the more laid-back, conversational ones, so found myself clutching at straws for answers at times, despite having recent interview practice for other positions. I left feeling that it was an overall success, but hoping that I hadn't been too chatty, flamboyant, or came across as unprepared!

What do I imagine the most challenging aspect of the role will be for me?

I thought that I had prepared adequately before the interview, researching my client's condition and briefly revising my relevant skills, but regretted not dedicating more time for the latter, and considering what I might be asked should the interview be more formal than I anticipated (which it was). I also wished that I had arranged a mock interview with my university careers centre. So, my advice would be to never assume that you have enough practice from previous interviews, and also to prepare in advance separate answers for each individual interview for the questions:

What attracted you to this role?

What key skills do you feel you have for this role?

What do you think are the five most important skills for this role?

What are two of your greatest weaknesses?

What are your greatest strengths?

It might seem easy to think of answers when they aren't connected to a particular job, but in the interview you will need to relate each response to the role which is really tricky when you are on the spot, hence the need to prepare in advance until you can confidently answer without reference to your notes.

Informal phone conversation, face-to-face panel interview

After completing the written test, which consisted of a mock assessment we had to attend a panel interview with the senior management (3 members) and had a short informal interview with a service user, a young care leaver. During the panel interview senior staff members each asked 5 questions these were competency based questions and scenarios relating to the role.

You are assigned to work with a service user from a BAME background who experienced discrimination at school. What is your experience of discrimination relating to BAME service users and how would you support this service user?

Prepare for the interview based on the role description and read the relevant safeguarding policies, frameworks and practitioners` guidelines.
Be patient with the recruitment team as they made mistakes when they sent out the interview dates and had issues booking in the date and time for the written test and interview. The recruitment team also lost the scanned in copies of my certificates twice so it took quite long to get a start date due to their mistakes.

Complete a mock assessment on a whole family in relation to 10 areas, Physical health, Mental health, Substance use, Domestic abuse, ASB and offending, Child safety, Housing, Debt, Adult education/training and employment, Children`s education complete risk and protective factors for each family member for the above areas. We had 90 minutes to complete the written assessment and generally in practice the FSWs has 4-6 weeks to complete the assessment.
After the written test we had a 45 minutes panel interview with the senior management.