The single most useful thing to know about a staff specialist interview is that every question maps to a selection criterion and every answer is scored against a rubric written for that criterion. Candidates who prepare by criterion walk in knowing what each question is for; candidates who prepare by topic are surprised by questions that were never surprising. This guide is about preparing by criterion.
Read the position description like the panel does
The selection criteria are the panel's scoring sheet. Before anything else, list them. For most staff specialist posts across the states they are some version of:
- AHPRA specialist registration and fellowship of the relevant college
- Demonstrated clinical experience and skills in the specialty
- Communication skills, written, verbal and interpersonal, including use of information technology and the electronic record
- Teamwork and leadership in a multidisciplinary team
- Commitment to teaching, supervision and continuing education
- Commitment to research and quality improvement
- Clinical governance and quality assurance
- Willingness to participate in the on call roster
- Cultural safety, increasingly explicit, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health named
- The organisation's values, sometimes implicit
Registration and fellowship are checked at shortlisting and rarely asked about. Everything else becomes a question.
One example per criterion
For each criterion, write one example from your own practice in STAR form: the situation, your task, what you did, the result. Make your own actions clear, because panels score what you did rather than what the team did. Add a line of reflection where it fits. Then write a second, shorter example as backup, because some panels ask two questions on the same criterion.
For clinical skills, a case that did not go well and what you changed, and a case at the edge of your scope. For communication, a difficult conversation and a complaint. For teamwork and leadership, a multidisciplinary example, a leadership example and a conflict. For teaching, what you have taught and a trainee you supervised. For research and QI, your project with its measure and its result. For governance, an incident you were involved in and your understanding of the system. For cultural safety, an example of your own actions with an Aboriginal patient or family. For values, one example per value.
Answer so the panel can score you
Panels score against descriptors: a strong answer names a real example, gives the measured outcome and shows understanding; an adequate answer describes the process with a generic example; a weak answer talks in the abstract or blames others. Make it easy for them. Signpost which criterion you are addressing if it is not obvious. Give the example, the outcome and the reflection in about two minutes. Then stop and let them probe.
Where candidates lose marks
Claiming every criterion equally. The question "which criteria do you meet most strongly and which least" is asked precisely to find out whether you are honest. Name the weakest with what you are doing about it.
Generic examples. "I always communicate clearly with families" scores adequate at best. "In March I sat with a family for forty minutes after an unexpected death and this is what I did" scores strong.
Forgetting the other professions. The teamwork criterion is multidisciplinary; an example that only mentions doctors misses it.
Treating cultural safety as a definition. The criterion is scored on actions: the Aboriginal liaison officer, the family, the discharge planning, the interpreter.
Running long. Thirty minutes with eight questions is under four minutes each including the probe. Two minute answers leave room.
The written application
Your written response to the criteria has already been scored, and the interview tests the same criteria out loud. Make sure the examples you give in the interview are consistent with what you wrote, and that you can go deeper on each, because the panel has your application in front of them.
Practising
Have someone read each criterion to you as a question and time your two minute answer, then probe once. Do it for the whole list in thirty minutes. When every criterion has an example you can deliver fluently with a result in it, you are ready.