Roughly half of consultant interviews include a presentation, usually five to ten minutes, on a title given in advance. Some trusts give the title a week ahead; some give it an hour before, with preparation time; a few give it fifteen minutes before. Most now limit or ban slides. The presentation is scored, and so are the questions that follow it, which is where panels separate candidates. This guide covers the titles panels set, a structure that answers them, and delivery.
The titles panels set
Newly appointed consultants report titles in three themes.
Vision and service development: your vision for the department over the next five years; how you would set up a new service, what data you would need and who you would involve; how you would grow the service and increase its visibility; how your appointment would develop services for the department and the region.
Challenges: how to reduce waiting times; the challenges facing the specialty in the current NHS; transforming the service after the pandemic; workforce recruitment and retention and what you would do about it.
Equity and population: equity of access to the service; reducing health inequalities for a named population in the trust's area.
Whatever the title, it is about this trust and this department, and the panel is testing whether you can think about their service, not the specialty in general.
A structure that answers the title
Problem, evidence, options, recommendation, what you would personally do.
- The problem as the title frames it, in a sentence, with why it matters to this trust.
- The evidence: two or three facts about the trust's position (the waiting list numbers, the CQC findings, the staff survey, the demographics of the population) and one or two from the national picture.
- The options: two or three ways forward, with the case for each in a sentence.
- Your recommendation and why.
- What you would do in your first year to make it happen: the people you would involve, the measure you would use, the first step.
Signpost the structure in your opening sentence so the panel can follow, and close by returning to the title. Ten minutes allows about a minute and a half per section; five minutes allows under a minute each, so cut the options to two.
If you get the title an hour before
Use the structure as a template. Spend the first ten minutes deciding the recommendation, because everything else follows from it. Spend the next twenty on the evidence, which you should have prepared in advance: before the interview, write down ten facts about the trust and the department that you could use in any presentation, and bring them. Spend the last twenty rehearsing aloud, at least twice, against a clock.
Delivery without slides
Speak to the panel, not to notes. One sheet of paper with the five headings and the key numbers is enough. Stand if you can. Use the structure as the visual: "there are three options, the first is...". Finish inside the time; running over is the commonest failure and panels notice it. If you finish early, stop; do not pad.
The questions afterwards
Expect three or four, and expect them to be sharper than the presentation. "What would you do if the executive said no?" "Who would resist this, and why?" "What would it cost?" "How would you know it had worked?" Prepare answers to each before you walk in. The panel is scoring whether your recommendation survives contact with their reality.
The common failures
Answering a general title instead of the one set. No recommendation, only a survey of the issues. No facts about this trust. Running over time. Reading a list. Collapsing under the first hard question. Each is avoided by the structure above and by rehearsing aloud.
Preparing in advance
Write three outlines before the interview, one for each theme, each with a recommendation and the trust facts that support it. Rehearse each aloud in both five and ten minute versions. Then have someone give you a new title with an hour's notice and run the whole thing, including the questions. Once you have done that twice, the day itself holds no surprises.