The IMT interview opens with a prepared two minute presentation on why you are suited to internal medicine. It sets the tone for the whole first station, and it leads straight into the suitability questions the assessors draw from it. Done well, it gets the panel on your side in the first three minutes. Done badly, it is a recited CV that tells them nothing they had not already read.
What the assessors score
The presentation is scored under application and achievements and under suitability, with communication marked across the station. Assessors are listening for three things: evidence that you understand what the medical registrar job actually is, evidence from your own experience that you can do it, and a sense of who you are as a colleague. They are not scoring the number of achievements you can fit into two minutes.
A structure that works
One message, three supporting points, and a close. The message is why you are suited to internal medicine, in a sentence. The three points are the evidence, each with a specific example and what it showed:
- Clinical: an acute situation you managed well, or a rotation that confirmed the choice, with what you did and what it taught you about being the registrar.
- The wider role: an audit, a QI project or a teaching activity, with the result, showing you understand that a medical registrar runs a team and improves a service as well as treating patients.
- The person: something about how you work, or what sustains you, with honesty about what you will find hard.
Close with one sentence on where you want this to lead, which opens the door to the "which specialty" follow up.
Writing it
Write it out in full, then cut it until it reads at one minute fifty when spoken at a normal pace. Most first drafts are three and a half minutes. Cut adjectives first, then anything the panel can read in your application, then any sentence that does not contain a specific. Use the first person and plain verbs: "I led", "I audited", "I changed".
Avoid clichés the assessors hear thirty times a day: the variety of medicine, the diagnostic puzzle, enjoying a challenge. If you want to say any of those, prove it with a case.
Delivering it
Practise aloud until the timing is reliable without a clock. Look at the panel, not at your notes. If you lose your place, pause and continue; a short silence costs nothing and a visible panic costs a lot. Do not rush the close. If the assessors stop you at two minutes, stop; they have heard what they need.
The questions that follow
The presentation seeds the questions that follow, so you choose some of them by what you include. Expect:
- Why internal medicine, and why now?
- What is your strongest achievement, and what did it change?
- What makes you suited to being a medical registrar, and what will you find hardest?
- Which specialty are you aiming for, and why?
- What would you do if you were not appointed this year?
Have a one minute answer for each, with a specific example, and make sure none of them simply repeats the presentation. If the presentation mentioned an audit, the follow up answer should add the result and the reflection, not the description again.
Practise the presentation and the follow up questions together, against a timer, with someone who will interrupt. That is the condition on the day.