The aims of this book are to guide you in achieving success through:
1. finding your own words and behaviours which will present you at your very best
2. identifying and clarifying areas for your personal development
Some readers may wonder about the relevance of the latter point above. There has
been a long-established tradition of interviewers enquiring about “strengths” and
“weaknesses”. You may still be asked a direct question of this type. A positive
alternative mindset to the idea of having “weaknesses”, however is to think of them as
“areas for personal development”. If you did not have any of these then you would not
need to go on a training programme! We will explore this subject in depth during
Chapter 4, Identifying key experiences, strengths and development requirements, and in
Section 6.05, Strengths and weaknesses?
Along the way, we shall regularly encourage you to take the explicit challenge: to
practice putting your experiences, opinions and beliefs into concise words. It’s often
harder than we anticipate and can reveal that we are less able to be as eloquent as we
would like to be.
The precise nature of the interview stations varies from one specialty to another and
constantly evolve. We will therefore take the approach of supporting your preparation in
an adaptable manner, rather than providing specialty specific information. You will be
provided with full descriptions of the stations you will experience when you are invited to
the interview day.
1.03 Advance preparation or last-minute rush?
We realise that different readers will be approaching this book with significantly different
timescales for interview preparation. Although written with a structured flow in mind it is
your choice whether to start at the beginning and work through to the end or to dip in and
out of the sections which interest you most.
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