By Joyce Routson
Practice your responses to interview questions
In today's tight market for nurses, it's more important than ever to be prepared if you've been selected an interview. The competition is fierce and you want to demonstrate that you are the best-qualified candidate for the job.
There are a myriad of sample interview questions available online. We've compiled some of the best ones from nursing school, recruiter and hospital HR sources. We've tried to explain the thinking behind many of them.
But first, remember that an interview is a two-way street... Most interviews contain three types of questions: basic (documenting your experience, your knowledge of the organization), character (will you fit in?) and behavioral.
Behavioral interviewing is a technique being used more and more by employers to assess your potential performance based on real-life scenarios. These types of questions are also used to assess your critical thinking and active listening skills.
Strengths and weaknesses A good character assessing question is "why should we hire you?" This is where the interviewer wants to hear what sets you apart from other candidates and find out a little about your personality.
Here are some other character-type questions:
* "Why did you select a nursing career?"
* "Tell me about yourself"
* "What contribution will you make to our organization?"
* "What excites you about this job?" or, "What was your favorite clinical experience?"
* "What are your strengths and weaknesses?"
* "How do you handle criticism?"
* Tell me about your last performance review. What were you told you could improve on?"
* "How would you describe your relationship with your previous/current manager?
* "How would a supervisor (or co-worker) describe you?"
* "What are your most significant accomplishments?"
* "What are your short- and long-term goals?" of, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?"
* "What has been your greatest challenge?"
* "What frustrates you most?"
* "What keeps you motivated?"
* "What made you choose the specialty in which you practice?"
Capabilities When it comes to behavioral questions, they may be as broad as "explain a situation where you utilized your critical thinking skills to intervene for a patient" or as narrow as "what do you do when you are five minutes from the end of your shift and there is a code emergency in your unit?"
