The Client

Experienced Director of Nursing in small NHS Trust looking for a bigger challenge in an acute Trust in England or Wales

The Brief

My client had been successfully short-listed and interviewed three times. She was told she was above the line and appointable but was not being appointed. She really wanted to succeed at her next interview in order to regain her confidence as well as get the job.

The programme

Two half-day session preceded by a half hour telephone briefing.

We debriefed previous interviews - what happened, what went well, what she would change, how she felt during and after and so on. She felt bewildered and disappointed as she had put her all into the interview process and preparation for it. 

Key issues

1.  Her manner. Post-interview feedback suggested that she came across as cold.  In her desire to come over as professional she was in fact presenting an inauthentic self to the panel - a cold, inflexible, rather humourless persona - not herself at all.
2. Preparation. She was shocked that feedback suggested that she was under-prepared.  She had done masses of preparation, reading White Papers, conference papers, strategic documents and boning up on local health issues. Picking all this apart, we discovered that she was concentrating on the wrong kind of preparation - little or no preparation on who would be on the panel, rehearsing examples of transferable skills and experience, giving careful consideration to the added value she could bring and how she was a good fit with the person specification.
3. Her mind-set. She saw the interview as an exam containing a set of questions the answers to which she could mug up in advance, so if her answers were wrong she would fail, which made her feel very stressed. She was convinced that the appointment should be on her track record not her personal style.

Some actions:

• Developed the notion of creating responses rather than trying to remember the correct answers, which shifted most of the anxiety and helped her to relax.
• Worked up a collection of examples and well-constructed illustrations to back up her career highlights and in particular to demonstrate her leadership style.
• Checked over her CV so that she could tailor her anecdotes and match her behaviour to the promise within the CV.
• Revisited her MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) profile, which made her realise that her preference for introversion meant that talking to strangers about herself made her feel uncomfortable. So, we developed mechanisms for revealing personal information in a way that was comfortable for her. We talked about what it felt like for her when she was under pressure and personalised some rescue mechanisms to enable her to cope on the day and enable her to talk comfortably about herself 
• Revised her preparation plan so that she spent more time considering how to sell her achievements, settling on a nicely judged balance between showing off and being unnecessarily modest.
• Planned and rehearsed a ten minute presentation as a vehicle for personal convictions showing the high quality style presentation style needed at Board level, presentation revamped using half a dozen well designed slides only and a calculated bit of risk taking
• Took an image audit and decided to ditch the navy suit and white blouse which was dismissed as too "nursey", too characterless, too safe and too predictable. Planned to wear something more colourful, more stylish and more "her".  The effect was to warm her up considerably but still gaining maximum professional impact.

The outcome