I can’t believe it’s been over a year since Cathy and I started the seemingly never-ending process of interviewing for residency positions. Going on the “interview trail” is a process that lasts for several months in the last year of medical school. As we were couples matching, we had to interview at a slightly higher number of programs than we would have if we were matching individually. There were weeks at a time when we spent more days on the road and in airports than we spent at home.
I won’t go into the usual, often common-sense advice (be nice ← duh?, act professionally, etc), but I wanted to share how I applied three evidence-based learning strategies to my interview experience: spaced retrieval practice (SRP), directness, and cramming (yes, cramming!). I make no claims to be an interview expert—far from it—but I hope anyone currently in the throes may glean something useful.
My two primary resources for getting started were Ben White’s blog (eg, “How to Succeed in Your Residency Interviews,” “A Curated Collection of Interview Questions”) and the book The Successful Match (which has excellent general application advice as well as tips for presenting yourself in the best light for your chosen specialty). After familiarizing myself with the general process (see “How to Succeed…” and TSM), I sat down with Ben White’s 50+ questions and worked through them on a google doc. It’s a priceless list, spanning everything from “What’s your story?” to “Tell me about your best and worst residents” to “Tell me about an ethical dilemma you experienced as a medical student.” Even in radiology—considered far more laid back than, say, ortho—I was asked some brain busters, including those last two questions.
Spaced Retrieval Practice
Most of our interviews were simple conversations. Even then, I still derived comfort from knowing that I had put thoughts into my answers—and that I had those ready in my pocket. It allowed me to be more relaxed during the interviews and feel secure that the answers I gave were true to myself. To practice, I loaded each question into an Anki card, typing the question on the front and pasting a screenshot of my google doc answer on the back (see below, for example). Armed with 49 cards, I worked through several SRP repetitions in the weeks leading up to my first interview.
SRP was only half the battle, of course. The process helped me lock dozens of answers in longer-term memory, but it wasn’t going to produce a holistically successful interview. That’s where directness stepped in.
Directness
Directness essentially means “practice how you perform.” In the learning literature, this idea is generally termed “transfer appropriate processing” (TAP). However, Scott Young, in his book Ultralearning, swaps TAP for “directness,” and it’s an alt term I quite like. For interviewing, this meant doing lots of practice interviews, and—in the vein of deliberate practice—getting feedback. I scheduled two school-sponsored mock interviews, which were filmed for later playback and helped me identify verbal tics. I ran questions with Cathy as we traveled to each interview. Another strategy I found helpful was listening to radiology podcasts (favorites include Radiology Firing Line, RLI Taking the Lead, and UCTV Radiology), which put radiology vocabulary and current issues at the forefront of my mind.
Cramming
Finally, immediately pre-interview, I’d cram all 49 cards. (I confess I got lazy toward the end.) We don’t advocate cramming when it comes to durable knowledge, of course (see Cathy’s Cramming Series: Part 1, 2, 3, 4), but interviewing is one-and-done. Cramming can outperform spaced learning on short-term tasks.1 We might as well take advantage by putting the two—SRP and cramming—together, especially since the amount of material isn’t overwhelming. Additionally, the night before, I would memorize a list of 4-5 reasons I was interested in the program. After surviving my first few interviews, I also began piecing together a list of 10-15 questions I could ask residents and interviewers (eg, goals/philosophies of the program? Mechanisms of feedback? Resident input in shaping curriculum?)—with program-specific questions added the pre-interview night. I actually encoded these using a memory palace, which enabled me to run through them if put on the spot.
Ultimately, there’s no substitute for the confidence of a few good interviews under the belt, but a few boosts from learning science helped take the stress levels down a few notches. Best of luck to all the applicants this year!
What do you think? Do you have specific or unusual strategies for preparing for interviews? Share in the comments below!
1. Rawson, K. A. & Kintsch, W. Rereading Effects Depend on Time of Test. J. Educ. Psychol. 97, 70–80 (2005).