Question:
I am trying to get a new job in a new country, and im having trouble
understanding the different question and answer interviews. I would
appriciate it if somebody that has gone through the whole process
would give me tips/answers for the following questions:
1. how do you stay current in your nursing practice?
2. What were your 2 most satisfying proffesional nursing
accomplishment?
3. how do you handle stress?
4. Tell me about a time in which you had to handle an irate co-worker
or patient, how did you handle it? what were the resultes?
5. how do you handle in a conflict?
6. what kind of managers do you like the most? the least? and why?
7. whay would you like to work for us?
8. What is the most important thing for you in a job?
Answer:
These are mostly "behavioural interviewing" questions. You may want to
read up on that technique. And read up on Human Resources Management, which is
the science of hiring/recruiting.
Answer it honestly.
* What do you do to "stay current" with Best Practice and "benchmarking"?
* How are you being the best RN you can be? What are your activities?
* Have you read your hospital's policy and procedure manual?
* Do you know your province or state's College of Nursing's Best Practice
guidelines?
* If you do not, Do you look them up? Know how to find this information,
and look it up.
* Do you practice Evidence-based Nursing?
(e.g. do you know the rationale of WHY you change a dressing, for
example, once, twice or three times a day? Or why you use a certain
cream on a burn? Or why we do what we do to prevent stasis pneumonia in
a bedridden patient?)
This is all the sort of stuff drilled into the student nurses in BSN
nursing programs.
We have to know WHY we do what we do, if we want to be professionals, and
not merely technical staff.
This gives them an idea of what -=motivates=- you, as a person, and as a
professional.
What is the answer? Only you know.
This is a behavioural interviewing question.
How do you handle stressful situations?
How are you preventing burnout from happening to you? They don't want
someone who burns out. Do you know the signs of burnout? What sorts of
situations cause burnout? (high stress/low control). What activities
do you do to *manage* -=your=- stress levels?
How did you handle it? (This is somewhat meant to see what your EI rating
is. EI is Emotional Intelligence.)
The answer that I'd give is:
Address the action and behaviour, not the person. The person you have the
conflict with is not a "bad nurse", she is a nurse who needs improvement with a
specified skill, for example. It's about your ability to remain detached,
de-escalate the situation, as well as use effective argument, logic and
verbal reasoning.
Learn about the types of Management styles and organizational setups so
that you can comment. e.g. transactional, transformational, management by
exemption, teams, matrixes, flat hierarchies, self-managemment, etc.
An Organizational Behavior textbook is a good place to start to learn
about these things.
Summary: The trend these days is to use what is called "behavioral
interviewing" and indicators of Emotional Intelligence. They like to use
scenarios.
Maybe you would benefit from taking some time and get to know yourself
and your preferences through a process of self-reflection. It sounds like
you may want to explore why you want to work for each place.
