Hi All!
Last month, Erin walked you through building a resume that actually gets noticed. So let's say it worked. You applied. You got the call. Congrats!
Buttttt now you're staring at a Zoom invite for an interview with a hiring manager who has never worked a 12-hour nursing shift in their life, and you have no idea what they're going to ask you or how to talk about your career in a way that makes sense to them.
This month, we're covering exactly that: how to walk into a nontraditional interview and sound like you already belong there.
Why these interviews feel different
Bedside interviews are usually short and clinical. "Tell me about a code you ran." "How do you prioritize a busy assignment." The interviewer already speaks your language.
Nontraditional interviews don't work that way. You might be talking to a case management director, a med device recruiter, or a panel that includes someone from HR, someone from operations, and someone clinical. Your nursing skills are implied, and they're testing whether you can think, communicate, and solve problems outside a clinical framework. But you will usually be using clinical experience as your proof.
This is such a different way to represent yourself than we ever learned in nursing school.
I have also found nurses to be really bad at tooting their own horn. We have been advocating for others for so long, that we are not used to advocating for ourselves! Let's change that.
Turn your stories into answers
You already have the stories. You also already have the skills. The interview is just about shaping them so a non-clinical person can follow along and see the value you bring.
A simple structure that works under pressure: Situation, Task, Action, Result (STAR).
Situation - one or two sentences of context. Skip the clinical detail that doesn't matter to them.
Task - what you were responsible for, or what needed to happen.
Action - what you specifically did. Make sure to be specific about your action role versus a more collective "team" or "we."
Result - what changed, ideally with a number.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Example Question: "Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information."
Situation: I came in for a shift to find we were down two nurses with no backup on the way, and I was the most senior nurse on the floor.
Task: I needed to reassign patient loads on the fly in a way that kept everyone safe, without full information on how bad the shortage would get.
Action: I triaged assignments based on acuity, flagged the two highest-risk patients to be reassessed hourly, and looped in the charge nurse upstairs before it became a bigger problem.
Result: We got through the shift with no missed assessments or incidents, and I later helped write the unit's short-staffing protocol based on what worked that day.
Notice what the Result line is doing. A weaker version might say: "The shift went okay and nothing bad happened." True, but it's not going to leave the lasting impression you want. The stronger version names the outcome and shows it led to something lasting, a protocol other nurses now use. That can be the differentiator in a competitive job market.
Now, go back to the portfolio you started building after our June newsletter. That's your bank of STAR stories, already sitting there waiting for you.
Questions to ask them
Interviews go both ways, and the questions you ask signal just as much as your answers. Skip "what's the culture like" and try:
"What does success look like in this role in the first 90 days?"
"What's the biggest challenge the person in this seat will face?"
"How does this team measure the impact of the work you do?"
Questions like these tell them you're already thinking like someone actually in the role, not someone auditioning for it.
My favorite question to end an interview is "Was there anything from the interview today that makes you question my ability to do this job successfully?"
If you get a no - great, you can feel confident about your interview and know that it's harder to turn someone down after they agree to your face that you would be a great fit.
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If they do name a concern, that's your chance to speak to how you'd overcome it and still be a great fit.
In a tough job market, I like to shoot my shot! You can too ๐
An AI prompt to help you prep
If you're not sure which of your stories to use, try this:
"I'm a nurse interviewing for a [insert target role, e.g. utilization review, case management, clinical informatics] position. Ask me behavioral interview questions one at a time, the kind a non-clinical hiring manager might ask. After each answer I give you, help me tighten it into a Situation-Task-Action-Result format that a non-nurse would understand, with a quantified result where possible. Ask me any clarifying questions about the role that would help before we begin."
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Let it interview you a few times before the real thing. You'll walk in with answers you've already said out loud. I love to use the voice to text function for this interview prep. Saying answers out loud is much better than just typing them.
What to do this week
Keep it simple:
Pull 3 stories from your portfolio (or your memory, if you haven't started one yet) and rewrite them in Situation-Task-Action-Result format.
Say your answers out loud, not just in your head. It's a different skill than writing them.
Write down 2 questions you'll ask them. Have them ready before you need them.
FINAL THOUGHT
You're not walking into that interview to prove you were a good nurse. You and I already know you are. You're walking in to show them what that nursing experience means outside the four walls of a hospital.
Even if you don't have an interview just yet, you can start compiling your STAR stories and be more prepared when you do! So many of your nursing wins can be adapted to many different behavioral questions that you might run into.
Thanks for reading, I am hoping this helps! Feel free to reply to this email with any other career move issues you are having so I can be sure to focus on these in a future issue.
Appreciate you being here,
Ellie
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