Okay, so it's 11.30, and we're going to go ahead and get started. Good morning. I'm Francesca Litto. I'm the Corporate Global Medical Director for Ford Motor Company, and that's a mouthful. This is Mike Levine, and he is the Medical Director for Examinetics. By way of disclosure, Mike and I are work partners, but not life partners. We've been work partners since we competed against each other for residency spots, and luckily both got them, so we have known each other since the dark ages. I did want to start by talking a little bit about why this matters. Why does putting your best foot forward and interviewing well matter? The reason it matters is because, although my title is Global Executive Director, blah, blah, blah, what I really am is an HR leader. As human resources leaders, so much of what we do is about trust and communications. To quote Julie McKibbin, who was giving a great presentation in her role as the Senior Leader at Procter & Gamble last year, she talked about how COVID catapulted us into the C-suite, which is great, but in the C-suite, or slightly lower than the C-suite, what we are now are business leaders with medical expertise. We need to learn how to communicate. One of the things that we need to do is navigate these interviews that our HR colleagues and partners have created so that we can actually get to the places where we can be most impactful. With that said, I'm going to do my own disclosure. I do work for Ford Motor Company, but right here, I am here as Francesca Litto. These are my own views and opinions, and I don't have any conflicts of interest, and we're not here to talk about medical products or services in this presentation. I'm Mike Levine. I'm in private practice, occupational medicine in Virginia, and I'm also a medical director for Examinetics, which is a national company. I have no conflicts of interest to disclose. No medical products or services will be discussed, and I'd just like to reveal to you that I first learned about behavioral interviewing when Fran called me asking me if I wanted to do this talk with her. If I can learn it on the fly, you can, too. It's not real complicated. Also, a colleague of mine, Dr. Dean Jean, heard what I was going to be lecturing on, and he hadn't heard the term behavioral interviewing, so he, as he is wont to do, entered it into chat GPT, and he got a one-page summary of basically our presentation. So we liked it. It agreed with us. Okay, so learning objectives. You can kind of see them on the screen. I'm not going to read them to you. This session is going to use case-based, evidence-based, interactive format, and we want to help prepare you for effective behavior-based interviews. First thing we're going to need to do is define that, and we'll get to that presently. We want to engage you in planning your transition to positions of greater leadership responsibility in educational and environmental medicine. So that's our main purpose today. Scroll on, Fran. Okay, so why have interview techniques changed? So it used to be that you put in your CV, right, and your letters of reference, and you maybe got on an airplane, and you went to go see the place, and you went to talk to the people, and if they really liked you, then they invited you back for a second interview. Information collecting was what you provided to them, your paperwork, right? But what we know is that really nobody used those references, and if they did, maybe they really weren't an accurate representation. So maybe raise your hand if you've written a letter of reference for somebody. I don't know how useful that was, right? Nobody wants to write, we were so glad to see them go, you know? We wish you luck with this human. So I think people have realized that there's not a lot of good information that you get from letters of reference. You know, think about what would you say about a former colleague? So, again, what we need is a system where we can actually answer the real questions, which are in the third bullet here. We know that somebody who's good on paper doesn't really translate into good with people. I'd like to work with this person. Maybe good at setting and meeting goals, right, which is really important for a business leader. Or even a good leader. So what behavioral-based interviews are theoretically designed to do is to maybe judge, measure, explore how effective you will be, and really, for lack of a better word, you're fit, right? Do I want to work with this person? And that's more than what you can present on paper. We all know people who can write great articles, and some of us may be people who can write great articles, but, you know, we're not hiring neurosurgeons here, right? If we hire a neurosurgeon, you really don't care how nice they are, right? You want them to get in your brain and do the job, and they're wonderful, and that's great. When we hire occupational medicine physicians and HR leaders, we want people who can bring others along. We want someone who, when things are going sideways, can go and talk with leaders, and figure out what needs to be done calmly, and relate to them as a person. So that's where behavioral-based interviewing comes in. So what happens here? You, as the candidate, have the opportunity to leverage your personal experience, to be a storyteller, to demonstrate your potential to be successful in the organization. So the Society of Human Resource Management makes a distinction between behavioral interviewing and situational interviewing. Behavioral interviewing is the subject of today's talk, but you're going to find behavioral interviewing questions, and situational interviewing questions, and general questions, such as, tell us about yourself, in any interview. So there's going to be a mix and match, and behavioral interview questions, the key thing is, this is about your history. They want to know what in your history can demonstrate to them that you can do the job they want you to do. The situational interview questions are the more familiar questions, such as, where you're given a hypothetical. So it's history versus hypothetical. In the behavioral setting, it's, what did you do? Tell us about a time that you did this thing that's analogous to the thing that we want you to do. You've got to listen to that question, and you've got to really make that distinction, you don't want to give them a hypothetical, you don't want to speak to something you haven't done. Both of these question types get at your knowledge, skills, and abilities. We're going to show you the typical behavioral questions that you may encounter, and this may be especially valuable to those of you earlier in your careers, but not so early that you don't have a work history to work with. There's a saying in Italian called la bella figura, which is, look your best, best foot forward. When you are preparing for any interview, you want to project your best professional appearance. I was actually just in the session on implicit bias, and Dr. Clark was talking a lot about this, so I'm just going to use myself as an example. This is not what you wear. This is chosen intentionally, this is a little colorful, a little busy. If I were, especially on a video screen, you might be going, that's an interesting pattern, but it would be very distracting from what I want you to do, which is look at me. I want you to listen to me, so we move forward. A little bit of this is what not to wear. Select an appropriate outfit, check the fit, especially if you're going to be on camera or video, because what is going to be seen is this much of you. Maybe make sure that that much of you is what you care to reflect. How many of you have been on a Zoom call and maybe you exercise during COVID that it looks like you're not actually wearing a whole lot because you have a tank top on? That's not how you want to interview for a leadership position. You want to check your look. You also want to remove distracting decor and backgrounds. I want to be looking at you and saying, oh, isn't that a talented person, let me learn from them. I don't want to be saying, were they fishing? Or what is that hanging up behind them? There was someone interviewing for a position at Ford and it was not a physician position, but it was a leadership position in my organization. He was in his garage. The entire time I was thinking, could you not have picked? Could you have rented a place? I was looking at all of the stuff he kept in his garage. Honestly, that is what I texted the other people about during the interview. We were just wondering, is he disorganized? There's that implicit bias. I immediately went to, your garage is a mess. What is that hanging over there? These are things to be thoughtful about whether it's in person. Be comfortable. Try on your clothes before. You don't want to be itchy. Do some preparation. Back to the video calls. Make sure that your family members, your pets, your lawnmower crew are not participating in your interview whether they're seen or unseen. Mike's going to talk a little bit about some Zoom fails, as we say. These are just things to be thoughtful about. If you need to take your entire family and your pets and send them elsewhere for that really important hour, because you really do want to put your best foot forward. Mike's going to do a little demonstration for gentlemen here. How you dress, obviously, is your personal style. It's all about that. I'm just going to make a few suggestions. We came on this independently. It's funny that we didn't talk about this. I went through my closet before coming out here and I thought, what's the loudest tie that I have? It's this one. I'm a Gustav Klimt fan. Nobody else is. Anyway, that's why it was really cheap. It's a terrible tie. It's distracting and it's kind of weird and it's like, what's going on there? There's another thing. I'm wearing plaid. You really want to know if what you're wearing, and by that I mean what you're going to wear on the day, is going to project well on video. Because some plaids and some patterns on ties can give you moiré patterns on the video and be very distracting. Another thing. You notice I just sat down. Most of us are going to be sitting for interviews. I'm nice and comfortable, but I don't look like I am because I left my button buttoned. Gentlemen, just do that and be way more relaxed. My mother would be very amused that I was giving anyone sartorial advice. Just laying that out there for you. But again, it's the little things. You may be uncomfortable enough. You might be nervous. Try to optimize your comfort so that you can really focus and be present for what is the most important activity, which is having these conversations. You really want to ask a colleague on the very virtual platform that you're going to use, including whatever internet connection you're going to use to make that call. You really want it to be a simulation of the event on the day. You want to have what you might need at the time of the interview, or something handy. If you need to sneeze, which can happen, you don't really want to be getting up and walking across the room in the middle of the interview. As Fran mentioned, avoid intrusion by family or pets. Set it up so that you're comfortable and that no one is distracted by what's in your environment. There are other things that people find distracting when meeting someone for the first time. Some of us have the habit of up-speak and end every sentence as if it's a question. People of my generation usually cock our head and wonder about that a little bit. For a lot of people, that's the norm. That's what you do. If you're meeting with a group of people and they don't sound like NPR announcers. The other thing that's similar is vocal fry, which didn't exist, I swear, before 1990. Now everybody has vocal fry. You do this thing with your larynx and it makes your voice a little deeper. You may have that. Don't turn it up to 11, because it's a little bit different from the norm for the people who will be interviewing you. We want to make sure all of the tech works. You want to ask the person who's helping you to talk to you about sound quality, about the lighting. It's really inexpensive to buy little lights like a ring light that gives you a much better, more even lighting in your home office or wherever you're going to do this. Finally, we don't like to talk about this, but have a plan B. Lightning strike, oak tree falls, internet out, phone line up. Can you call in? Does your cell phone work? Video rather than video. Be prepared. When Mike and I were preparing this presentation, his microphone went out, so we started doing hand signals. There was a storm. My lighting was bad. He was like, are you there? I can't see you. This is a compilation slide of some classic Zoom fails. The guy in the upper right-hand corner, that is a beautiful background, is it not? It's fabulous. He's making excellent eye contact. I think he's reading his little iPad or something. That's kind of terrible. This guy is worse on the bottom. First of all, he's sort of a ghoulish-looking character, I would say. What is that thing hanging on the wall behind him to the left? I've got no idea, but it's a little scary, especially with the dark glasses. That's the best we ever got of him because he was giving a court deposition and had to give the entire deposition with the cat filter. They called it to his attention, and he said, I don't know how to turn it off. No cat filters, or at least be ready to roll with it if you do have one that can't be turned off. Also, you may have a Star Trek background because you're obscuring your garage or your kitchen or wherever you're working, but I don't want to interview you with your Star Trek background. I love Star Trek. I have that background myself sometimes, but what if I didn't? Think about, is it your vacation picture? Think about for academia. First of all, when I told her what behavioral interviewing was, she said, we call that interviewing because she's interviewing academics and people who are applying for leadership positions all the time, not generally entry-level people. Whatever you inspired me to say is gone, in addition to eye contact. This gentleman in the picture is not being engaging. He's just not interested. He may think he's looking at the screen, but he didn't practice, so he doesn't realize that he's not looking at the screen. Again, as long as we're on that, if you have a webcam that is not integrated in your computer, and I'm trying to interview you and I'm like, what are you looking at? I don't know if you have a problem. Then I may feel guilty. Oh my God, is that my implicit bias? What if they have a little bit of me to look at, you don't want to see the jazz hands, right? So, you're selling yourself, yes, by being a storyteller, but more storyteller, less sales, no jazz hands, and that's where rehearsing with a colleague comes in. If you need to use your hands to tell a story, just be mindful that, first of all, they may not be able to see your hands at all, but they might see your upper body kind of wiggling around because your hands are moving, and if you're in person, again, that might be a little bit too much of you in the moment. So, okay, let's get to it and talk about how do you prepare to respond to the questions. We talked about how to get your act together in terms of what you look like, but how do you prepare? So, the game here is to present your experience to align with the position, so you do need to do your homework and know a little bit about what the heck the job is that you were being hired for. I've actually been in interviewing where the person is saying, oh, so this is a job for a plant physician? Yes, that is why the job description in the application that you put in said that we were looking for a plant physician, so pay attention. It could be that you're applying for a couple of different jobs, and you might even be fortunate, especially these days, and you might have a couple of different interviews with different companies. Make sure you're prepared for the right one because that shows respect, but also, I want to hire somebody who knows what they're doing in the morning, so this is an opportunity for me to learn that you know what you're doing when you come to the table, and you can look up companies on LinkedIn, right? You know how to do your homework. If you know the names of the interview panel, which you should, read the email that says, these are the people that are going to be participating in the interview, and then go look them up on the internet. Look them up on LinkedIn. Find out what you can about them because that might provide an interesting bit of conversation for you, or at least, you may understand a little bit about them and what their background is, and a lot of these people on the interviews for leadership positions are not going to be occupational medicine physicians. They might be human resources. They might be labor leaders. They might be the lawyer from down the hall that they dragged into this because he's at an appropriate salary level that they're like, come on, you've got to help me with this interview. It might be somebody from finance, and so, you need to be prepared to talk to them in their language. Remember that the interviewers were provided a copy of your CV. Now, I don't know if they read it or not, or if they're looking at it in front of them while they're doing the interview, but you shouldn't have to recite your CV. What you should prepare to do, though, is to translate your CV, translate your medical experience into what the job demands are in terms of your knowledge, skills, and expertise through giving examples, and that's why we keep using the word storyteller. You really do need to be a good storyteller. That said, I think Dean Jean, who Mike mentioned, and others have done sessions at prior AOHCs, and you'll see the TED Talks going, people doing an elevator speech. This really isn't the time for your elevator speech unless you're invited to give it. So, you listen to the questions and answer the question. If you're going to be like a golden retriever puppy, and you're giving me your elevator speech, but I didn't ask you about tell me about yourself, then I'm learning something else. I'm learning that you don't listen. I don't want to hire somebody who doesn't listen. I want to hire somebody who's going to be a member of the team. So, again, be careful what you're sharing. Only senators get to answer the question they want, not the question they were asked. Exactly. This is not risk communication, right? This is not stay on message. This is answer the questions. And, again, focus on your delivery. We're going to give you some sample questions. We put a handout in the app that is from the Society of Human Resource Management that has the questions, as Mike might have said before. There's only so many questions. So, this is where you truly can prepare effective answers in advance, and what you want to do is focus on your delivery, because this may be new for you, and the interview shouldn't be the first time that you're trying to think about, wow, what should I curate from my experience to answer that question? You should kind of have that material ready. So, I did remember what it was that my wife suggested I mention to you. A thing for her that is concerning when she's interviewing a candidate is family photos, kids' toys, things that indicate stuff that she does not want to know as a prospective employer. So, you want to be careful about creating a neutral environment that does not reveal things that the HR person doesn't want to know about you. Right. That's a great point, because, again, implicit bias. If I see your baby picture, and it could be your grandchild, right? It could be stock art that you hung up because you had a blank wall. What am I thinking about? I'm thinking about your FMLA time, right? I'm being honest here. It's great that you have a baby. Crap. So, and that's my bias, right? But that's the information you just gave me. So, I'd rather see your skiing picture, because I'm like, oh, do you like skiing? Awesome. You know, you're active. Another implicit bias. But, you know, you could have a broken leg from skiing under the table that I can't see. Then you're going to ask me about an accommodation. But, again, you know, these are the distractions that are going through my mind, my implicit bias. So, just to give you ideas, don't provide, as Mike said, any extra information. Curate the information and, you know, your best self that you want to present. Okay. So, in this slide, there's a series of general question formats. We have a lot more questions. It's really not that many more. I mean, it's probably only 10 to 12 questions that you kind of need to know. They're all in the references. They're not hard to find. Chat GPT found them right away. So, you know, easy. On this slide, the fourth bullet is really important. And I know Fran said this before, but you do not want to recapitulate your CV, and you do not want to use this time to demonstrate your tremendous fund of knowledge. Right? I mean, all of us know a lot of stuff. They've read your CV. They know you know a lot of stuff. You wouldn't have gotten the interview if they don't think that you know a lot of stuff. And unless they ask you about specific stuff, that's not a direction to move in. You want to stick to their question, answer the heck out of it, use your own experience, show them that you're a good fit, and that you listen when people talk to you. Exactly. So, I'm going to go over a general outline, and then we are going to do some short mock interviews. So, we're not going to take you through this entire outline. We're going to focus on some of the questions, but this is what the experience will likely look like for you. So, there'll be some sort of introduction. You'll get settled in. The people who are leading the interview might introduce themselves, they might share a little bit about the position, and maybe, you know, their philosophy about where this fits in the organization. Then you can get kind of a softball question, also known as, why are you qualified? You know, that is your opportunity to give maybe a minor elevator speech. You know, oh, yes, you know, I have spent 20 years in occupational medicine, in various leadership positions, and what attracted me to your position was fill in the blank. Then come the questions, and again, in our next part of this presentation, we'll show you some of those questions with some volunteers. Then there might be some discussion. This is an opportunity for the interviewers to ask you some follow-up questions based upon what you shared, or they might say, especially if they're starting to get a warm feeling about you, they might say, hey, so, you know, we're thinking that we're going to be looking to place this person in three to six months. You know, that's our time frame. And then your opportunity to ask questions, and just a little bit of friendly advice, this is not the time to negotiate your benefits. This is your time to maybe ask some of those particular questions. Hey, so tell me a little bit about the union leadership. Tell me who my key contacts are going to be. Again, your questions are showing that you've been listening, and you want to continue to learn more about the position. That shows your investment and your interest. If we could paraphrase John F. Kennedy, ask not what they can do for you. Ask what you can do for them. Exactly. And again, you want to show your executive presence. You want to be calm. You don't want to be mumbling. You want to be engaging. But again, no jazz hands. Not too engaging. You don't want to be like, oh, pick me. You know, because that's what I'm going to remember. Oh, wasn't she bubbly? Or wasn't he bubbly? Yeah, but not the one we're going to pick. But yes, very bubbly. I would love to have a drink with this person, but maybe not entrust my health system to them. So again, you want to kind of keep it on that professional level. So we are now going to move into the mock interview, and this is sort of what we're going to do. This is, you know, we're going to create an experience for you here with a little bit of theater. We have actually pre-selected some people who I'm going to invite up if we don't get any volunteers. But if there's anybody who would really like to volunteer, now is your time. We need two volunteers to come up, and we're going to ask you two questions. So, you ready? It's two questions each. Okay, a gentleman in the front here in the glasses, and a gentleman in the back there. And Francine and Sonia, you are safe. So actually, why don't you come up first, and the stairs are over here. Use the handrails. And what's your name? Joe Abrams. Joe Abrams. All right, so everybody give a round of applause for Joe Abrams for volunteering. Okay. And so, we're going to ask you two questions as if we are in the interview, and then afterwards, what we'd like you to do after you've answered the questions, we'd like you to maybe just talk about how this felt. And we'd like all of you in the audience to imagine that you are Joe Abrams. So, we have a scenario here. Joe, can I ask you, can you read the scenario on the screen over there? Do you want me to read it out loud? No, can you read it? I can read it, yes. Okay, take a minute. Take a minute to look at it. Let's be fair. Let's be fair. So, obviously, I mean, you go for an interview, you're going to get information like this about your company, you need to be familiar. Okay, great. Well, Joe, it's really great to have you here. Thank you for interviewing with us today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Yeah, so I've been an occupational medicine physician in the Air Force for about eight years. I recently graduated from residency, was prior a flight surgeon. I've had opportunities to work in Texas, Afghanistan, Korea, Germany, have done projects that have been for small units and projects for large units, and I'm looking to expand my experience, my opportunities to outside the military at this time. Great. Thanks. So, thank you. So, Joe, could you talk a little bit about how you've navigated and led through an organizational change? An organizational change, yeah. So, recently, I became the chief of occupational medicine at Hill Air Force Base, and the prior chief had been there for six years and had his way of doing things and was very successful. It has been really one of the best run clinics that I've seen in the Air Force. And with me coming in, the risk of naturally bringing down the clinic, so I tried to find where I could add to instead of detract from the success of the clinic. And so, with my opportunity to be a little bit more personal and resolve some of the interpersonal conflict that I noticed there in the clinic, I decided to interview each of my members of my team, about 26, and find out what is working well and what is not working well. And in those interviews, I found out a lot of things that actually were not running well, that others were not as well aware of. Thank you. So, now I'm going to put you on the spot one more time and say how did it feel, and everyone please think, but how did it feel for you to answer these types of questions? In this setting, I don't know who to look at, so I'm. Yeah, it's hard. So, that's a little bit different. How does it feel? I have been thinking about these types of questions for some time, and it's not terribly uncomfortable. You know, the specific questions is, you always wonder, am I going to present myself the way that I know who I am, but am I going to, is I going to come across? And that's usually my concern. I know that I'm qualified, but are they going to see that? Are they going to see the picture in the background and be distracted? Is there a small thing that I'm going to do that's going to go off on a tangent that I don't want them to do? In other words, can I keep within my important framework? Great. All right. Well, thank you very much. Well done, and very brave. I think you have to go this way. You got to exit stage left, I guess. So, I'm not going to put Joe on the spot, because he did great. He was clear. He used, you know, it seems that he could ask for information from people in a new job environment, right? That's something I might be looking for. But, and I happen to be former Navy, so I get it, right? But how many people, if you were a human resources manager, or you were hiring him, would not have necessarily understood what he was talking about with squadron and all that other stuff? Yeah. So, maybe some of you. So, what I would give you as feedback, and, you know, all of you, is that if you're working in one environment, whether it be a hospital, really anything, is to think about other ways that businesses might describe things like squadrons, your group, your location, your region, your department. These are ways that you can kind of make stuff a little more neutral. So, because, again, a follow-up question from somebody who's listening might be, oh, so how many people were you supervising there, right? I'm trying to tease out your scope. Who did you report to? That might be a follow-up question. Where did you fit in the organization? Who were your stakeholders? You know, did you work with unions? If I'm in a situation where you might need to supervise nurses or contractors, right, I might say, how did you work with nurses? Did you have, if I'm looking for the components here, I might say, well, did you do drug testing? Like, if that's something I'm thinking about, it's something I need to fix, I might focus on that. So, any intel that you can get about the situation where the hiring is happening might help you to anticipate questions. Is there anybody else? And you can go up, go up to the microphone here. Does anybody else have impressions, suggestions, what was going through their mind when they? Well, while they're thinking about it, I do have a comment. Oh, go for it, sorry. Can I comment on one aspect of your speaking that was a little distracting? Absolutely. All of us do this. We use filler words. Um, erm, like, you know, those things. A much better alternative to those things is nothing. Just pause. You feel the um coming out, just stop talking. And that will come across better. Not that you didn't come across wonderfully. I was sorry the way we've set this up. It's not really conducive to this. But, um, so, you know, you're going to be star, so. All right, the gentleman in the back, do you want to come up? And I think if we have time, I might call on one of, I don't want to call a person a plant, but someone who we asked in advance, you know, and planted in the audience, hence the term plant. And what's your name? Hey, John Solack. Good to see you, John. Come on, you're in the hot seat, so to speak. So, I think Mike, again, has the first question for you. Okay. John, it's great you could be here with us. We're very interested in you. And my first question for you would be, how have you approached a problem that initially seemed to you to be insurmountable? Challenges like these are more frequent than you might guess in the organization that I currently work for. I'm currently about to graduate as a resident in occupational aerospace medicine in the Army. And recently we had a policy accountability change whereby members of the team that I supervised, some of which who are more experienced than I, and had worked in other organizations that didn't require folks to have accountability every time that they traveled from one location to another. It was brought down on us as a change that we had to have individuals report up to me and for me to report the personnel status they had arrived safely in their destinations. And so I responded to the seeming insurmountable aspect of that task of having a change in philosophy and practice by bringing, anticipating the objections that my colleagues would have in advance of implementing that policy out in order to provide iterative modifications before we rolled that policy out. And that turned out to be very effective because the arguments that folks had were essentially already answered before we rolled out the policy, sir. Well, that sounds great. I'm just curious, what made you feel that that problem was going to be insurmountable? The experience in other organizations were vastly different from that policy, and there was no existing regulation that made that a policy that seemed to be implemented. And so that ran into an issue of not being able to have solid policy grounds for it to stand out, sir. Great. Thanks. So I have the second question. So when you have multiple options, where do you go to research a decision? One of the major experiences that, or one of the idioms that I learned from my mentors in the military was that the first step to solving a problem is to stop the urge to reinvent the wheel. And so step number two is to reach out to colleagues who have dealt with that exact same issue before. And then I typically find that from there, there's a list of resources that you can go to find. And so if you have a particular problem or question in mind, I can tell you more about what resources I would use. Okay. And thank you. Everybody give a hand. That's why you belong to ACOM. That's right. That's why you belong to ACOM. So, you know, and again, knowing that you are just fresh out of residency, right? This is a little unfair because this type of interview would probably be for the position after the next one you have, or after you have several years under your belt. So I think, but it's important to say we're going to meet people where they're at, especially now when we know that a lot of experienced occupational medicine physicians are going to be retiring. There is a gap. You know, when I trained, right, when we trained, we were told, yeah, go work for 10, 15 years, and then you're going to get one of those leadership jobs. Well, that timeline is going to be compressed now. So you might not have, not you specifically, but you, anybody, one might not have a lot of experience. And you might have to think about more as a situational question. What would you do? Right? Truly, what would you do with an imaginary scenario? What would I do if I needed to find out about a new chemical, right? How am I going to build a medical surveillance program? So again, thinking about how a question relates. And you can always ask a follow-up question, you know, they're saying, oh, you know, where do you go to research a decision? You could certainly say, well, could you tell me more information about what type of decision you're talking about? And then you might get a little intel, right? Well, we're thinking about changing to a new EMR. Oh, okay. Now I know what you're kind of talking about. Also, I think, you know, if you're asked a question, and this is going to happen to some of us, that a behavioral question that you just don't have anything in your data bank that really fits the question, I didn't, I haven't done anything that, you know, required this, that, or the other thing. You can just say that, and you can say, but let me tell you how I would address it and treat it as a situational question and give them a hypothetical answer. Because you know, they're not expecting you to have all the experiences that you absolutely need. They may really want that, but they may also be very satisfied with what you say. Right. And Mike makes a great point. Because again, going back to this absence of experienced mid-career people, you did get to the interview. You got to the interview because you're board certified, you're residency trained, you know, whatever they were looking for, maybe your military experience, okay, he can lead. Right. He might not be exactly where we want him to be, but he's got something. And so we're going to pour some development into him. So but again, remember that if you got to the interview, you got to the interview. Right. So you passed the first hurdle. So well, anyway, thank you so much. Let's give them all a hand. Thanks a lot. Great job. All right, Francine. So Francine Katz, Dr. Katz is one of our planted interviewees. And since we have time, I think we can do a couple more questions. So which question are you going to give her? So I think I'm going to, we have to pick a new question, but this is not magic. This handout actually is the handout. It's the questions that the Society of Human Resource Management and oh, by the way, chat GPT says that we should be asking. So have a seat. Yeah, but don't use that as the answer when they ask you about sources of information. Right. At least not this year. Francine, it was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for coming to X Corp. I'd like to ask, see what I did? That should have paused, said, um, what was one of the toughest problems that you've ever solved and what process did you go through to solve it? The question is, what was the toughest issue that I have had to solve and what resources and how did I solve it? Correct? Yes. That's a good question. I can draw on a few examples. I think one of the things that I am actually doing now that has been a little challenging in my current position, we are over a stamping plant and we currently are changing what we do as far as using disability or TPA, the person that is taking care of the disability and leave. During this time, we have had to deal with the fact that medical, our medical facility is no longer going to be the go through for when people return to work. Our plant has been doing that for well over two decades or more. It's a rethinking process. Initially, what we have been doing initially when it was instituted was to assist because the TPA does not want us to put our hands in it at all. However, when you have a plant full of employees that are coming back to work all the time and used to doing that and don't know to do the other process, we changed our medical packets. I worked with everyone, did a single point learning with the nurses that I oversee. I talked with the regional medical director and we went through webinars and then I reinstituted that with the nurses. I allowed them to come through. We told them the new process. We gave them a handout. We showed them how to do it. We walked them through the first month. After that, what we've been working on is collecting the data and sending it up to those that need to know so that we can get more a handle on this. So in conclusion, the way that I go about it is to help to empower the people that I'm overseeing to understand, to get feedback from them, and then to recognize that to move forward and to make this a process that is going to work, we have to then find ways to give feedback to the people that are doing this process and know who our key constituents are. So far, this may not have been the best example. So far, it is still a work in progress. I think that this is the way to deal with it because in order to create a new road where it has not been, we have to do feedback, collect the data, and work together to get the process moving better or figure out how to regroup and rework. Have the things that you've been doing gotten more buy-in since you began making your adjustments and your staff began working in a different way? So the staff is definitely getting the picture and they understand and they're working with it, yes. And they've been excellent in buying in and more importantly, I am getting buy-in from the leaders within the plant that, like the union, understands that I'm encouraging everyone to create feedback up the chain because that's the only way we're going to make this work. And yes, it is working better. The process is not necessarily working better, but getting the plant in unison as to how do we deal with this change that feels very foreign and alien to us. I think it's a practice of recognizing that we're in this together and that brings a teamwork that is really important. Great. So you're bringing employees along with your staff. Perfect. Wonderful. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. And round of applause for Dr. Kass. So we're nearing the end of our time and I'm going to actually use all of these examples to kind of wrap up and ask Mike to contribute as well. And I actually wanted, we talked about preparation a lot, but I want to kind of focus on the middle there. So you saw Francine doing this. She's using the HR love language. So what do I mean by that? She's talking about stakeholders. She's talking about feedback. She's talking about checking with people. And that's how HR people think, right? So a little bit of this is drinking the Kool-Aid, but I'm asking about this behaviors, right? We're asking about how you've done something because we're hoping that that's how you're going to behave in the position if we hire you for the position. We want somebody who's not going to go my way or the highway, right? We want somebody who's going to talk to other people who, as the gentleman said before, who are going to go and ask people, actually, it was you who said they're going to go ask the people, hey, what's wrong here? What don't I know? And that's what you're doing with your answers is you're talking about your behaviors because we're going to take a risk in hiring a person. And especially in the scenario where we said that the company had a contractor and now they're investing in an employed physician leader. So that's a big investment on the part of the company. So thank you so much. So I want Mike to just talk a little bit about jargon and corpse speak. And I know we've used a little bit of jargon and the answer to that sometimes are follow-up questions, but I want Mike to talk a little bit about some other things that we might say that aren't as easily translatable. Yeah, I think all of us in occupational medicine are really pretty good at adjusting the way we talk about things to a wide range of audiences. It's part of our training. It's part of your training as physicians. But I think we're particularly good at it because we have to deal with all sorts of stakeholders with different levels of understanding of things. But eliminating jargon deliberately is always helpful when you're being interviewed by people you don't know. Eliminating things that could be confusing. There's a famous British playwright, George Bernard Shaw, who once said, the real problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred at all. And we really want to think about that because this is your time to communicate with these folks. So don't use terms of phrase or words that will be unfamiliar and will require explanation. People may misunderstand them. I recently had the experience of using an expression that my wife and I use, and both of us have lived at various times in New Zealand, and I think that may be where it came from. And the expression is, the thin end of the wedge. Has anyone heard that? I mean, this is just astonishing to me. That's my go-to expression for meaning, this is the beginning of some bad thing. If you allow the thin end of the wedge into the crack, right, you're going to create a much bigger problem. The slippery slope, give an inch and they take a yard, very similar expressions, right? I've used this for 25 years, and no one ever called me on it until a friend of mine said, what the hell are you talking about? Which won't happen in your interview. But this is something that you want to have shake out in your practice sessions, because it's just good for general communication. If we're just saying, RTW, RTO, required to operate, if you're saying, oh, well, I supported the plant so that they would have the correct RTO, okay, are you talking about a product? Do you make something called an RTO? So again, answer the questions. Don't create questions, right? Don't have people saying, what the heck are you talking about? Or them wondering, or you don't want them worse Googling on their phone, what is RTO? Well, they're supposed to be listening to you. So I know we've come pretty close. With my vision, we are five minutes from the end of our time. If anyone has a burning question, please feel free. Otherwise, Mike and I will stay up here. Looks like somebody's getting up. Go ahead. Yes. Thanks for the presentation, really helpful. I've had interviews. One of the strangest questions I've had is, what would you say is your greatest weakness? Oh, so if anyone didn't hear, he's asking, being asked, what would you say is your greatest weakness? And to which I feel like answering, it would be telling you my greatest weakness. But what would be your approach to answering this? So I think it's an opportunity to be insightful. It's an opportunity to be humble. I don't think there's a right or a wrong answer to that. I would hope that people, it doesn't get you a lot of information, right? So if I ask you, what is your greatest weakness, I'm maybe looking to see if you can be insightful. And maybe you could talk about, well, then you can be the White House Press Secretary, right? OK, so you've asked me about my greatest weakness. Well, I recently realized that I wasn't asking my team for feedback. So I've started asking people for feedback. You can then kind of turn it into something that allows you to share something about yourself. So yes, one more question. So I'm right now looking for promotions within my own company. And what I was wondering is, what do you do when you kind of know the people who are interviewing you? They know something of what you've done, but they don't know everything you've done necessarily. And you don't know how much to tell them because you don't want to sound like you think they're stupid and they don't know what you're doing because they're a supervisor or supervisor supervisor. So that's a great question. So again, the question is, what do you do when you're within your own company and you want the bigger, better job? I think you actually might be in a situation where you would get questions that are different from someone who is from outside. So the interviewers may help you. And they might even say, what attracts you to a position of greater responsibility? You can certainly highlight things you've done because in big companies, although we'd love to think that everybody knows what we've done, they don't. They're too busy. So you can certainly select something just as if you were coming from outside and show what you've done. And again, I think that they probably won't know everything that you're going to say. You could also, because of your inside information being there, ask more intelligent questions maybe from a more informed, you know, hey, so I've noticed that your company is going to do this. What might I be contributing if I get this role? So hopefully that's helpful. And I'm talking too much. Do you have anything to add? Yeah. I want to hear about people's greatest video fails, if you want to share. But you look like you have a real question. I don't know about a real question, but you know, when you were mentioning earlier about looking at people on LinkedIn, I've hesitated doing that only because it notifies them. How do you feel about that? Well, I would say it's better than looking at them on Facebook, but again, I don't know if Facebook stalking, you know, right, or Tinder, right, because, you know, like, not social. You don't want to go there in the social media sites, but, you know, I think maybe that's a risk you take. If it's the worst that can happen, they'll know that someone they're going to interview cares enough to look at them on LinkedIn. Okay. I don't know that that would offend me. I think I would be like, hey, she's taking an interest. Cool. You're breaking the microphone. Sorry, I was just going to respond. I'm under the impression, unless I'm wrong and have thought that I've been looking at people in secret when I haven't been, but I think you can change your LinkedIn profile so that there's a private browsing option. So it will say something like, you know, some, but there'll be a notification that someone looked at your profile, but it will say like person in Chicago, as opposed to an actual name. Is that called stalker mode? I believe that requires paying for the service and that's okay. Hi, everybody. My name is Sonia Myers. I'm one of the occupational medicine docs from the Western Occupational and Environmental Medicine Association, and I'm just so thrilled to be a good friend of these two up on the stage. And I want to tell you- Thank you. Sonia was one of our backup plants. So we should give Sonia a round of applause because she was standing by ready. I just want to say thank you so much for putting this together. I loved so much of what you had to say, and oh, wished I had heard this maybe three months ago. But I think it really sparked a wonderful discussion amongst everybody here in the audience, and I am looking forward to so many more of these talks in the future at future AOHCs. So thank you. You're welcome. And I think with that gap, right? We have a talent gap and there's a talent war. So I honestly, as a mentor, have a selfish interest in preparing people to get jobs that, you know what? Yeah, maybe you're going to get them sooner than you would in the past, but I don't want anybody else to have them. I want OEM docs to have them, or people who are immersed in an interest in OEM as practicing physicians to have them, whether you came from formal residency training or you came from a pursuit of learning and you're here. So please reach out to either one of us, and hopefully this has been valuable and engaging to you. And thanks for spending time with us. Thank you.

interviewing skills

behavioral-based interviews

clear communication

adapt language

mock interviews

challenging situations

problem-solving approaches

organizational changes

self-assessment

LinkedIn research