MOST PHYSICIANS ENTERING THE current job market will find strong demand for their skills. For some specialties and some geographies, there are even shortages—a seller’s market for you. 

But organizations are very selective about whom they hire, despite their keenness to find candidates and fill open physician jobs. Successful physician hiring requires more than confirming specialties and certifications. Organizations want to be sure the physicians are likely to stay in their jobs and flourish. 

That’s why job interviews are so important. Interviews help employers get to know the person behind the CV, to decide whether the fit between you and their organization is right. 

They’re also an opportunity for you to show that you’re the best candidate for that job you really want. 

Putting your best foot forward in interviews starts with preparation. To help you with that, here are seven common interview questions employers rely on—and what they’re listening for in your responses. 

1 How do you envision your career progressing? 

When physician employees leave their jobs after just a year or two, that’s expensive and disruptive for the organizations who’ve hired them. That’s why you’ll likely be asked in interviews about the type of environment you see yourself practicing in and how you envision your practice developing. Your answer provides a quick way for interviewers to understand the overlap in the Venn diagram of your interests and the job’s features. That helps recruiters understand whether continuing the employment conversation makes sense. 

“First and foremost, most recruiters will ask how a candidate sees their practice now and in the future,” says Liz Mahan, director of professional development and solutions at the Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment (AAPPR). “It’s important to recruiters to understand what kind of practice a candidate is ideally looking for, to be sure they can meet those requirements.” 

For example, recruiters will assess whether your expectations about patient demographics, support systems, research opportunities, schedules or scope of practice match up with what the job or the organization can offer. They want to avoid wasting time pursuing candidates whose expectations don’t match the job. That might sound cold, but quickly spotting and moving on from a mismatch is better for candidates, too. 

“Studies show most new graduates will change jobs three to five years after starting practice, creating a lot of upheaval for themselves, their practices and their patients,” Mahan says. Recruiters do their best to avoid this outcome, but candidates have to do their part. Thinking about your long-term goals and preparing to communicate them can help you avoid the future stress and costs of looking for a new job or moving to a new city soon after being hired. 

Recruiters will use these sorts of questions as part of your initial screening. You’ll likely hear them again if you progress to interviews with physician leaders. Hiring physicians want to hear you articulate your goals and expectations to learn how they can help you if you wind up in the job. Even as they’re assessing your candidacy, hiring physicians will be thinking ahead to how they’d match you with mentors, practice settings and opportunities for growth. 

“I ask candidates, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years or 10 years?’” says David Colombo, M.D., division chief of maternal fetal medicine at Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I ask that because I’m not interested in just hiring and forgetting. I want new hires to grow in their positions, to make this their home and become invested. If they have specific things they want to do, I want to help them get there.” 

Dustin Arnold, D.O., chief medical officer at UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, adds that while many physicians prefer to focus on building their practices and aren’t planning to take management roles in the future, younger physicians who are interested in leadership shouldn’t hesitate to say so in interviews. 

“One thing you’re always excited about is when candidates are interested in leadership,” Arnold says. He recommends aspiring physician leaders be prepared to talk about the experiences that helped spark that interest. “We’ll ask them about leadership opportunities they’ve had in the past and where those opportunities have they taken them.” 

2 Why our organization? Why this job? 

Questions like “Why our organization?” help interviewers gauge how genuine a candidate’s interest is in their specific opportunity. They’re another way interviewers assess whether you’d be likely to fit in their organization and thrive. 

“Sometimes I can tell they haven’t done a lot of research on us, and that’s a mark against them,” Arnold says. “It’s so easy. With Google, it’s right there. So how could you not have learned anything about the hospital, the town? It reflects how serious the candidate is about the job.” 

Colombo adds, “I really try to dig into why the person wants to come work where I am. Sometimes people say, ‘I want to live in this city.’ That’s good, but there are lots of cities like the one I’m in. I want to know what about this practice excites you.” 

Hiring managers expect that candidates who are seriously pursuing their organization will have done their homework. That’s why pat responses like “I just saw your job posting and was curious;” “it’s in the city I want to live in;” or “the salary was attractive” can be red flags. If your answer suggests you’re just dabbling or shopping around, employers will assume you’re not ready to make an informed decision about where you want to work. 

“I don’t want people to selectively ‘like’ something just because it gets them more money,” Colombo says. He adds that candidates sometimes overvalue slight salary differences because they haven’t yet learned about other factors like culture that will affect their job satisfaction much more. 

“Going from college to med school, then to residency, then to fellowship, it’s very laid out and predictable. People are very purposeful about moving from each step to the next one,” Colombo says. “But then when going from fellowship to a job, they sometimes forget about the planning and to think through, ‘What am I actually getting into here?’ I encourage people to be very purposeful. Not just ‘I want loan repayment’ or ‘I don’t want to do that much call.’ I want candidates to ask themselves, ‘What’s going to give you joy as you move forward?’” 

Gerard Baltazar, D.O., a trauma and surgical critical care specialist and assistant professor of surgery in New York City, reminds that while recruiting and hiring are expensive, the costs incurred after a physician is hired are even greater. He notes that in his specialty, by some estimates, it could cost as much as $1 million to on-board a trauma surgeon. Those high financial stakes put even more pressure on recruiters and hiring managers to evaluate a candidate’s understanding of their organizational environment and likely compatibility. 

“It’s such a financial investment and an energetic investment to bring a physician on board,” says Baltazar. “The onboarding process is so arduous. It’s a big headache for so many people that you want to make sure [any new hire] knows what they’re getting into and that they want to be there.” 

“Each institution has their own needs and wants, and so does the individual,” he says. “Asking what attracted you to the organization helps reconcile the two. The interviewee is the one who has to say, ‘I’ve read about your organization. I see that you have X, Y and Z, and that aligns with my A, B, C.’ And then that’s what makes a good marriage.” 

3 What do you think makes a team or group successful? 

Whether you’ll be practicing in an independent group, a hospital, an integrated system or some other setting, you’ll need to work well with other physicians, nurses and staff. To get a read on how well you’ll fit in with their organization’s teams and conventions, interviewers will ask you about your experiences working on teams and your views about how people can work together productively. 

Colombo says, “I’ll ask questions like, ‘What do you think makes a group successful?’ ‘Of all the high functioning groups you’ve been in, what was the common thread?’ and ‘What do you think makes a group not functional?’” 

Colombo says he listens carefully to these answers to confirm the candidate’s basic philosophy of teamwork meshes with his group’s culture. His group also relies on group interviews via Zoom so everyone on the team can assess a candidate’s responses. 

Colombo adds that with questions of teamwork in the organization, “you have to make sure we’re all on the same page. It doesn’t do a candidate any good for me to pretend or lie to them, and it doesn’t do them any good to lie to me, because they’ll just end up unhappy.” 

Hiring physicians also often ask questions to assess how you’ll handle conflicts and respond to difficult situations within a team. 

“I’m looking for signs of insight and humility, so I’ll ask questions about how the candidate has managed conflicts in the past,” Arnold says. “I want to know, what are their beliefs? What are their behaviors? Are they afraid or unafraid to stop the line if they see something that might be unsafe? I’ll give them some scenarios to see how they’d handle them.” 

4 Tell me about your weaknesses, or a time when you failed 

At some point in your interviews with a prospective employer, you’re likely to be asked about your weaknesses. You may be inclined to respond with weaknesses that are benign, trivial or even positive traits in disguise. But this sort of “positioning” can backfire when interviewing with physicians in particular. 

Hiring physicians want to know what your actual strengths and weaknesses are because they’ll be adding you to a team composed of other humans with strengths and weaknesses of their own. Physician leaders want to be sure new hires will fit in well, and that their strengths and weaknesses will help balance those of their teammates. 

An even more important reason, though, is that your answers to questions like these can reveal something about your character. 

“I think you can tell if the candidate is sincere when they answer that question. I tell residents it’s important to have some humility, and to really think about their weaknesses,” Arnold says. “Don’t make it fake. Really think hard about it. Sit down and write it out.” 

Arnold says that to illustrate the difference, he offers examples of genuine weaknesses of his own when he’s advising residents on how to prepare for this question, or even as a prompt to candidates during interviews. 

“I’ll tell them that I have a tendency to attract people that think like me or can anticipate what I’m thinking. I find I gravitate toward them in the leadership environment, but you need to have people around you who don’t think like you if you want to succeed,” Arnold says. “So that’s a real weakness, and something I actually work on every day.” 

Baltazar says he asks a similar question to reveal a candidate’s character: Tell me about something you failed at. 

“One of the challenging questions I always ask is, ‘What is something that you failed at, and how did you recover from it?’ I won’t put them on the spot by asking about a patient death or something like that, but I’ll judge their character by asking them to admit that they failed at something, and asking them, ‘How did you grow from that?’” 

5 Tell me about this unusual item on your CV 

Anything in your training or work history that is out of the ordinary (such as a years-long gap in your training or work experience, a job that you left after a short stint, or a change in residency) will catch the attention of a recruiter or hiring manager. If easily explained, a short note in your CV or cover letter can help ensure your CV isn’t automatically rejected. Once you are called for an interview, you should also be prepared to discuss it or at least reinforce what your CV says. 

“If I see something that bothers me on the CV, I’ll ask about it. If they have, say, a two-year gap, we’ve got to talk about that,” says Colombo. 

When your CV shows an unexpected or abrupt transition (say, leaving a first job after just a year), you might be tempted to minimize the incident by laying blame on your prior employer or manager. Defensiveness or unwillingness to acknowledge your share of responsibility for what happened may backfire. 

“If they throw the previous place under the bus, I’m thinking, ‘What are you going to say about me?’” Arnold says. “Worse, it makes me think the candidate may not be a team player.” 

When candidates are diplomatic in explaining these situations, Arnold says he considers it a good sign. “Even if it wasn’t the best situation, a diplomatic answer like, ‘It just wasn’t a good fit, but I’m thankful for all the opportunities they gave me, and I think this job here will be a better fit’ is more professional.” 

If there’s something on your CV that could raise questions, Baltazar says to keep in mind that the interviewer may have done a Google search or reached out to people in their network who might know you. They’ll be ready with questions for you, so you should be prepared to respond honestly. 

For example, if it appears the candidate may have been suspended, Baltazar would ask about that directly. “A healthy candidate would be able to say, ‘Yes, I made a mistake. Here’s what I learned from it.’” 

6 What do you like to do outside of work? 

Experienced hiring physicians and recruiters know that dissatisfaction with non-work life can lead newly hired physicians to look for new opportunities, even when they’re happy with the job itself. That’s a financial loss for the organization (and probably the physician, too) that recruiters are determined to avoid. By asking you what you like to do outside work, they can figure out whether your interests match up with what the community offers. 

“Recruiters will want to know what interests candidates have outside of their career and what kind of lifestyle they’re looking for,” says Mahan. “Are they looking for the excitement of a big city? A more rural location? Something in between? A recruiter really wants to know if their community will be a good fit for the candidate.” 

“Once I was interviewing candidates for an attending job in the Bronx,” Baltazar adds. “One of the people that I was interviewing said, ‘I like hiking a lot.’ And I was like, why the hell are you coming here to the Bronx? That’s not going to work for you.” 

7 What questions do you have for me? 

At the end of every interview, you’ll typically be asked, “Do you have any questions for me?” That may seem perfunctory, and you may even assume that interviewers only ask out of courtesy. But the truth is, recruiters and hiring physicians are interested in your questions. If you don’t have any, you may unintentionally send a signal that you’re not very interested or prepared. 

“It won’t necessarily turn me off on the candidate, but when they say they don’t have any questions, I can’t help think, ‘How can you not?’” Arnold says. He advises that candidates be prepared to ask whatever questions they have about the job, simply to be sure there’s clarity on both sides. 

“Ask about money. Ask about benefits. Ask about vacation. Ask about call. Because if you come here thinking you’re it’s going to be one way and it turns out to be something else and you leave, it’s super expensive to recruit another doctor,” he says. “I would much rather have you ask all the questions, get everything out there, and be very transparent about it. You’re not being greedy if you ask about money. You’re just asking. And I think it benefits both the interviewer and the interviewee in those circumstances.” 

Colombo adds that candidates’ interview questions can signal their commitment to learning and growing in their jobs. “I like when a candidate asks questions like, ‘If I accept this job, how will I know I’ve been successful after the first year?’” 

When it’s your turn to ask questions, that’s also an opportunity for you to surface any issues that might affect your satisfaction, should you take the job. 

For example, if you’re replacing a physician who left, you could ask how long the position has been open and why the physician left. If you’ve learned you’ll be compensated based on productivity, you should ask questions about how you’ll build your patient panel and what kind of staff support and marketing investment will help you reach your goals. 

One caveat about asking questions: Try to address them to the person best able to answer them. In-house recruiters can help. If you have questions about benefits, for example, the recruiter could answer those, or direct you to an HR person. Or if you’re on a site visit, the recruiter can tell you to whom you should direct specific questions about productivity and scheduling. And questions about team culture, research and leadership opportunities, scheduling and other specifics of work life are probably best asked of interviewers who would be your colleagues or your boss. •