Sticky Situation No. 1: Drawing a Blank
You studied the hospital’s culture, boned up on your clinical skills, and memorized the answer to every common interview question you could find. Then the unimaginable happens: you’re faced with a question you weren’t expecting. You can’t figure out what to say and the impending silence feels so awkward, you might as well be wearing nothing but your birthday suit. How do you fix this?
Solution: Focus on something you were prepared for.
While you don’t want to get in the habit of doing this, sometimes it pays to give a non-answer, especially when the alternative is a seemingly unending chasm of silence. Hey, politicians do this all the time. If the interviewer threw you for a loop with a question on how you handled a conflict with a doctor or patient, change the subject to something semi-related that you did prepare for, like your collaborative skills in a challenging department where you excelled.
