NHS Admin interview

[VytaminSea]

Hello! I've got an interview for a Band 3 administration position within the NHS.

Does anybody have an idea of what kind of questions they will ask during the interview?
I already work in the NHS (same trust) in a different role so know about my trust and the department I have applied for but I just wondered what else they may ask me.

Thank you!

Confidentiality - tidy desk, sharing of information, checking who people are when they call.

Organising a heavy work load and prioritising.

Maybe something like if you are doing a task and someone asks you to do something else how would you handle it.

Depending on role how you would handle distressed family or confrontation.
Good luck

You might get asked about Safeguarding, as everyone needs to be aware.
You might get asked something negative or positive about yourself. The negative would be something that you can turn into a positive, such as you ask lots of questions and it can be irritating but you want to be sure of what you are doing. Or, you find it hard to say no so sometimes take on more than you should because you like to help and do a good job.

Also maybe touch on Prevent just in case.

Does the Trust have "values" which it strives towards? Have a look on their website and know then if they do (almost certainly do have them)

Confidentiality
Trust Values
Team Work
Communication
Organisation/Prioritising
How you would handle a hectic and busy workload
How you would handle various situations
Strengths and weaknesses
Equality and Diversity
Questions around safeguarding or what you would do if someone was being bullied or treated unfairly

when is the interview? I've got some example questions somewhere so will post on here later....

Thanks for the advice everyone!
Carolhh The interview is next week.

I had an interview and this is what they asked me:
Band 3 Administration Assistant (2 ladies interview panel)

What qualities can you bring to this role?
What admin experience have you had?
Why is teamwork important? What are the advantages/disadvantages of team work?
How can you monitor waste when you are ordering stock?
Confidentiality is very important. What do you know about this?
A woman calls in the office and she’s had an incident with her mother. No other senior staff is in the office. What do you do?
Why is training employees important?

For another interview they asked me this:
Band 3 Administrator (2 ladies):

What did you do in your most recent job in your current job?
We look for IT skills in this role, do you have IT skills?
Do you have any experience in taking minutes because we need someone to take minutes with complex information?
What do you know about retrospective reviews?
Have you ever worked as a team?
How do you manage deadlines and prioritise your work?
What motivates you? (for this position or for the work that you do?)

Have you worked with complex information? (So was the example you gave previously just signposting or did you work with complex information as well?)

One lady asked these questions:

Have you ever had to deal with an upset/distressed client?
How important do you think is quality of work that you do? Did you do anything about quality in your previous role?

Some other questions I have been asked previosuly:
How can you form good working relationships?
What do you know about safeguarding and who’s responsibility is it?

Thank you so much Carolhh, that's really helpful!

Hope it goes well, just be yourself, I know it can be hard because of interview nerves. They also look at your personality so try to relax as much as you can. good idea to also look up two facts about the trust that you are interviewing with best wishes

Hi, just thought I'd do an update about the interview!

They didn't really ask me any questions like these examples or any that I had researched online. They asked the dreaded 'Tell me about yourself'. Then for examples of times I had a conflict (the process & the resolution) with a colleague and then with a patient and what kind of reference my manager would give me (🤔).

I arrived early, was in there all of 4 minutes, 4 questions and was actually back at home before my interview time!
Nothing about my experience for the actual role or my current job role, nothing about confidentiality or data protection/information governance, nothing about the trust or why I wanted the job/job change etc.
Also no get to know you chit chat which maybe was to do with Covid. They were both very nice but didn't seem to want to get to know me. It was the weirdest interview I've ever had.

Needless to say I was unsuccessful and left feeling a little deflated. Seemed like they already had someone lined up and were just going through the motions.
Thank you all for your help though! It was really appreciated and hopefully will come in useful another time!

OP, if you don't mind me asking, was it a bank position or full time/permanent?

I've had a couple of similar unsuccessful interviews at different organisations and have found out an internal person got the role each time.

I have an interview for a bank role with NHS this time round, so I'm hoping there's multiple positions and I just have to not completely mess up on the interview to be successful.

Hang in there. I know the deflated feeling but I'm sure success will come our way soon.

Hi FTM, it was a full time permanent position for me. Hopefully with a bank role there would be multiple positions available around your hospital so fingers crossed for you!

@VytaminSea Here's hoping! Fingers crossed for you and any future interviews you may have too.

NHS job interviews can be absolutely awful, all about psycho-analysis, past experience is hardly respected if you fail on answering questions about handling situations that have nothing to do with your actual skills, and are mainly just a tick box exercise. I was totally put off returning to the NHS as it now is and decided to remain self employed where I don't have to worry about explaining to anyone how I would handle colleague's personal problems, racism, diversity issues etc .... the job is supposed to be about supporting patients and the system after all!

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