Work Related Task for Interview- How do I prepare for the unknown?

[SadProse]

I have an interview this week for a well-known organisation and the role is along the lines of providing counsel/support via telephone and video calls for patients unable to leave their homes. The panel interview is expected to last 90 minutes and is to be held virtually.

I have been told I will be required to do a work related task. But I have no idea what sort of task to expect? I'm not sure how to prepare for it and have not had much luck through online research either!

I am finding the lack of knowing to cause me to stress out - previously in-person interviews I've had to do a mock assessment or a written report/test alone in a room etc but I haven't got much to go on here! Also I can't help but dread they may do a practice telephone consultation with one interviewer, but because it's a panel the others 3 will take notes while we do the role playing in front of them. I just find that daunting 😳Any advice or personal experiences is appreciated!

I wouldn't have thought they'd do a role play esp without warning, most people can't stand them so it's not going to give the candidates the opportunity to show themselves at their best?

Maybe they'll tell you some stuff a patient might say and ask you to write a response or next steps or something?

I had an interview recently and we did hve to do kind of role plays, I think it’s probably fairly common. It was done on Teams and it was with one person but I think there were others in there watching and marking but the conversation just looked to be the two of us.

I think try not to stress about it too much, do your interview prep based on what you do know, with interviews they don’t want you to know too much because they want to find out if your natural responses are the right fit for them.

The idea of that kind of activity is that you can't really prep for it so the interviewer gets to see what your current level of competency or your approach is in that area.

It's like the old assessment centre approach (not sure if companies still do that) where you'd have all the interviewees in for a few hours and give them tasks to do, see how they worked with others and so on.

If I had to guess based on what you've said about the role it will either be a case study approach - here's the scenario, how would you approach the discussion, where might you signpost them to, what safeguarding issues would you be looking for.... or it will be a caseload management task - you have 15 people in your caseload, these are there particulars, how would you prioritise them, who is most urgent to contact, is there anyone you think needs escalating to a different service....

90 minutes of interview Jesus I run out of examples after 15 minutes!

I’ve had to do a telephone advice role play with someone watching. Then draft an email response as a result of the interaction.

Have you tried Glassdoor? Sometimes people put stuff on there.