Has anyone had an interview with the NHS?

I used to work in the NHS as a management accountant and questions will largely vary from Trust to Trust. It will depend if you’re in commissioning, an acute trust, a community trust etc, and also will be shaped by how HR in the trust works, is it outsourced or in house?

I’d definitely advise you to put some time into learning about the NHS in general, and the challenges facing it (financially, some massive challenges!). Learn facts and figures about the trust – all of the annual accounts should be available from their public website, this will give you an idea of how the trust is performing.

Compile some STAR stories: Situation, Task, Action, Result. This will help you to stucture your answers and will help you to think about some generic situations that you can bank and tailor to the questions they might ask you (a time you’ve had to deal with an obstructive person, a time you’ve worked from initiative, a time you’ve applied your prior experience to a new situation etc etc, all the usual stuff).

Show an interest in the department specifically, what accounting platform do they use? What are their normal receivables days (if you can’t glean that from the accounts mentioned above)? How many students do they currently have (training opportunities perhaps)? How is the trust structured?

I know this is quite generic, but then so are the NHS interviews I’ve been to, so I hope some of this helps anyway…

Good luck,
Jess