Scheduling Interviews
Source: AAMC Careers in Medicine
How to schedule your residency interviews
The interview scheduling process is fluid. Little is in your control, and the timeline is fairly open. What’s more, interview decisions involve many and, often, competing elements. Without a smart strategy, it’s easy to end the interview trail with diminished options, incomplete information, and less-than-certain feelings about which programs you’re willing to attend and rank.
The goal of a smart scheduling strategy: Attend only as many interviews as necessary to identify the programs that best fit and to successfully match. To achieve this goal, a smart strategy creates awareness of your priorities and resources and leads you to confident, well-informed decisions throughout the interview season.
When developing your scheduling strategy with a trusted advisor, consider your:
Specialty choice and training goals. At this point, you should be well-informed and well-aware in this area; well-informed about the competitiveness of your specialty and your residency candidacy and well-aware of how much you know about each program’s fit with you and your training goals.
Resources to fund and defray travel costs. Your financial and career interests are sometimes at odds during the interview season, and it’s likely you’ll weigh the trade-offs in each category before making interview decisions. As such, you’ll likely need to monitor your travel expenditures to balance the return on your financial investment in attending future interviews. This includes not only decisions about whether to travel to in-person interviews versus virtual interviews, but also expenditures for second look visits.
Mental and physical health. If you’re participating in virtual interviews, it might be tempting to squeeze in as many interviews as possible. Don’t underestimate the mental energy needed to remain at your peak performance during these interviews. This means completing no more than one interview per day and scheduling your interviews during a time when you don’t have any competing clinical responsibilities.
If you’re traveling to interviews, group them geographically as much as possible. You’ll not only save on expenses but also reduce the inevitable stress of travel. Also, allow ample time to travel to and from interviews so you can recover and prepare to make a good impression at the next program. Generally, this means completing no more than two in-person interviews in one week. And remember, the interview season can be more than stress and fatigue! If you have a day off while traveling, see the sights. It can be a great way to learn about your potential new hometown while easing the burnout of the interview trail.
Performance. Many theories and strategies exist for scheduling interviews to capitalize on your best interview performance and to maximize your chance of matching at your top programs. However, the best overarching advice is to do what works best with your schedule and fret less about the timing, which is often out of your control.
Ability to gather information. The more time you spend at a program, the more data points you’ll gather; although the quality of those data points will vary. Your confidence in a program’s fit with you and your training goals prior to receiving an invite will help you present yourself as a strong candidate during the interview process.
Flexibility. Try to leave room on your calendar and in your back pocket for those programs you suspect will be the best fit and best meet your training needs (i.e., your top programs). Yes, you can always cancel interviews. But juggling invites, working within an already-tight schedule, and rescheduling travel after cancelling interviews quickly becomes overwhelming.
Minimize time away from the curriculum. While residency interviews are important, so are your final-year clinical rotations and electives. Your first priority in medical school—and crucial to your future residency performance—is to become the best physician possible before you graduate.
Keeping your program options open. You may not feel ready to dismiss a program until after interviewing there. Having time, energy, and money to explore programs you’re unsure about will (to use another sports metaphor) “deepen your bench.”
Minimize the emotion and panic involved in your decisions. You’re likely feeling overwhelmed, frazzled, or anxious. This means you’re also likely making less-than-optimal decisions that can easily result in changing course and, consequently, wasting your resources.
A smart scheduling strategy will leave you keenly aware of your priorities and resources and lead you to confident, well-informed decisions. To develop a smart scheduling strategy, work with your Caeer Advisor and Specialty Advisor.
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