TL;DR
Nine questions come up at almost every junior doctor interview panel in Australia.
Panels are typically two or three people, 15 to 20 minutes, four to six questions.
Have a real example for every answer, and end each one with what you learned or changed.
"Why this hospital" is the most common question after the introduction, and generic answers fail it.
There is nearly always a clinical scenario. Chest pain is the most common by a wide margin.
No Australian experience is not disqualifying. Name it in the first minute, then never apologise for it again.
Most hospital interviews for junior doctor positions in Australia look the same. A panel of two or three people, usually the Director of Prevocational Training, someone from medical workforce, and a senior clinician. Fifteen to twenty minutes. Four to six questions. Some hospitals run it even shorter than that, with four questions and a clock.
That’s good news, because it means the interview is predictable. The wording changes from hospital to hospital and from state to state. The questions don’t. The same handful comes up at nearly every panel, and you can have all of them ready before you walk in.
This guide covers the nine you should have ready before you walk in. It’s written for candidates who’ve passed AMC Part 1 and are applying for RMO, HMO or intern-level jobs, and it assumes you may have little or no Australian clinical experience. If that’s you, there’s a section on how to handle it near the end.
Two rules before you read the questions
Have a real example for every answer. “I would do X” is a weak answer. “I did X” is a strong one. The example doesn’t need to be from a hospital. Medical school placements, the AMC Clinical, an observership, a previous job outside medicine. It needs to be real, and it needs to be yours. Panels can tell when a story was borrowed.
End every answer with what you learned or what you changed. That last sentence is where the marks are. It’s also the sentence most candidates forget, because they think the story is the answer. The story is the evidence. The reflection is the answer.
If you want a structure, use STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Spend ten seconds on the situation and most of your time on what you did. Then add the reflection at the end.
1. “Tell us about yourself”
This is the opening question at most interviews and it’s usually 60 to 90 seconds. Not three minutes. Say where you graduated and when, what you’ve done since (AMC, IELTS, any observership or clinical work), and one thing about you that shows a person, not a CV. Then finish by saying why you’re at this hospital specifically, which hands you the next question on your own terms.
If there’s a gap in your history, name it yourself in one calm sentence and move on. A gap you mention sounds like life. A gap they find sounds like something you were hiding.
Trap: reciting your CV in order. They’ve read it. Tell them what it doesn’t say.
2. “Why this hospital?”
This is the most common question in junior doctor interviews in Australia, and it’s often the very first thing asked after you’ve introduced yourself.
Most candidates answer with words that fit any hospital in the country. Good teaching, supportive culture, broad exposure. The panel has heard that six times today. What they’re listening for is evidence you looked this hospital up.
So look it up. What’s the bed count? What’s the case mix? Is it a tertiary referral centre or a district hospital? Has anything changed recently, a new service, a new building, a change in who runs it? Who’s the Director of Prevocational Training? Then give two or three reasons that could only apply here, and finish with what you’ll bring in return.
One line worth having: “I’m not looking for a foot in the door. I’m looking for the place I become a doctor.
Trap: saying anything negative about another hospital, including one you trained at. Panels assume you’ll say the same about them one day.
3. “Tell us about a mistake you made”
This comes up almost as often as “why this hospital”, and it’s the one that goes wrong most often. The mistake candidates make is saying they can’t think of one. The panel hears either “not honest” or “not reflective”, and they write down both.
Choose a real mistake with no lasting harm, where you owned it straight away, and where the thing you changed is a habit you still use. Then tell it in this order: what happened, what you did about it immediately, who you told, what you changed afterwards. Calmly. It’s a case, not a confession.
If you haven’t worked clinically yet, say so, give a real mistake from placement or an exam, and then describe exactly what you’d do if you made a clinical one: check the patient first, tell your senior straight away, be open with the patient, document it, file an incident report, and ask what in the system let it happen. Knowing that sequence cold is worth more than a ward story you invented.
One line worth having: “I know I’ll make mistakes this year. What I can promise is that you’ll hear about them from me first.”
4. “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”
For strengths, pick three and make the first one safety. A hospital hiring a junior doctor wants to know you’ll call for help before it’s too late, that you’ll carry your share of the work, and that people will want to work with you. Give one piece of evidence for each.
For the weakness, choose something real that doesn’t disqualify you, and show the system you built to manage it. Reluctance to ask for help early on, with the rule you now follow. A tendency to over-prepare before acting, with what you do about it. Say it’s better now but you still watch it. That last part is what makes it believable.
Trap: “I’m a perfectionist.” “I work too hard.” “I care too much.” The panel has heard all three today.
5. “Tell us about a conflict with a colleague”
The panel isn’t interested in the conflict. They’re interested in whether you’re difficult to work with. Every version of this question, with a nurse, a senior, another resident, an administrator, is testing the same thing.
Use this shape: take it out of the room, listen and ask them to be specific, concede if you were wrong, explain your reasoning if you weren’t, and bring in someone senior if you still disagree. Then say what you learned.
The highest-scoring version is the one where you turn out to have been partly wrong. It shows insight, and insight is what’s being marked.
Trap: making the other person the villain. The moment your story needs them to be unreasonable, you’ve lost the point.
6. “A patient presents with chest pain. What’s your approach?”
There is nearly always a clinical scenario. Chest pain is the most common by a wide margin, followed by sepsis, the breathless post-operative patient, and the elderly patient who’s had a fall.
They’re not testing whether you know drug doses. They’re testing whether you have a safe, structured approach and whether you’d call for help. So use the same spine every time: how sick is this patient right now, go and see them, assess A to E, call for help early, investigate and treat at the same time, reassess, communicate, document, hand over.
For chest pain specifically, the two things to say in your first fifteen seconds are “ECG within ten minutes” and “I’d exclude the life-threatening causes first.” Then name them: acute coronary syndrome, pulmonary embolism, aortic dissection, tension pneumothorax, tamponade. Then the rest.
Say when you’d escalate, and say it as a strength rather than an apology. Junior doctors aren’t marked on solving the problem alone. They’re marked on knowing when they can’t.
Trap: opening with a long history. A leisurely SOCRATES on a 60-year-old with chest pain is the most common way candidates lose this question.
7. “Where do you see yourself in a few years?”
What they’re really asking is whether you’ll still be here in October.
You don’t need a specialty. You do need commitment. If you know what you want, say what draws you to it and what you’ll do this year to get there. If you don’t, say that you’re keeping the year broad on purpose, because you’d rather choose a specialty from experience than from a lecture, and that this hospital is a good place to find out. Either way, finish by saying you want to stay in the network.
Trap: anything that implies you’d leave mid-year. If the specialty you want isn’t offered here, don’t say so.
Say what this hospital gives you on the way to it.
8. The practical questions
“Are you happy to work nights and weekends?” “Can you rotate to another site?” “What’s your registration status?” “When can you start?”
These are short and factual, and hesitation on them does more damage than it should, because there’s a right answer and you’re expected to know it about yourself. Answer in the first two words. Yes to nights. Yes to rural. Then your registration category, your supervision level, your visa status and your earliest start date, plainly, like the administrative facts they are.
Don’t lie about rural. If the honest answer is no, say so with a reason. A clear no reads better than a vague maybe.
9. “Do you have any questions for us?”
Almost every interview ends here. Have three, and make them the kind that show you plan to stay. What orientation and supervision look like in the first month. How teaching is protected when the wards are busy.
What the residents they’re sorry to lose have in common.
Never ask about salary or roster. Never say “no, you’ve covered everything.” It’s the one slot where you get to steer, and it’s wasted more often than any other.
If this is your first clinical job
You can’t hide it, so don’t. Say it in the first minute: “This is my first clinical position, and I’d rather say that upfront than have you wonder.” Then never apologise for it again.
A hospital hiring a first-year doctor already knows you have no experience. What they’re buying is whether you’re safe, whether you’re honest about your limits, how fast you’ll learn, and whether you’ll stay. You can show all four without a day on a ward. On the first one, inexperience is an advantage. A new doctor who asks about everything is safer than an experienced one who thinks they can cope.
The line that carries the whole interview: “I don’t have ward experience to sell you. What I have is a very clear understanding of what I don’t know.”
The night before
Write your eight to ten real examples down as bullet points. Most of them will answer three or four different questions. Choose your mistake story and commit to it. Say “why this hospital” and the chest pain approach out loud, timed, under two minutes each. Confirm your registration category, supervision level and start date in writing. Then stop. Arriving rested matters more than one more hour of revision.
What comes next
We’re building interview preparation into AMC Academic, with the questions above and the ones that follow them, worked answers, and practice under the same conditions as the mock exams. It’s coming soon. Create a free account and you’ll hear the day it’s ready, and you can try twenty AMC Part 1 questions in the meantime.
If you’ve just passed Part 1 and you’re working out the order of things, our guide to what comes after AMC Part 1 covers registration, IELTS, and where IMGs actually find jobs.
Create a free account at amcacademic.com/signup. No card, and nothing is charged until you choose a plan.