Nursing Interview Questions: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Who You’ll Hear

Kati Kleber, MSN RN – Nurse educator, former cardiac med-surg/stepdown and neurocritical care nurse, author, and speaker.

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Chelsea Klekamp, BSN RN – Experienced bedside nurse, Nurse Residency Program Coordinator.

The interview is a time for you to set yourself apart and make a great impression.
As a nurse, you are making first impressions every single shift– this is something you need to be good at.
Demonstrate your ability to make genuine small talk.
People who interview nurses are often nurses themselves, and are very good at reading people.
Be yourself, but be your professional self.
- Interviewers absolutely can tell when an answer is inauthentic.
- No matter how comfortable you are feeling with the interviewer, avoid cursing, over-sharing, or making jokes.

Bad response
- Unable to provide an example
- How to make it better: take the time to think of a genuine answer, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in a healthcare context.
Mediocre response
- Describe a specific example
- How to make it better: go on to explain what was learned from the mistake.
Great response
- Describe a specific mistake, what you did about it, and what you learned from it.
- Even if it’s something serious like a medication error, it’s still a great response if it demonstrates your honesty, integrity, and willingness to learn.

Bad response
- Excited about the pay, job security, lack of schoolwork
- Nervous about nothing
- How to make it better:
  - Focus on patient care rather than how nursing is going to benefit you.
  - You should be nervous about something, otherwise you will come off as overconfident and that you hold unrealistic expectations of this role.
Great response
- Excited to be with patients and family, to deliver nursing care, to play a role in their progress
- Nervous to make mistakes, that there is so much to learn, that things will be hard at first
- Show that you have a realistic idea of what nursing is and that having just graduated nursing school you still have a lot to learn.

Bad response
- Unrealistic, saying you go above and beyond every single day
- Giving an example of an expected behavior as going above and beyond
- How to make it better: take the time beforehand to thoroughly assess which of your example behaviors are standard or are truly above and beyond.
Great response
- Can be simple, but must be genuine
- Should demonstrate you individualizing patient care

Bad response
- Unable to provide an example
- Claim you’ve never received negative feedback
- Throwing other people under the bus
- How to make it better:
  - Take the time to think of a genuine answer, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in a healthcare context.
  - Be sure your answer demonstrates how you’ve worked to improve since receiving difficult feedback.
Great response
- Give a specific example, why it was hard to hear, and what you did about it.
- Show that you reflected on the feedback and how it impacted you.

In preparation for the interview, do some self-reflection about what you truly bring to the table. Even if you are fresh out of school, your experiences and your attitude are valuable.
It is incredibly important to the interviewers that you are self-aware and have realistic expectations. Make sure your answers demonstrate that.
Don’t talk down about others in the hope of making yourself look better. More than anything it shows you don’t value your teammates.
If you are still in school, be writing down when you make mistakes or receive difficult feedback as it happens to you. You’ll then be able to refer back to these examples before you go to your interview, so they are refreshed in your mind and you’ll be ready to talk about them.