“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” the interviewer asks you, and you squirm…

An influential physician-administrator once complained to me that whenever he asked potential new faculty hires where they saw themselves in a decade they always said they were interested in global health or teaching. “They just say that because it’s sexy,” he remarked. “Many of them have nothing in their C.V.s to bolster their interest in either pursuit.”

When asked where you see yourself in ten years, consider what your accomplishments thus far support to show a clear evolution. This doesn’t mean you’re stuck with what you’ve done even if you didn’t like it. You could point out that having tried myocardial bench research, you realize that your real interest is in clinical investigations of new cardiac markers. Throwing out activities just because they sound appealing doesn’t make you look professional or your candidacy seem well-synthesized. The idea is to have a trajectory that you can back up, defend, and easily justify.

Many medical school applicants say they don’t know what field they want to go into. Of course not! And many residency applicants don’t know if they want to do a fellowship. That’s okay. Again, the point is to focus on your previous strengths and achievements and leverage them.

One more thing: If you are planning to seek mock interview help from me, please do it now. I am booking several weeks in advance.

Google had a problem.

As a New York Times article describes it, Google executives were growing increasingly aware that they were not hiring enough women. Worse still, they were attracting negative attention about it. So, Google did what Google does best: They amassed data and mined it.

In their analysis, among other findings, Google concluded that the company was overlooking women who tended to be more modest than comparable male applicants during interviews. The interviewers inappropriately perceived the women applicants to be less accomplished, and the female candidates were not offered jobs. (Once they understood the problem, Google altered their internal hiring policies accordingly.)

This story is instructive in understanding the importance of your residency or medical school interview.

Let’s start with your overarching strategy, one that can be gleaned from the Google story: The residency and medical school interview processes are persuasive ones. Your role is to convince faculty that you deserve a slot at their institutions. The best way to persuade is with facts, just like a lawyer does when s/he is trying a case in front of a judge. Saying you are compassionate or hardworking is not convincing, and it doesn’t distinguish you from the scores of other people the interviewer is meeting. You need to prove your worth by highlighting your academic, clinical, research, community service, leadership, international, and/or teaching achievements.

When mentoring applicants, I hear them ask: Michelle, if I showcase my accomplishments in my residency/ medical school interview, doesn’t that mean I’m being redundant? My answer: Absolutely! Think of the medical admissions process like building a house. Your ERAS®/AMCAS® and letters serve as one layer of that house – like scaffolding. In other words, your accomplishments are conveyed simply and succinctly there. The personal statement is your opportunity to apply a thicker layer, one in which you flesh out your achievements, thus persuading the reader of your distinctiveness (plumbing, pipes, electrical). Finally, the interview is your chance to add on the thickest peel (exterior, roof). Discussing your accomplishments in detail can seal the interviewer’s positive impression of you.

If you still feel shy about drawing attention to your achievements, I can assure you that occasionally residency and medical school interviewers do not leave adequate time to review materials for the candidates they will ultimately judge, or they are asked to interview such a large number of applicants that they might understandably get candidates confused. If you treat every residency and medical school interview as though it were a “blind” one, you address these obstacles. Determine in advance how you want your interviewers to remember you when they represent you to the committee, and tailor your interview to leave that impression. At the end of the week, when your interviewer asks what others thought of the “young woman who volunteered with Mother Teresa while doing malaria research and competitive hammer-throwing,” all the other admissions officers know immediately she is referring to you.