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A Mayo Clinic podcast for laboratory professionals, physicians, and students, hosted by Justin Kreuter, M.D., assistant professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at Mayo Clinic, featuring educational topics and insightful takeaways to apply in your practice.
This is Lab Medicine Rounds, a
curated podcast for physicians,
laboratory professionals and students.
I'm your host, Justin Kreuter,
a transfusion medicine pathologist
and assistant professor of laboratory
medicine and pathology at Mayo Clinic.
Today we're rounding
with Dr. Reade Quinton,
an associate professor of laboratory
medicine and pathology and anatomic
pathologist in the Department
of Laboratory Medicine
pathology at Mayo Clinic to
talking about advice on
applying and interviewing for
residency. Thanks for joining
us today, Dr. Quinton.
I am happy to be here again. Dr.
Kreuter. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
Let's kind of kick off with what are a
few things that most interviewers are
probably trying to assess
during those interviews we
have for residency?
Yeah, so there's a lot
that goes on in that,
and I think of course every interviewer
is going to be slightly different,
but in general I can give you some basics.
I think one of the things that the
applicants need to remember is that
if you're already in
the interview process,
if you have been invited to an interview,
there's a ton of things we've already
sort of gotten through and established.
So number one,
we've already seen your scores and
how many publications you have,
where have you presented all these
little details of the application.
So when I am sitting down
during the interview process,
I'm not really worried
about that at that point.
It's like you've already
made it past that level,
so I'm not necessarily going to sit
there and ask about the granular
details of your USLE scores
or anything like that.
So the first thing that I like
to ask or get a sense of is
just the idea of are they aware
of what they're getting into? It's
kind of easy sometimes to establish
in their personal statement,
do they really know what they're
getting into if they go into pathology
as a residency program.
But sometimes it's a little unclear and
sometimes people have had more or less
exposure in their med school too.
So kind of just chatting with them to
see does this person really understand
what the next four years will entail,
that perhaps maybe they really
like one thing in pathology,
but do they also know they
have to do these other things?
So I really like to see do they
know what they're signing up for?
The other thing I really like
to assess is just in general
communication and personality and
are they going to fit well in the
program? Knowing who I have as faculty,
knowing who I have as a
pool of current residents,
does this person seem like
somebody who would slot in nicely,
get along with everybody and kind
of work in that team and you can
gauge your team. My team here is going
to be very different from other programs
teams.
And so just getting a sense of
who is this person and do they
seem like they would work well with
our group is very important to me.
I feel like we can train everything else.
We can teach you the pathology,
but it's more difficult if
you're not comfortable in
the environment.
We want to make sure that the trainees
are in the best environment for them
so that they're successful.
And then finally,
sort of the third thing I love to
ask about and a lot of us do is
it is a little bit like that idea of
do you know what you're getting into?
But really it's what are your
goals moving forward? Now,
some of our applicants don't know
yet, and they are, as we like to say,
in pathology,
they're undifferentiated. They don't
know exactly what they may want to
specialize in yet, and that's
perfectly fine and valid.
And knowing that upfront kind of
changes the discussion somewhat too.
Other people though have very
distinct needs and goals as
far as maybe they're very
heavily interested in research,
maybe they're heavily interested
in educational opportunities.
Maybe they already know I'm absolutely
going to go into transfusion medicine,
so I want to target this type of program.
And so knowing that upfront can help
us guide that person as far as would
this program a good fit for
you? So if somebody says,
I absolutely want to
do pediatric pathology,
they might be a great applicant,
but in my program here,
we don't have a dedicated children's
hospital that they would rotate through.
So we might have a discussion of, well,
here's all the amazing
resources and things that we
could provide here. However,
let's talk about that a little bit more
because there may be other opportunities
that are better for you.
And that being said,
I don't believe you should ever target
a residency based on exactly what you
want to do for fellowship.
So for instance,
we don't have a forensic fellowship here,
but we have an amazing experience for
people who want to go into forensic
pathology.
So I don't think the applicants need to
necessarily target a residency training
program at that level,
but having those discussions about do
they know what they want to do in the
longterm can really help us focus on,
okay, great. If that's important to you,
let's talk about the opportunities
here and how we might be able to guide
you through that process.
I think that's really wonderful to
highlight for listeners who might be
interviewing this year in future years,
this idea that the interview
is also looking out for them in
the sense of might we be
the right program for you?
Or maybe even highlight for them,
maybe some weaknesses
that our program has,
which might highlight for questions
that they have for other interviews that
they go through.
So it really is kind of a
collaborative experience
rather than, I think sometimes
when you're interviewing,
you kind of feel like you're trying to
swim upstream and it's just you versus
the world.
Exactly.
I think it's just as important
to us that we get not only
great residents, but we want
them to be happy and successful.
So it's like I love to have that
complete discussion of what is
your best opportunities here
versus other places? And again,
it does not hurt my feelings if somebody
in the end after they've seen all the
data, they go, well, this actually
is a little bit better for me,
and it's a small community. We're
all going to be in touch anyway,
so we'll see you in the future and
congratulate you wherever you end up.
On that note too,
I think that for maybe junior faculty
that are listening to this podcast,
I think you're giving insights as far as
reminding us maybe what are some of the
aspects to focus on when
we're in these interviews,
what kinds of questions
are we looking for? Right?
You're kind of highlighting the importance
of talking about that communication
style, thinking about what
somebody's interests are.
How does our program support those goals?
I'm curious,
what advice might you have for
these interviewees as far as
the interview process,
as far as how can they best
convey their communication style,
their personality, these
aspects in the interview?
Yeah, I mean, number one, be yourself.
Don't try to be somebody you're not.
Just relax and embrace the interests
you have and the things you like to do,
and don't be shy about talking about them.
I find a lot of my interviews spend more
time just chatting with somebody about
where they grew up, what kind of
environment do they like to hang out in,
and just to get a feel for, oh,
well, would they like our area?
Would they like to live here?
So just relax, be yourself,
but also be really cautious about
aggressively overselling yourself.
I have some applicants sometimes who
want to jump into the interview and
immediately start to tell me everything
about where they were in their
class ranking, every
publication that they've done,
every research project they're
involved in. And that's all great,
but keep in mind, again,
we already have that information.
So what I like is if there
is a particular thing I'm interested in,
I'll ask you about it and because
I want to hear more about it.
So oftentimes we'll have
somebody who says, oh,
I did this summer research project and
then that has progressed in the year
since then and I might really
be interested. Okay, great.
Tell me more about that. What did you get
out of that? And have that discussion.
But I've had some who almost turn it
on its head where I feel like I'm being
interviewed and they're just
kind of bludgeoning me with a
little too much information all at once.
It's like, just have a conversation,
enjoy it, and we'll get
to the important things.
I think what I'm taking away from it
is if somebody's coming in and they're
having that kind of like, I'm swimming
upstream, it's me versus the world.
Maybe if they're hitting you with all
this information that that's going
to consume that period of time that you
have for the interview, and you might,
I guess I think end that
not really having much
information to go on for that individual.
Correct. Already. Like I said,
we've already got this huge packet
of information about that individual,
and so just hearing it
again might reinforce it,
but doesn't really help me learn
anything new about that person.
And so the interview is really to sort
of get to know somebody at a level
that we can't achieve just by reading.
So in terms of advice for
people interviewing this,
it may sound cliche,
but be yourself and you're
really looking to have a
back and forth conversation and letting
the interviewer kind of take the lead on
the direction.
Yes, absolutely.
One aspect I think at least
I usually have a conversation
about with medical students is
kind of that part of the interview,
what questions do they
have for the program?
And my sense is sometimes applicants don't
necessarily have a great
sense on what they want to ask
early on,
and so maybe they have one
or two that they just ask.
Do you have any kind of advice
for those interviewing as far
as how to approach thinking
about questions that are
going to be, I don't know,
the way I think about it is meaningful
for making their rank list after they're
done with interviews.
Exactly. Yeah. I mean,
it's such an intimidating process because
they are told you've got to have some
questions because if you
don't have any questions,
there's this appearance of like, oh,
I either didn't do my
homework about the program,
or I'm not very interested in the program,
which you definitely don't want to
come across as, but at the same time,
it's exhausting to come up with
all these different questions.
And then of course, the longer you
go through that interview season,
you get more and more tired as you go.
But yeah, I know it's cliche to say,
but yeah, definitely have a
bank of questions prepared.
But I think an important point to make
about that is it does not have to be
necessarily about the residency program,
although those questions are great,
but just anything that conveys
an interest in the program,
the area,
remember this is where you're going
to be for four years. So I've had some
people that ask me great
questions about childcare,
about opportunities for travel in the
area and what's around that
area. And then of course,
we get lots of questions
about the program itself.
But one thing I think people don't
think of is that in an interview,
we are specifically not
allowed to ask questions.
We can't ask people about
whether they're married,
whether they have children
or anything like that.
That is a very specific block that we have
not working against us per se, but just
that we're not allowed to ask about.
So when somebody asks me a specific
question about what's
childcare in the city,
that opens up a whole different avenue
of things that we can discuss that I
can't ask, oh, do you have children?
Because we've got great schools here.
So things like that give us a lot of
flexibility. The other thing that I love
to tell people is don't be afraid to ask
the same question to multiple people.
So you can have a really
important question that you think,
I'm going to ask a resident that,
but I'm also going to ask these other
faculty that I wouldn't repeat the same
question to every single person
you're interviewing with.
But we're not taking notes.
So it's not like we're going to sit
down in a room afterwards and say, well,
what did they ask you?
But I think it can be very eyeopening
because you can talk to different people
and get different responses,
and sometimes that can really help your
decision-making process because the
perception of the chief resident and how
they answer a question may be different
from how the faculty answers a question,
and that would be very valuable
to you in that interview process.
The other thing is, I always say
when you're talking about questions,
be cautious about asking faculty
to granular questions about their own cv.
Sometimes it's very important because
maybe you're very interested in their
research or their type of career
because that's what you want to go into.
And so if you're asking,
saying, okay, hey,
I read online that you've
done this and this,
sometimes that can open up fabulous
areas of discussion to say, oh,
you're interested in that.
Great, let's talk about that.
The only reason I caution people on
that is I have seen the approach where
people are doing their homework
and they want you to know,
I have done the homework and
I've studied your program,
but they start asking a lot of things
about your publications or your
research where they really don't have
any necessarily interest or understanding
of that. Exactly. And they just
will basically say like, oh,
I saw you did a project on
blank. Can you tell me about it?
And it can come across
strangely because again,
I'm not the one being interviewed,
so I would caution people,
again,
if you have a particular interest
in something fabulous and let's talk
about it as much as you want.
But I wouldn't just ask general
questions like that about somebody's
cv.
I'm glad you brought that up.
If I can kind of dig in just a little
bit then and ask a follow up about,
are there a couple other maybe ways
that somebody can kind of convey that
they've done their homework
without asking the kind of
detailed publication record?
Because like you say,
that's what is trying to get communicated
across, but like we're saying,
that can really eat up a lot of time and
that may not actually serve anybody's
interests.
So I think, again,
if you're one of the applicants who's
coming in with a very specific interest,
I want to do pathology
because I want to do GI path,
then I think it's much easier
to ask these very specific
questions because you
have a genuine interest.
Maybe it might be even an area of
research you're already working in,
and so you're trying to target like,
oh, do you do this in your lab?
Because I'm really interested
in that. That's fabulous.
But if not that level of granularity,
then I would say asking more
questions about the program,
but being specific.
So if I know for instance that
you've done your research and you've
looked at our program and our curriculum
and you're aware that we have a
separate, let's say,
informatics rotation and to
be able to point out like, oh,
I see that there's an informatics
rotation that's usually offered first or
second year. Can you tell me
more about how that works?
That tells me the same thing. You've
looked online, you've seen what we do,
and you have a specific question about
the curriculum or the program in general.
So those types of questions are a little
bit more open to the program as opposed
to the specific interviewer,
which can definitely open up discussions
without putting the interviewer sort of
on their back foot.
Right on. If I can then turn,
and I realize maybe it's a little
bit of a problematic area to
talk about as a program director,
what if any kind of follow up,
and I use the word here and
I realize this is fraught,
what do you expect from those
that you have interviewed? Right?
Because I know that there are
rules about contact that happens,
and I think certainly there's a lot
of conversations that happen amongst
interviewees about thank
you letters or follow up
emails.
What are your thoughts about what
you might see from somebody who
is interested in the program
after they've interviewed?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's pretty common for someone
after they have done the interview to
send out just a general thank you email
for the opportunity to do the interview,
and you can be as detailed or not
on that. It could just be a really,
thank you so much for hosting me, look
forward to talking to you in the future,
or something like that.
Or it can be more detailed if you had
something that you really wanted to
highlight as a great experience
during that interview day.
But there's not an expectation that
we necessarily get that feedback,
but at least sending the one sort of
follow-up email is usually kind of nice
just to know that they had a good time.
And sometimes I've actually reached out
to some just because I wanted to make
sure they got home safely
or what have you. I had one,
I think it was last
year or the year before,
who was basically sick
during the interview process
and made it through,
but was just struggling the whole time
because it was all virtual anyway. And so
I followed up with them just
to make sure you, okay. So
that being said, we encourage,
and I think most program
directors encourage all the
applicants that if you have
any questions as you go through the rest
of this process to reach out anytime to
us. So especially if you're
early in the interview process,
you are going to discover questions
later that you wish you would've asked.
And that is an open door policy for us
where it's like at any point you can
email, call back and say,
Hey, now that I've done this,
I have this question about your program.
What do you offer for this
specifically? We always embrace those.
That being said,
we also make it very clear that it's kind
of a one-way street for communication.
If the interviewee opens
up a dialogue with us,
we are happy to have as much of a
conversation as they want so that they can
understand as much of the program as
they can. But we are very limited on
how we reach back out to the
applicants other than right after the
interviews, I'll usually send
out an email that just says,
thank you for joining us
last week, or what have you.
But then I tell all of them during
the interview season that we are not
in the practice of reaching back out
to you multiple times to see if you
need anything else.
We really try to avoid any kind of
pressure on that applicant later
as they're going through their rank
list. We want them to make that decision.
And again, we're here
to answer any questions,
but I'm not going to
hound them on any of that.
I think that's important for
the audience to hear both for
trainees from this or for people that
are me interviewing to know that they can
reach back out.
I think there's been a number of people
that have come into my office after
doing their interviews and
they're kind of like, okay,
how should I make this rank
list that? It's kind like, well,
how did these places
do in your estimation?
And maybe there are questions that they
didn't realize in the beginning that
they'd want to go back and ask
some of those earlier, excuse me,
some of those earlier programs about,
so kind of letting them know that
they can always reach back out.
And then also the idea that there are
certain rules around how does contact go
from the program just because
the match process is trying to
maintain that sanctity of the decisions.
Yes, and I think going back to one of
the things you touched on a second ago,
it's really important for the applicants
to understand that this is designed
for them. It is weighted
towards them first, not us.
And I cannot emphasize
enough the idea of just make
your rank list in the order you want it.
Don't play any mind games with
yourself trying to figure out, well,
I don't know if they want me or not.
Just rank them in the order that
you want and it'll all work out.
But I think people try to
overcomplicate the psychology behind it.
Sometimes.
We've been routing with Dr. Reade Quinton
talking about advice for interviewing
for residency. Thanks for taking
the time to talk about this with us.
Thank you, Dr. Kreuter. It's
always a pleasure to be here.
I appreciate the opportunity.
To all our listeners, we thank
you for joining us today.
We invite you to share your thoughts
and suggestions via email to MCL
education@mayo.edu. If
you've enjoyed this podcast,
please subscribe and until
our next rounds together,
we encourage you to continue to connect
lab medicine and the clinical practice
through educational conversations.