It’s no secret that getting into the Trainee Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner role is no easy feat.  Although this role is barely ten years old, the position is a highly coveted one that attracts individuals from a variety of backgrounds, skill sets and experience levels.  It’s also a great role to be in because it can open doors to other career pathways; such as going onto undertake a clinical doctorate.  So the long and short of it is – if you’ve managed to successfully apply for a trainee post, well done you!  However, the application is only one half of the battle.  The other half is the often dreaded interview phase.  All IAPT Trainee PWP interviews vary to some degree but the general gist of them is the same: all services are looking for competent individuals with transferable skills, good knowledge of common mental health difficulties and some indication that they can juggle a full time job and university study at the same time.

My personal experience was that I had to attend an interview day where there were 29 other hopefuls competing for only 12 trainee positions. An interview day is not uncommon and it can be a pretty draining and intense experience. The important thing to remember is not to get overwhelmed!

My interview day involved the following:

• A roleplay - For the roleplay, we were randomly paired up with another candidate and informed that one of us would have to play a "stooge" role of acting as a patient whilst the other would have to act as a practitioner.  The candidate in the practitioner role would then have to do a mental heath assessment with this stooge patient which involved asking the patient questions to determine more about their symptoms and condition.  This roleplay was observed by two interviewers. Here, they were looking for us to demonstrate our knowledge of what sort of information practitioners have to elucidate from patients in assessments, such as the symptoms, the impact of the symptoms on day-to-day functioning, any risk concerns, medication, etc. They were also looking at our interpersonal skills. This was a daunting experience because you are relying on the other candidate to feed you information and vice versa. I later learned this was also partof what was being assessed by the interviewers - it is really important to be able to work in a team within an IAPT service so the communication skills and way that the candidates worked together gave the interviewers more of an insight into our ability to be a team player.

• A debate - For the debate, all 29 candidates were placed in a classroom together and the room was divided into two halves. One half was the "pro" side and the other half was the "con" side. The debate subject was "telephone working is better than face-to-face working." As anyone knows, the majority of PWP work is done by telephone and telephone working is a big part of IAPT and low intensity working in general.  Here, there was no right or wrong answer.  The interviewers were looking at whether we were team players or not, at our communication and debating skills and at who of us was a contributor and who wasn't.  This was not as nerve-wracking as the roleplays because we were all "in it together" so to speak but I did feel pressure to contribute so as to be noticed.  I found the people who did speak up and contribute were the ones who were more confident and outspoken.  I have retrospectively been informed that the interviewers shied away from shortlisting anyone who came across as "pushy" in order to be vocal and favoured those who worked well in a team - showing that simply having a louder voice than the rest wasn't going to win you any brownie points.

• A presentation - This was one of the hardest parts of the day.  Prior to the interview day, we had all been told to prepare a short presentation lasting 5 minutes which would be about "how to assess for common mental health difficulties." This is all the information we were given alongside being told that we could do this as a Powerpoint presentation.  I opted to do a Powerpoint which many other candidates did. I found it was a good choice to use Powerpoint as it represented that I had come prepared for this portion of the interview day.  I noticed a look of panic and fear on the faces of candidates who hadn't bought any notes or any visual aids like a Powerpoint presentation with them.  They suddenly felt unprepared in comparison to those who had bought something along.  The presentation itself was only presented to two interviewers again which relieved some of the pressure (could you imagine doing that in front of a panel of interviewers plus 29 other candidates?!)  Regardless, I managed not to completely finish my presentation and to find my voice trembling and breaking at some points.  The interviewers were really friendly but this did little to ease my nerves.  My strength here was the fact that what I did manage to cram into my presentation was a play-by-play of all the areas PWPs cover when they are information gathering with patients which is exactly what the interviewers were looking for.  Again, I only knew what this was through reading the Reach Out manual and frequenting online Psychology forums asking for other people's experiences of similar interviews.

• A panel interview - This was the second most anxiety-inducing aspect of the day.  The panel interview involved 2 other interviewers and it was like a standard job interview.  They asked questions about myself, my knowledge of IAPT, the Stepped Care model, what the PWP trainee role was, how I would balance work with university training and how I would manage my own stresses in a very stressful job role.  I cannot emphasise how important it is to read about the PWP role and low intensity working. I was not the most informed about IAPT or PWP training before I came into the interview process so I was really grateful I had read up the bits I had as they got me through!

If you're preparing for a PWP training position, here's some other useful literature and places on the web to check out for more insights:

The Reach Out manual - also known as the "PWP training bible."
The ClinPsy Wiki page about "how to prepare for an trainee PWP interview" is also immeasurably useful.

If you still have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment or message me on Twitter or Facebook and I'll do my best to answer them!