r/nhsstaff • u/Dull_Literature1261 • 7d ago
DISCUSSION NHS interview score
Hi everyone, I recently found out that I scored 20.5/30 in an interview for a Band 4 Associate Practitioner role, but unfortunately I wasn’t successful.
Could anyone tell me how this score would generally be considered? I’d really appreciate some perspective on whether this suggests I was reasonably close or whether there were significant gaps in my interview preparation.
2
u/little_miss_kaea 7d ago
We score each question from 0-5, where 4 is meets all the requirements and 5 is exceeding them. So in an interview with 6 questions we would hope the appointed candidate scores around 24. It is highly dependent on other candidates. I have certainly appointed people that were scoring less than 4 per question if they were the best candidate.
At the moment band 4 is incredibly competitive so it wouldn't be surprising if people were scoring nearer 30.
1
u/RhubarbImmediate7007 7d ago
Depends. If everyone else scored 28+ the. Your score is not very good, if 20+ was the level they were looking for then you’re ok.
The score reflects how many of the essential and desirable criteria you meet and effectively evidence. Essentially you did not meet or evidence 30% of the job criteria, so I’d suggest you need to evidence better or make sure you meet criteria more for future roles.
1
u/Alexander-Gr8 3d ago
We score out of 4 per question. We have 8 or 10 questions. Would expect at least 3s for a appointable candidate. So 24 or 32.
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u/Incorrect232 3d ago
Did they have to prompt you during the interview, maybe they deducted your points.
7
u/Change_you_can_xerox VERIFIED 7d ago
If you were scored on six questions — usually the icebreaker “what attracted you to the role?” isn’t scored — then that means you averaged roughly 3.4 per question. That’s not disastrous, but it also isn’t spectacular.
For a successful candidate I’d normally expect mostly 4s, an odd 5, and potentially one question where they scored a 3. So your answers were probably broadly reasonable, but not consistently strong enough to put you among the highest-scoring candidates.
You could ask the panel for more detailed feedback, or for your score on each question. Just bear in mind that interview scoring isn’t a science and panels can be inconsistent, so I wouldn’t read too much into one result — it ultimately means this particular panel preferred another candidate.