<p><a href="/jobs/s-social-care/ss-social-care/r-approved-mental-health-professional-amhp/">Approved mental health professionals</a> fall into a variety of job categories. Some may gravitate towards care work and deal with cases on a more hands-on basis, or might aim towards becoming support workers where they take a more administrative approach to the job as a whole. Whatever the case may be, the interview procedures are not all that different for mental health professionals and these are the types of questions you can expect to be asked within your upcoming interview.</p>
<h2>Approved mental health professional interview questions examples.</h2>
<h5>Scenario questions.</h5>
<p>After candidates take the time to outline themselves and their professional lives, it is not unusual for interviews to be geared towards answering scenario-based questions. These are the “tell me about a time when X happened and what was the result?” style questions that candidates often stumble on. These do not necessarily need to be stumbling blocks, but it is certainly worth your while to take some time in order to do some advanced preparation. In mental health interviews, interviewers (often a panel of executives) will be looking to assess a candidate based on their professional commitment to the clients they serve, so when these situation questions come up, it is always best to answer them using relevant case information and relate it to the post to some degree. It is also wise to close these statements addressing what you learned and how it will affect any decisions you make in the future.</p>
<p>This is the normal protocol for answering scenario questions as they are more telling stories as opposed to simply answering questions through statements. Many candidates fall into the trap of simply stating what happened without any direct link to anything, which often prompts further questions from interviews. This is quite a serious mistake for candidates to make. Often, it is a wise interview technique to have interviewers speaking as little as possible – candidates are the ones on display and must present themselves as such through dialogue.</p>
<h5>Interpersonal skills.</h5>
<p>While interpersonal skills are also directly addressed through a candidate's ability to answer questions eloquently, there will also be several questions directly commenting on interpersonal skills, which might include “How have you dealt with any difficult cases/clients and what sort of resolution did you work towards?” Obviously having excellent interpersonal skills would be the only way out of this sort of question and candidates will have to market themselves as having effective communication abilities in order to convince interviewers that they are worthy of being hired.</p>
<p>It is also not a bad idea to flex any modules that you might have taken as a part of further education or even as a part of a degree course. This is because there will often be focuses on adapting language and communication styles to suit the needs of the client being addressed. Having relevant case stories would also be appropriate here, but candidates who demonstrate the fact they have been trained to have this sort of skill will score far higher than those who have not. </p>
<h5>Forethought questions.</h5>
<p>Interviewers also like to see candidates who have given a bit of thought regarding their upcoming roles and may ask questions along the lines of “What issues do you think you will face on a day to day basis?” Unfortunately, there is no one true way to answer this question, but candidates should obviously have a well-prepared answer on hand. It is simply not enough to say you expect every day to be different and present new challenges. Interviewers wish to hear of specific issues that candidates believe might arise on the job. This gauges both their understanding of the job role and indeed whether or not they are capable of addressing any of these specific issues, so having some further commentary on hand to follow these questions would certainly be useful. Following each issue with how you would personally deal with it, or at least attempt to deal with would be an excellent way to answer this sort of question.</p>
<p>Those who do not demonstrate any sort of insight or consideration for the job will understandably not score as well with interviewers. After all, <a href="/jobs/s-social-care/ss-social-care/r-approved-mental-health-professional-amhp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mental health professionals</a> will need to have some degree of advanced consideration in order to excel within their roles, so not demonstrating this during an interview is a fatal mistake. Candidates should always go out of their way, wherever possible, in order to show this quality.</p>