When people start thinking about their next job, they often begin with a list. Better salary. Bigger title. More flexibility. Shorter commute. Different organisation. All perfectly reasonable things to want. But there's another question worth asking before you start scrolling through job ads: What does my next job actually need to give me? Because a new job isn't necessarily a good career move. Start with what you need, not what's available It's easy to become reactive when you're looking for a new role. You see an interesting position. A recruiter calls. Someone in your network mentions an opportunity. Suddenly, you're assessing whether you want that particular job. Try doing the thinking before the opportunity appears. Ask yourself what you want your next role to give you that your current one doesn't. It might be: greater responsibility exposure to a new area better leadership more autonomy an opportunity to lead greater flexibility a different clinical environment better remuneration new skills or experience a clearer path to where you ultimately want to go Once you know what you're looking for, it becomes much easier to recognise the right opportunity, and say no to the wrong one. Think More, Less and New A simple way to get clearer is to divide a page into three columns: MORE — LESS — NEW What do you want more of in your next role? What do you want less of? And what do you want that is completely new ? Your answers don't need to sound impressive. You might want more challenging work but less travel. More responsibility but fewer direct reports. More patient contact. Less bureaucracy. More flexibility. A new speciality or environment. The point is to understand what matters to you before someone else starts selling you an opportunity. Separate your wants from your non-negotiables . Not everything on your list carries equal weight. There are things that would be nice to have, and there are things a role genuinely needs to provide for it to work. For example, flexibility may be a preference for one person and a non-negotiable for another. The same applies to salary, location, hours, travel, development opportunities and organisational culture. Try dividing your criteria into three categories: Must have: I wouldn't take the role without this. Important: This would strongly influence my decision. Nice to have: I'd value it, but I could compromise. This becomes particularly useful when you're comparing two opportunities and neither is perfect. Look beyond the job title A bigger title can feel like progression. It isn't always. Likewise, a sideways move can look like a lack of progression when it may actually give you experience that dramatically expands your future options. Look beyond what the job is called. What will you be responsible for? What problems will you get to solve? Who will you work with and learn from? What will you be exposed to? What will you be able to say you've done after two years that you can't say today? Sometimes the best career move doesn't look like a promotion on paper. Think one move beyond the next move This is one of the most useful questions you can ask about any opportunity: What could this role make possible afterwards? You don't need to have the next ten years mapped out. Careers rarely work that neatly. But your next role will shape your experience, network, reputation and future options. Imagine you take the job and stay for three years. What will you have learned? What will you have achieved? What sort of opportunities might you be considered for next? A role that looks attractive today isn't necessarily a great move if it takes you further away from where you ultimately want to go. Use the interview to assess them too Once you're clear about what you need from your next job, interviews change. You're no longer simply trying to convince the organisation to hire you. You're gathering evidence about whether you should choose them . If development matters, ask how people in the team have progressed. If leadership matters, ask your prospective manager how they lead and what they expect from their team. If autonomy matters, ask how decisions are made. If flexibility matters, find out what it looks like in practice rather than relying on what's written in the job advertisement. Good candidates don't just prepare answers. They prepare questions that help them make a good decision. Give your recruiter something to work with "I'm looking for my next challenge." "I'd like something more senior." "I'm open to opportunities." A recruiter can work with those statements, but they don't tell them very much. Compare that with: "I want my next role to give me broader leadership responsibility and exposure to service strategy. I'm happy to consider a lateral move if it gives me that experience, but flexibility is important to me." Now your recruiter has something meaningful to work with. The clearer you are about what you're looking for, the easier it is for them to bring you opportunities that actually fit. Don't just find another job It's tempting to judge an opportunity by comparing it with the role you have now. Is the salary better? Is the title better? Does the organisation sound more interesting? But your current job shouldn't be the only benchmark. Before you make your next move, ask: What do I need this job to give me? What will I be able to do, know or demonstrate because I've taken it? And what could it make possible next? The goal isn't simply to find a better job. It's to make a better career move.

Why Good Candidates Give Bad Interviews You can be exceptionally good at what you do and still be surprisingly bad at talking about it. It happens all the time in interviews. A highly capable candidate walks into the room with years of experience, strong technical expertise and a track record of delivering results. Yet they walk out having failed to convince the interview panel that they are the right person for the role. Meanwhile, another candidate with similar, or sometimes less, experience gives a stronger interview and gets the offer. It can feel unfair. But there is an important distinction candidates often overlook: Being good at your job and being good at communicating your value are two completely different skills. An interview isn't a test of whether you can do the job. It is a short window in which you need to give the interviewer enough evidence to confidently believe that you can. And that's a skill you can learn. Your experience doesn't speak for itself One of the biggest mistakes experienced candidates make is assuming the interviewer will recognise the significance of what they've done. We think: It's on my resume. They know my industry. Surely they understand what was involved. Don't make them join the dots. Your job in an interview is to make it easy for someone to understand three things: What did you do? Why did it matter? What changed because of it? Compare: "I was responsible for implementing a new rostering system across the service." with: "We were experiencing significant rostering issues that were affecting both staff and service delivery. I led the implementation of a new system, including engaging the clinical teams, addressing resistance and managing the transition. Within six months, we'd significantly reduced unfilled shifts and had much greater visibility of workforce requirements." The second answer gives us something the first doesn't: evidence . You don't need to turn every answer into a five-minute case study. You simply need to stop assuming that your job title or responsibilities demonstrate your capability. Stop telling them what "we" did Healthcare and medical environments depend on teamwork, so it's understandable that candidates frequently talk about what we achieved. "We introduced…" "We changed…" "We managed…" "We achieved…" There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the team. In fact, claiming sole credit for a genuinely collective achievement can work against you. But the interviewer is hiring you . They need to understand your contribution. Try: "The team achieved X. My responsibility within that was Y, and the part I specifically led was Z." That one change can make an enormous difference to the quality of an interview answer. Don't bury your answer Another common problem is giving far too much context. The interviewer asks: "Tell me about a time you had to manage a difficult stakeholder." Seven minutes later, the candidate is still explaining the organisational structure. Context matters. Too much context kills an answer. A useful rule is: Give me enough background to understand the problem, then get to what you did. If you find yourself explaining every person, meeting and event that led to the situation, you're probably giving too much detail. Try using the STAR methodology: Situation → Task → Action → Result Keep the situation and task short. They are merely there to provide context. Spend most of your time on the action and result . That's where the evidence of your capability lives. Build an evidence bank, not a list of interview answers One of the best ways to prepare for an interview is not to predict 30 questions and write 30 answers. Instead, build an evidence bank . Before the interview, identify six to eight strong examples from your career that demonstrate different aspects of your capability. For example: a difficult problem you solved a significant change you led or contributed to a time you influenced someone without having authority over them a challenging stakeholder or relationship you managed a mistake or setback and what you did next an improvement you initiated a situation where you had to make a difficult decision an example of measurable impact you delivered For each example, know the problem, your role, what you did, the result and what you learned . One strong example can often be adapted to answer several different interview questions. That means you're not memorising scripts. You're becoming familiar with your own evidence. And that tends to make you sound far more natural. Put some numbers around your experience Numbers make experience tangible. You don't need to have increased revenue by 300% or managed a multimillion-dollar transformation. Depending on your role, useful measures might include:  team size patient or client numbers budgets caseloads geographical coverage timeframes reduction in vacancies improvements in retention waiting times efficiency improvements service growth compliance or quality measures Compare: "I managed a multidisciplinary team." with: "I managed a multidisciplinary team of 35 across three locations." Immediately, we understand more about the complexity of the role. Before your interview, go through your examples and ask: Where can I quantify this? How can I make my example more tangible? Learn to talk about yourself without feeling like you're boasting This is particularly difficult for candidates who are naturally modest. They worry that talking about achievements will make them sound arrogant, so they soften everything. "I was lucky enough to…" "I only played a small part…" "It wasn't really just me…" Humility is a strength. Making yourself invisible isn't. There is a difference between taking appropriate credit and taking all the credit . You can say: "I led the project, and its success depended heavily on the clinical teams who implemented the changes." Both things can be true. An interview is one of the few situations where someone is explicitly asking you to explain what you're good at. Let them hear it. Answer the question they actually asked When we're nervous, we're often listening for a keyword rather than listening to the whole question. We hear "conflict" and launch into our prepared conflict story. But perhaps the interviewer asked how you prevented a conflict from escalating rather than how you resolved one. Those are different questions. It's perfectly acceptable to pause before answering. You can even say: "Let me think about the best example for that." Three seconds of silence will feel much longer to you than it does to the interviewer. And if you're unsure whether you've answered the question, finish with: "Does that give you what you were looking for, or would you like me to go into more detail?" Put your answers to the test When you're preparing for your next interview, take each of your examples and ask yourself: Will the interviewer understand what I did, why it mattered and what changed as a result? If the answer isn't immediately obvious, keep working on the example. Better still, practise saying it aloud. What sounds clear in your head can sound very different when you actually have to articulate it. Ask better questions The interview doesn't suddenly stop being an interview when they ask: "Do you have any questions for us?" The questions you ask tell the panel a great deal about how you think. Instead of relying only on questions about process, consider questions such as: "What would you most like the person coming into this role to change or improve?" "What would success look like after 6-12 months?" "What's the biggest challenge the team is facing at the moment?" "What tends to distinguish the people who are really successful in this organisation?" "If I joined, what would you want me to understand quickly?" Their answers also give you something equally important: information to help you decide whether you want the job. Because an interview isn't only about being chosen. It's about making a good career decision yourself. Make it easy for them to choose you Great interviews aren't necessarily delivered by the most charismatic candidates. They're delivered by candidates who make it easy for the interviewer to understand what they can do, how they think and what they could bring to the role. Your experience matters. Your expertise matters. Your achievements matter. But in an interview, none of those things can be left to speak for themselves. Your interviewer shouldn't have to work hard to discover why you're a great candidate. Give them the evidence they need to see it.