As has been the case for the past several years, physician residency interviews will largely be held virtually during the 2024–2025 Match cycle.
The experience of having a high-stakes interview online has been normalized by years of FaceTime, Zoom and Teams meetings. Still, preparation for the technical aspects of an interview and making sure you have mastered the content that will be covered is vital to landing the right residency slot.
A year removed from her own residency interviews, Maya Hammoud, MD—a first-year general surgery resident at Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine—offered applicants a few key tips to ace their virtual interview.
The AMA helps medical students master the residency-application process so you can make the right decisions about your career, prepare for a knockout interview, explore residency opportunities—all so you can successfully match.
Ensure your tech is correct
Dr. Hammoud said she felt very comfortable with platforms such as Zoom, but there were still details she needed to check. To do that, consider logging on to the platform prior to the interview and checking your audio and video settings.
“It’s important to make sure your background looks nice and professional,” she said. “Many of us bought or borrowed ring lights before interviews. One sort of odd thing that happened to me was there were weird settings on my computer that tried to auto-adjust the brightness.”
Content is king
While the technical aspects of your interview may help your presentation, knowing what you are going to say is clearly the most important part of the interview.
Dr. Hammoud’s advice on that front? Practice makes perfect.
“I practiced going over my answers to questions like 'Tell me about yourself' or 'Why do you want to go into surgery?' If you practice repeating your answers out loud, you just get better and better,” said Dr. Hammoud, an AMA member whose aunt—an ob-gyn MD also named Maya Hammoud—is a consultant for the AMA’s medical education unit.
Dr. Hammoud also highlighted the importance of having tangible examples of your skills in action. For questions on leadership, for instance, she was able to point to her involvement with her medical school’s surgical interest group.
Talking about her involvement in that specialty interest group “was a helpful way of demonstrating my leadership skills,” she said. “I was not just talking about theoretical leadership but pointing to what I’ve done.”
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Don’t let a disconnection derail you
Dr. Hammoud spoke to classmates who had connectivity issues during their interviews. People have been working in a semiremote world long enough to understand that’s a possibility. Rebounding from a connectivity issue is more important than the fact that it happened, she said.
“Getting booted off a call can get you flustered, but from what I’ve heard programs are understanding,” she said. “It’s an added stress but it doesn’t have to be a catastrophe.”
Before an interview, Dr. Hammoud said, it’s wise for interviewees to have a number to call in case they get disconnected from their video conference.
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Make yourself comfortable
Though most medical students do wear a suit in camera view, interviewing from home means that you don’t need to wear your fanciest, least comfortable dress shoes.
"It was nice for me at least to be able to interview from home, you’re comfortable in your settings, you kind of know what to expect,” Dr. Hammoud said. “I would advise that if you have roommates, you can tell whoever you live with that you need time and peace and quiet while you’re interviewing."
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