Prepare for the Interview: A Primer for Answering DEI Interview Questions

You may already be prepared for the standard interview questions: “Tell me about yourself.” “ What are your five- and 10-year career plans? ” “Give us an example of…” As you may have noticed, the standard interview questions don’t seem to vary much from one year to the next—or even one generation to the next.

One type of question that you’re more likely to encounter today than even five years ago is the DEI query: “Tell us your philosophy and approach to DEI.” Or, “Share some examples of how DEI has impacted your medical practice.”

Standing for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” DEI has come to the forefront for employers as they strive to build work teams that better reflect the communities they serve or that better respect a diverse group of coworkers—or both.

Since these questions are relatively new in the world of job interviews, it’s a good idea to reflect and prepare for the questions in advance. Below is a primer with steps to follow as you anticipate this conversation point in your next interview.

Get into the right frame of mind for DEI interview questions

Learn the basics. Even if you’ve had workplace training on DEI principles, or have been exposed to the concepts elsewhere, refreshing yourself on each part of the acronym and how it might apply to the practice of medicine will give you more confidence in the interview.

Learn the extras. Have you heard of a diversity dashboard or scorecard? How about the pillars of inclusion? You don’t need a master’s course on the subject, but having more background can give you added agility in answering interviewers’ questions. In this case, the diversity dashboard and the scorecard are two of the tools that can be used to establish goals or evaluate progress in an organization, while the pillars of inclusion refer to guidelines for understanding and meeting standards of inclusion.

Think broadly. When discussing diversity, remember to include multiple aspects in your analysis, such as race, culture, age, gender, disability, economic status, or other factors. By maintaining a broad perspective, you’ll be able to identify more examples from your experience and participate more fully in answering these interview questions.

Building your DEI interview strategy

In considering how you might answer DEI questions, it’s helpful to start with an example. Following are two answers to the same question, “What has been your experience with diversity and inclusion?” As you’ll see, one answer is stronger than the other.

Answer 1: “I’ve been working with people from multiple cultures since I started training, and our patients have been very diverse in their backgrounds. I think my work has given me a good foundation for these issues.”

Answer 2: “I’ve given a lot of thought to DEI, and particularly to the ‘inclusion’ part of the term. Because of their cognitive disabilities, my patients are frequently excluded from normal activities, even in their own families. Working on their behalf has helped me sharpen my processes for bringing more voices to the table. That’s a practice that I’ve started carrying over to other areas, including meetings with my colleagues and conversations with my patients from different cultural backgrounds. It’s been challenging to see things from a different lens, but I think it’s helping me become a better doctor.”

Of the two answers, the first is too vague. This person sounds more like someone trying to cover the bases than someone who has given honest reflection to the subject. The second answer, by contrast, provides more detail about both the candidate’s experience with the issue and how that experience might be applied to the next workplace.

Parsing out the answers above, here are four steps for building your own answer strategy.

1. Be specific. Speaking in generalities is a common mistake, especially for a difficult subject. Unfortunately, answers that sound like a motivational poster (“I believe diversity makes for a great workplace”) have the potential to backfire when the interviewer replies, “Tell us why.”

2. Be brief. Both answers above leave room for follow-up questions, which is a good strategy. By not covering all the possible points in one answer, you provide a better opportunity for give-and-take, which could help reveal the interviewer’s concerns and viewpoints on the subject.

3. Don’t apologize. This is a big topic, so it would be natural to feel you have gaps in your training or experience with related issues. If so, don’t apologize but instead dig deeper to find a better focus for your response. And if you still can’t get traction trying to build DEI answers, reading more deeply or attending a training might help you see more aspects of the issue.

4. Practice. It’s always a good idea to practice for interviews, but since these questions might be new to you, it’s even more important. Start by writing down five to 10 possible versions of DEI questions to anticipate, to get you familiar with the way the topic might be approached by the interviewer. Then, practice answers that meet the criteria above (specific, brief, no apologies). You don’t need to memorize your answers; just repeat them enough times that they’ll feel natural when you give them later.

DEI is a two-way street: Exploring the institution’s approach

So far, the focus has been on how you might respond to an interviewer’s questions about your DEI practices and approach. But what about them? This is the organization you’re about to join―what has been their approach and philosophy on the subject? One way to learn more is by asking questions during your interviews. Here are some tips to guide you.

Decide what you want to know. Are you interested in how the organization’s DEI processes are implemented? Do you want to be part of a committee if one exists? Do the metrics interest you? Or is it enough at this point just to know there’s a DEI policy in place? Whatever your level of interest, you’ll ask a better question if you’ve identified in advance what you want to know.

Conduct relevant research. If you belong to a group that isn’t reflected in this institution’s org chart, you might be the “first” of something. Having conducted this research gives you the platform to ask a related question in the interview. Perhaps, “I might be wrong, but in reviewing the web site, it looks like I might be the only [fill in the blank] on your team. That’s not an issue for me, but sometimes that’s not an easy role. What can you tell me about how you support your team members in terms of diversity?”

Think big picture. The larger the organization, the more likely it is they’ve already established DEI practices and policies, which gives you something to evaluate. On the other hand, if you run into an employer who hasn’t crossed this bridge yet, just note for yourself that they don’t have a DEI policy in place. If it’s an important consideration for you, you may decide to work elsewhere. Or, taking another approach, you may be able to initiate the process from the inside once you’ve started.

Wrapping up

When the interview has finished, you’ll likely have spent only a small percentage of it on DEI questions. Even so, those moments could turn out to be some of the most important, in terms of the impression you and the interviewer make on each other. Discussing these points demands trust and a certain amount of vulnerability in a process that can sometimes feel impersonal. That makes the preparation and practice even more important, as a way of achieving a more meaningful interview experience. 