DClinPsy Interviews - Where to Start?!

Blog first published on 7 Feb 2021 | Updated on 6 Jan 2025.

Congratulations to those of you who have been invited to interviews, after what we know has been a long wait. As excited as you are, we are happy to announce that we hold annual interview webinars to put our minds together and answer your inquiries.

To learn about upcoming or past webinars, please visit our Events page.

If you haven’t already done the following, here is what we suggest the following to start preparing for the interviews:

Keep calm and organise your thoughts. Managing anxiety is part of a clinical psychologist’s job and constant challenge, balancing your life and mental well-being is an important skill. We understand that you might be directing a lot of your time towards preparing for these interviews, and balance this with looking after your mental and physical well-being.

Revisit your personal, clinical and research experiences. Reflect on and think about what you have learnt from them, and how they have helped you to become a trainee clinical psychologist candidate. If you need more guidance, we recommend you read the following posts by the minorities group, a subcommittee group from the BPS Division of Clinical Psychology, and other platforms that have gathered example interview questions, vignettes and support:

• ClinPsych interview preparation

• Tips for interview prep

• Interview preparation for minority applicants

• Preparing for clinical psychology interviews: the truth

• The gigantic list of potential interview questions

• Vignettes: Clinical Case studies and research

• Interview coaching

YouTube videos that you may find useful:

• DClinPsy Applications & Interviews - Frequently Asked Questions by TheOxfordPsych

• How to prepare for Clinical Psychology interviews | DON'T PANIC - YOU'VE GOT THIS by The Worry People

• How I Prepared for my Clinical Psychology Doctorate Interview by Sharon B

• How I prepared for my successful DClin Interview by Dr Holly

Read up on the psychological theories and formulation, familiarise yourself with them and relate them to your clinical or research experience with these theories. However, if you haven’t had any experience with formulation, don’t worry too much - think of formulation like a story or a flow diagram that helps us make sense of what a client brings to us in a room. Within therapy, it forms a roadmap to therapy.

Try to read around mental health services within the NHS and recent policies. We understand that as international applicants, you will have had a diverse range of experiences prior to training, not all of which will have been done in the UK. If you are not familiar with the NHS and how mental health services are structured in the UK, it might be helpful to refer to relevant resources - we have included a list of some below. However, it’s important to reiterate that not all international trainees have had experience of working in the NHS so please do not consider this to be a barrier to being successful in your interviews.

• Understanding the New NHS

• Understanding the NHS - DClinPsy International Blog Post

• Reforming the Mental Health Act (published on 18 July, 2024)

• Mental Health Act - MIND

• The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan explained (published on 27 July 2023)

Most importantly - treat yourself to something nice for being one step closer to DClinPsy! We cannot stress enough the importance of self-care and self-preservation in this process, they are key elements to build your confidence and staying level-headed for the interviews.

Congratulations to those who have been invited for the interviews. We look forward to seeing you in one of our webinars!