How would you balance working in a team with independent thinking?
Illustrates candidates ability to work under pressure and handle stressful situations.
Why do you want to work as a rehab aide?
You can start with emphasizing the meaningful purpose of the job. Perhaps you always wanted to work in healthcare, in one way or another, but wasn’t lucky enough to earn a degree (yet), or simply took a different direction in life. As a rehab aide you can help patients regain their fitness after a surgery or a serious illness, because every staff member is important and plays their role. Said in another words, you prefer a job of a rehabilitation aide to a job of library aide, or office aide, etc.
You can also point out that you have the skills and fitting personality for the job. Excellent communication and teamwork skills, patience and empathy with the patients, physical strengths and stamina for lifting and moving immobile patients, and so on. Considering everything, the job of a rehab aide seems like an excellent match to you.
Be Aware of Your Surroundings
The interview starts the moment you pull into the parking lot – every interaction counts. Even the receptionist and other employees in the lobby are evaluating!
Convey confidence! A firm handshake, good eye contact and sitting up straight are important. Try to avoid playing with your hair and crossing your arms, which can be interpreted as nervousness or being closed-off.
What do you think your typical workday would look like?
Demonstrates candidates understanding of the role.
Athletico Physical Therapy provides the highest quality orthopedic rehabilitation services to communities, employers and athletes, with over 900 locations throughout 24 states. To demonstrate our commitment to both our patients and referring physicians, we measure functional patient outcomes and patient satisfaction with national data comparison using a third-party outcomes system. Our services include physical and occupational/hand therapy, work rehabilitation, women’s health therapy, pediatric physical therapy, concussion management and athletic training. For more information, please visit www.athletico.com.
You may sometimes need to lift heavy patients from beds, helping them to a wheelchair. Do you feel physically fit to handle such tasks?
As I’ve already said, you should show confidence in your ability to handle the job. Now it doesn’t mean that you have to weight 200 pounds and have a muscular stature. Many diminutive women are excellent rehabilitation aides, simply because they know how to work with the patients and with various tools that help them lift them in the hospital, as well as laws of physics (such as a lever, for example). That’s something you can refer to if you do not look like someone who can help a 300 pounds heavy cardiac get up from bed.
You can also refer to your past experience at this point. Perhaps you had a job in which you had to lift heavy weights, or you spend a lot of time in the gym, or whatever. Anything that helps to demonstrate that you do not mind such physical work is a good example.
Do you have any clerical experience?
In most places you will do the paperwork, and may even respond for basic bookkeeping. That’s why it is good to mention any administrative or office roles you had in the past, or basically any jobs in which you worked with papers, did some data entry, worked with MS Office, and so on.
And if this is your first job application in the field, ensure them that you have excellent computer skills in general, and are a quick learner, and without a doubt you’ll learn to take care of the paperwork and administrative duties in a short time. You may also answer phone calls and take care of appointments scheduling, and they may ask about these duties. The principle remains the same however–either you did it before, and know how to do it, or you have confidence in your ability to handle such tasks, and quickly learn anything you may have to learn in order to perform your job.