Bombed my interview

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Specializes in Case Management.

Hello,

I’ve been away for a while, but I wanted to share a humiliating experience to see if anyone else has had something similar happen. For the past 3.5 years I’ve been working as a CM in an outpatient setting. Got my CCM in September so I wanted to start looking at new career possibilities. I’ve had 3 interviews this past week for a position in case management/utilization review. 

Normally, when I interview, I get a lot of fluff questions and situational questions. Those I am use to. However, I interviewed for an insurance company yesterday and holy hell I thought I was on a game of jeopardy. 

Here is an example: what does MRI stand for and what is it? What does CT stand for? What’s the difference? What is a carotid endarterectomy and who performs it? What is a CABG? What is hepatic encephalopathy? What the eff?! I was so flustered and totally unprepared that I literally could not think of what an MRI stands for! I said medical resonance imaging! ?‍♀️ I couldn’t think of what encephalopathy was! 

So I guess my question is, is this typical for an insurance company to ask these types of questions? I kind of get why they did, but damn! 

Anyways, thanks for reading my rant!

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Specializes in Peds, Med-Surg, Disaster Nsg, Parish Nsg.

Welcome back! 

Although I'm sorry you had such an unnerving interview, thanks for sharing your experience.  Hopefully, someone who has experience with insurance interviews will add some helpful input.

Hang in there.

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Specializes in retired LTC.

Might your interviewer NOT have been any way knowledgeable in medical terminology or the field?

Like a really green civilian who wouldn't have the remotest idea about the difference between hypo- and hyper-???

Obviously that kind of interviewer couldn't ask you anything technical. And so the level of the interview was at the minimum-est complexity.

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Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

Those all make sense in the context of UM/your, but dang. Google can answer those questions in 3 seconds. What is more important is that if you don't know the answer, you know where to look. 

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Specializes in Case Management.

Both of the interviewers were nurses and yeah the questions weren’t hard, but my brain wasn’t functioning and I choked! I thought I was going to have a discussion about the job and how my experience could benefit them, not an oral pop quiz on medical terminology!! ? I stopped them midway through and was like look we can stop this if you want, it’s obvious I’m bombing this interview LOL. 

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Specializes in Case management, rehabilitation, newborn nursery.

Wow. Sorry you had that experience. I’ve worked for 2 of the big insurers. One role was as a CM, the other was disease management. Both interviews were a mix of the behavioral event type questions (tell me about a time when you disagreed with a decision made by your manager and how did you handle it?) and a review of my experience. I’ve had work at home positions for 6 years now, doing different things, and there are still days when I have to Google an abbreviation. Also, different  facilities can have their own accepted abbreviations. 

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Specializes in Case Management.

Right, I’m use to behavioral questions too. This was just super weird! 

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Specializes in Occupational Health.

Sounds like they've had CM's in the past that weren't capable of reviewing multiple medical scenarios due to a lack of basic knowledge. I took the questions as a simple screening tool to determine basic medical terminology, simple pathology, and rationales as to why as certain procedure (I.e. MRI vs CT) would be ordered and whether or not they're appropriate for the diagnosis or diagnoses

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for some reason I thought of this:  

 

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Specializes in Case Management.
On 1/6/2021 at 2:23 PM, d'cm said:

for some reason I thought of this:  

 

I’m just now seeing this! LOL! Too funny ? 

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Specializes in Case Manager/Administrator.

I know this is 8 weeks late but here goes......

Although those questions are valid, I am not sure why they were asked in a interview forum unless it was a follow up interview.  We use Interqual and Milliman criteria. This criteria is reviewed against what the provider sends in.  Now this sounds simple but there is more to it than just this.  

 

If you ever get another chance to interview I would be knowledgeable about what Interqual and Milliman is, about basic chronic care foundations and about basic surgical steps form initial to end as far as patient flow.  It helps to just know what an OASIS is, what specialty medication are, and what insurance can do for you.  Good Luck

 

I will write up a brief overview of health insurance is on a different thread. 

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