00:00 Introduction to the Application Process
02:11 Welcome Section
05:10 The Importance of Training and Mentorship
07:41 Key Elements of a Standout Application
10:40 Understanding the CV: What to Highlight
13:28 The Role of the Cover Letter
16:13 Final Thoughts on Application Materials
28:54 The Importance of Letters of Recommendation
35:45 Preparing for Interviews
39:34 Crafting Meaningful Questions
42:27 Balancing Personal and Professional Sharing
47:13 Navigating Clinical Vignettes
50:46 Key Do’s and Don’ts in Interviews
52:03 Crafting Your Personal Vignette
53:03 Demonstrating Strengths and Growth Areas
55:48 The Future of Interview Selection Processes
01:01:45 Navigating AI in Interviews and Applications
01:07:25 Key Takeaways for Applicants
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (00:00)
Hey folks, welcome back to the podcast. I’m glad to be here with you as always and excited to bring you, I think a very timely episode. It’s going to be timely every December after this, I think because it’s all about applying and interviewing for internships and post-docs. So I have got Dr. Andrea Zartman and she is a board certified neuropsychologist. She’s been heavily involved in multiple aspects of training at the practicum internship and
postdoctoral level, including serving as a postdoc training director at the Dallas VA. At a national level, she served on several training based committees and as a pasture for the APA Council of Chairs of Training Councils. That’s a mouthful, but she’s done a lot. And as you will see, Andrea has a lot of experience to share with us today about applying and interviewing for both the internship and postdoc.
So these are just a few things that we talk about. We talk about just training and mentorship in general in neuropsychology. But of course, we get to some of the good stuff. We talk about what makes an application stand out immediately, how training directors actually read CVs for internship and postdoc, common mistakes and how to structure your descriptions effectively on a CV. We talk about the real role of cover letters and what they actually help with.
Again, how to structure them. We talk about letters of recommendation and what makes a good letter of recommendation. And then we spend quite a bit of time on interviewing as well. So kind of go through the whole process again with interviews. So what differentiates strong interviews from average ones, how to prepare for interview questions, case vignettes and presentations, navigating personal disclosure with professionalism and many other things. this is I think there’s a lot to take away here for
course anybody who’s in the application or interviewing process, but also for those of us who are on the training side or who write letters of recommendation and otherwise support these candidates with their applications. So without further ado, let’s get to my conversation with Dr. Andrea Zardman.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (02:11)
Andrea, hey, welcome to the podcast.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (02:13)
Hey there, so good to be here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (02:15)
Yeah, thanks for being here. I’m so excited to talk to you about this because this is so timely. It is as we’re recording, it’s December. lot of folks listening have submitted applications. A lot of folks listening have reviewed applications and we’re going to be interviewing soon. And this is just like an exciting time in our world.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (02:17)
Of course.
Yes.
Definitely. I’m sure a lot of sites are sending their letters out right now. I know we’ve looked at internship applications and postdoc applications. So it’s been kind of the beginning of the mad rush for recruitment season. Before we go too far, I do want to say that I am a training director at the Dallas VA. But as part of my
role in the federal government is that my thoughts and opinions I’m going to be talking about today are solely representative just by my own opinion and not that of the VA or the government or any other official perspective. So this is literally me talking about being involved in training for almost 20 years now. So I’ve seen a slew of applications from practicum students and interns and postdocs. So really my opinions I’m talking about today is just based on
my own experiences.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (03:30)
That sounds great. That sounds great. And honestly, I think I would rather have your opinion than the federal government or the VA’s opinion. yeah, I am totally fine with that. So I’ll start with a question that I always start with for folks, is of all the things you can do in your role as a neuropsychologist, why care about this and come on a podcast to talk about applications and interviewing.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (03:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. So training is definitely my passion. Part of the reason why I chose my job I have is because it allowed me to be involved in training at multiple levels. And so I really am a true believer in that part of my role is to help kind of generate the next generation of neuropsychologists. I know personally, I had some amazing supervisors in my past who truly
kind of got me to where I am from both a clinical level and a research level and a like leadership level. You know, they’re the ones who kind of got me involved at a national level and various committees. They’re the ones who pushed me to do some of the things that were kind of outside of my comfort zone. And so for me, I really feel like training and mentorship is such a huge piece of being a neuropsychologist at so many different levels. And so I know that
In particular, trying to find the right fit for a program is very stressful for people. I remember being under that stress many years ago. And so I try to take lessons I’ve learned from myself personally when I was going through the process. So I think even though it’s been quite a while, some of those lessons are still pretty prevalent, as well as kind of where I’ve seen people rise to the top and kind of fall a little bit.
⁓ I think all of that is good information. so I really do like training is what keeps me where I’m at right now. I think it also being a supervisor, make sure that my skills and my knowledge base stays current. I’m constantly learning from trainees. So I feel like a lot of times it’s a two way street of me kind of learning new things and trying to think about, taking different perspectives that I feel like it makes me a better clinician overall.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (05:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I’m right with you. Yeah, I love we do a lot of training in our practice as well. Different setting, you know, being in private practice, of course, but yeah, it’s so true. It keeps you on your toes. I feel like it keeps me from getting complacent among many other benefits. But yeah, well, I’m excited to chat with you about this, this whole process. Like I said, it’s very fresh, you know, as we were talking before recording, we just got finished reviewing.
what feels like a million applications, which I’m grateful for. And it’s a lot. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, we’re going to break this up into probably three parts loosely. We’ll talk about the application process. We’ll talk about the interview process. And then we’ll talk about kind of big picture, just broader kind of insights and takeaways for folks. So let’s dive into the application process. So this is super relevant right now.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (06:04)
Yes, not a bad problem to have.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (06:27)
I’ll start with a positive question, I suppose. So from your perspective, I’m very curious what makes an application immediately stand out to you in a good way when you’re reviewing everything.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (06:39)
Definitely. I will say that it’s very easy to see who had their application materials reviewed by others versus who applications were not reviewed by others. A lot of it is the organization of the materials itself. So I always encourage people to especially pay time and attention to their CV.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (06:53)
Hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (06:59)
And especially related to like, what are they putting on their CV, the outline of their CV? What we see a lot of times is that, and I think it’s, also depends on what level you’re applying for. So for example, an internship CV is going to look different than a postdoctoral CV because you’ve had more experiences, but also they need to be more refined. And so I think that is kind of what stuck like really jumps out at me. You know, other things is like, make sure it sounds really silly.
but it happens a lot, make sure that when you’re editing and you’re looking over your materials, you have the right names. So every year we get somebody who is addressing their materials to us as a different facility or different supervisors who don’t work at our facility. And so it sounds really silly and it sounds like, okay, I would never do that, but it’s easy because it makes sense that you are using the same cover letter.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (07:41)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (07:53)
or a similar cover letter or the same materials to apply for multiple sites. I did that. Like it’s just, that’s what you do. But this is where it becomes really important to kind of slow down and make sure all the pieces are actually where they are. The other thing is, again, it’s that organization piece that like really jumps out at you. If your materials and your packet is disorganized, it doesn’t come across as that great.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (08:00)
Of course.
Right. I want to go back to the CV point. This is super interesting right off the bat. So I actually don’t look at people’s CVs that closely. So I want to know what you’re looking for and maybe some of those differences, like you said, between internship and postdoc on a CV.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (08:30)
yeah.
So I will tell you that the CV is one of the first things I do look at. And I know I will spend actually a fair amount of time looking at your CV because I’m looking at different things. ⁓ One thing I’m looking at from, and I look at different things for both internship and postdoctoral side. So starting off an internship, what I’m really looking at is what practicum experiences have you had? So like, are they consistent with neuropsychology? And if they’re not, why not?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (08:37)
Okay, yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (09:01)
So maybe you’re in a program that just doesn’t have experiences of neuropsychology available. And if that’s the case, what have you done to get that experience? So I feel like that’s kind of the starting point. I look to see like, you know, of course, like what is your dissertation? Because if your dissertation is about neuropsychology, it kind of tells me more that, you’re in for this, right? Like your graduate work, your dissertation, everything is pointed towards neuropsychology. So you may be…
a little bit better to hit the ground running than somebody who’s not. If your dissertation is not a neuropsych, again, I don’t necessarily put that against you because again, I know there are a lot of programs out there that don’t have that opportunity. But I do look to see like, is it a relevant dissertation for like my patient population? So for example, like is your dissertation about PTSD? Is it about alcohol? Is it about psychiatric distress?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (09:51)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (09:53)
So, you know, looking at, work in the adult population. So if I’m looking at your CV and everything is kids, it makes me kind of question about how good of a fit are we? Whereas if you are giving me a CV that doesn’t have a whole lot of neuropsych on it, but it has things about the military or it has things about the VA or it has things about that, you know, substance abuse, PTSD, trauma.
depression, adult-focused things or geriatric-focused items, that tells me a lot about where your experience is, where is your knowledge base. So I will look at your education, your dissertation topic, your… I’m focusing more so on your practicums of where have you trained. It’s also helpful when you’re looking at your prac on your CV about listing, at least at the internship level,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:40)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (10:48)
who were you supervised by? Because, and I say this even for postdoc, because what I’m looking for was were you supervised by someone who’s board certified versus somebody who wasn’t? And so there are a lot of good people out there who are not board certified, but if I know the names of those people, sometimes I can also know the quality of the person that you were training with. So a lot of times, once you get past postdoc,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:53)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (11:12)
I tell people take those names off unless they’re like a really big name in the field or like a very like there’s something salient and why you need that name on your CV. But for internship and postdoc, I really encourage people to keep the name to their supervisors on there because neuropsychology is a small world. And so it really does help me to know the quality of the supervisors you’ve been working with. And I also kind of know like a lot of the supervisors out there, kind of know like
what their MO is. Like I know like what kind of how they approach things, how they look at things and how similar or dissimilar they are to maybe like how I look at things. So it kind of allows me to know like what can I offer you as a supervisor? You know, I don’t, and I always, we have kind of a, my program, depending on the internship or postdoc has more of a clinical bent to it. And so if I’m looking at your CV and it is super heavy research,
You may not be the best fit for my program because you may be looking for a program that’s much more research-based versus like if you have more clinical work. I’m like, okay, that’s maybe more when I’m, it’s a better fit for my particular program. We do look at research though, because we do have, especially when we come to postdoc, our postdoctoral program is a little bit heavier in research than the internship side is. So I am looking to make sure, do you know the basics of research? Like are you,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (12:12)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (12:33)
have you presented at national presentations? Part of what I’m looking at on the CV as well is like, who is your professional identity? So I’m looking at the professional organizations. Like if you have professional organizations that are neuropsychology based, that kind of tells me a little bit more about your professional identity versus somebody who has zero neuropsych organizations. And again, they’re all child organizations or they’re all forensic organizations. It tells me a little bit about who do you see yourself as?
So I do spend a fair amount of time on the CV. One of the things I would recommend for people as well is a lot of times one of the downfalls I see on CVs is people will put too much information about the description of what their duties are or for like their practical placements. And it gets a little bit harder to read when you’re doing that. So one thing I encourage people to think about is
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (13:28)
Hmm
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (13:31)
maybe put no more than three bullet points. And this is something that when I’m editing my trainees CVs, this is the one area that I’m always like red slashing, you know, like let’s lower this down and make it more to the point. So I always tell my trainees, you know, the first bullet is what type of organization is this? So I want to know, is this a private practice? Is this academic medical center? Is this a VA? Is this a counseling center?
So what type of organization is this? Because I don’t know all the organizations in the United States. I’m not sure if this is a private hospital or a private practice. So tell me what type of organization it is. And then in that same sentence, what patient population were you serving? So was it adults from 18 to 99? Was it a much smaller band of thing?
And then like, you know, what was the level of diversity within those patients? So was it primarily men, primarily women, a combination of looking at people from ethnic differences, looking at language differences, like anything unique about that particular site, kind of in the like the, is the site? The second bullet I like to put on is like your duties. And so this is truly like, what did you do from a clinical perspective or a research perspective?
Like what did you do on that site? So, you know, for example, if you’re a practicum student, you may have done one assessment per week, one neuropsychological assessment per week in which you did. And I think from going from practicum to internship, it’s better to list out the things that you did. So I did the clinical interview, I tested the patient, I scored, I wrote the report, I gave feedback because that’s telling me how involved were you.
That changes from internship to postdoc because on internship, we kind of expect you to have done those things now. So it’s not uncommon for a practicum student to only do a portion of the evaluation. So maybe they didn’t do the clinical interview, but they did the testing, or maybe they did everything but the feedback session. So it kind of helps me know what pieces did you do, because that’s a lot more common on practicum side. But going from internship to postdoc,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:27)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (15:45)
we would have expected you to do the full evaluation. So now it’s okay to be like all aspects of the neuropsychological evaluation were complete. So it makes it more concise and succeed. And then my third bullet point I typically add is there, is there anything else that was, that made this experience special? So for example, did you get to go to brain cuttings? Did you get to do didactics with the internship or postdoc that you were kind of tied to for that practicum?
did you do research? So, you know, here’s my clinical duties. And then on this practicum, I also did this research that becomes especially important if there are things like grants and things like that involved. So I try to keep it to those three specific bullets and have that same level of structure throughout your CV. So it’s like, what type of organization is it? This was what I actually did. And this is kind of like the extra, if appropriate.
But I do find that if you can kind of keep that format, it’s so much easier to read as a training director. it gives you such more of a clear professional identity than when it’s kind of just this big conglomeration of a paragraph that kind of gets repetitive.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (16:39)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. There’s so much gold in everything you just said. want to go, I want to highlight a few of these things. One, absolutely agree brevity is king in pretty much any regard. love that we’re digging into the CV more than the other parts, or at least hitting this first, because like I said, I, you know, we’ll glance through the CV. But all these points are super important, but you’re right that it does kind of blend.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (17:04)
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (17:23)
together.
is part of this is that training directors are reading through, I mean, it easily dozens, I think in most cases, dozens, maybe even hundreds of applications. And even if we use little rubrics to screen them and whatnot, it’s still, it’s a lot and anything you can do to keep it short and punchy and make things stand out is going to go along.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (17:29)
⁓
Yes,
the clarity, because even thinking about just the organization, like if you are going to be a trainee, if you’re training somebody, you want somebody who can be organized, who can kind of put all those details. It just makes your life a lot of work.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (17:58)
Absolutely. Yeah, and it’s a transferable skill, you know, to writing reports and doing notes and, you know, all kinds of things, right? So if we, at least if I see that on a CV or maybe a sample report or a, you know, cover letter, that is a good sign.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (18:01)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, definitely.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:15)
The other part I wanted to just emphasize is like you said, this is a pretty small world and just I’m not sure where to take that, but just to emphasize that, you know, chances are wherever you’re applying, I mean, there’s like a 20 % chance, maybe a 50 % chance that the folks there are going to know someone from your application somehow or have a friend, you know, friend of a friend situation. And, you know,
that matters, that matters. Like we make a lot of calls behind the scenes to like unofficial references and you know, folks who may not have written letters, but you know, we’re still listed in the application as a supervisor, for example. So just know that as well.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (18:57)
And I think the longer that you stay in the field, know, again, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. So I literally have 20 years of trainees that are now working in all aspects of the United States that a lot of them I’m still in touch with on a regular basis. And that’s another reason why I love training so much is the fact that I do, it kind of builds your network of people throughout the whole country.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (19:20)
But it’s not uncommon during this season for my old trainees and friends that I know in the field to reach out to me being like, hey, I just want to put a bug in your ear about this particular person. They’re really good. But also sometimes I get the opposite of like, hey, I want to just give you a heads up. This is, this person may be coming your way and they’ve struggled a little bit in this area. And a lot of times in those situations, it’s not necessarily bad. It’s more like.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:20)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (19:48)
this is just something for you to keep in mind. So it is, think that’s the one thing I kind of going along with that. And it’s kind of a side tangent is knowing what a small world it is. You also don’t want to bad mouth sites to other sites. And so, and this has happened a lot of times and it used to happen a little bit more. I think when we were all together at INS on postdoc where you would hear, like people would hear
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:01)
Sure. Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (20:13)
like their interactions with people, but it is kind of funny where I know we’ve actually had people in the interview and I know we’re jumping ahead, but like in our interview or in our application materials, kind of say something that’s maybe not as great about another site to us as kind of an example of why they like our site. But we’re like, that’s not the same. That’s not hitting the same way that you think it is. ⁓ And same, we’ve heard like our friends have reached out to us. like, you won’t believe what they said about your site. And like, I’m sure.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:35)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (20:41)
You know, but just be mindful of, yeah, just be mindful of what you’re saying to other people.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:42)
Mm-hmm. Everybody talks.
Yes, yes, always a good reminder. So while we’re in this application process, I absolutely I want to talk about the cover letter. I’m curious what kind of a role the cover letter plays for you.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (20:51)
Yeah.
Yes.
So it’s kind of funny, the cover letter for us does not play as big of a role as the CV does. So I, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:07)
that’s fascinating. Okay, so we’re flip-flopped because I’m
like zoned in on the cover letter. But yeah, let me I want to hear your rationale and then I’ll share.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (21:13)
Yeah, so I
feel that.
over the, it feels to me when I’m reading the cover letters more times than not, it’s just a basically,
a kind of a last for words moment, but kind of like a dumping of your CV into another format. And so I don’t really get as much, I don’t find anything that’s new about you, honestly, from this cover letter versus when I’m looking at your CV. Every so often now, this is what will make a candidate stand out is if I know, when I read your cover letter, if it’s something that is,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:28)
Yeah, yeah.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (21:46)
different than what I’ve just looked over at your CV. Cause I will start with your CV. I, that’s the first thing I look at after like the APIC, you know, API stuff. I will look at your CV first and then I look at all your other materials. So if I’ve already looked at your CV and now I’m reading your cover letter and it is literally just repetition and I’ve learned nothing new about you, it doesn’t really do much. It’s like, okay. And it was just a step. You had to fill out a cover letter. The people who stand up
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:52)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (22:15)
part are the ones who have added some extra detail either about themselves or their training about that kind of tweaks that uniqueness about them. So for example, I feel like the cover letter becomes really important for people who’ve not been afforded the opportunity to do a lot of neuropsych in graduate school, but they’re interested in going in there. And this is where you’re going to tell me about what efforts have you made outside of what graduate school gave you.
that you did to prepare yourself for neuropsychology. So that’s the one time that I find that I feel like the cover letter is really helpful. For me is when somebody doesn’t have as strong of a CV from a neuropsych perspective, but now your cover letter, you’re telling me, yes, I acknowledge that I don’t have the same level of training, but I’ve done XYZ to try to get.
there so I’ll be prepared coming into internship. So I think that kind of shows me your initiative and your drive and like, what have you done? The other thing I’m looking at in your cover letter is two other things. One is just your quality of writing because you know, NeuroPsych, we do a lot of writing. ⁓ And so that kind of is one extra kind of work sample in some ways for me looking at like, do you use the proper grammar? Do you not overshare?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (23:24)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (23:34)
personal things about yourself, because we’ve had that happen where people overshare maybe personal items that maybe it’s not the best thing to start your application materials off with. You know, I think part of that cover letter as well is we tell our trainees is that neuropsych is not necessarily a touchy-feely part of psychology. And so sometimes
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (23:45)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (23:59)
like the creative writing aspect of things with a flowery writing doesn’t hit the same for neuropsychology as it may hit for other aspects of psychology. And so I feel like that’s sometimes when I’ve had bad cover letters, it’s because somebody I feel like has been, it’s more an exercise in creative writing. And I don’t even know how to like, I don’t want to give any like example, like specific examples, but it’s more,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (24:18)
Hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (24:23)
when they’ve used a lot of like metaphors or a lot of, or they’ve kind of delved too deeply into their personal lives. And that’s not the first thing I want to be knowing about you versus like, are we a good fit? Can you do the job? So those are kind of the three things I look at is, it a repetition of your CV or did I learn something new? Just your overall work quality related to your writing as well as like, what was the appropriate level of kind of like, what have you shared?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (24:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (24:52)
But I think it’s
so interesting that you, that’s what you’re focusing on more so is the cover letter. So I would love to hear your insights kind of about what you’re thinking of that.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:01)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think we’re actually pretty aligned as far as what we’re looking for. It’s just maybe different emphasis, you know, because I’m totally with you as far as treating it as another work sample and just how do you write and can you pay attention to detail? I mean, it’s like little things just to get very specific around like, do you spell our names correctly? You know, ⁓ do you use the right name? Yeah, grammar, punctuation, all that stuff. I’m also not a huge fan of the cover letter that is
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (25:19)
Did he use the right names?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:27)
just sort of regurgitating a CV, right, because we couldn’t find that elsewhere. What we really look for in the cover letter is a couple of things, like seeing that someone has actually researched our site a bit. I mean, the quickest way to my heart, so to speak, as a training director is like, you know, did you mention our values? Like, can I tell that you went on our website and looked at our practice values or like, you know, something specific about our practice that may not be listed in the.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (25:29)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:53)
you know, the APIC directory. So, you know, did you do your research? Do you, and this is mainly for internship, but, you know, do you express an interest in what we do, which is testing, right? So, if it’s a generic cover letter that talks about intervention and just sort of like becoming a better generalist, you know, I’m not super interested in that. And then the third thing we look for is do you have an interest in actually being here?
geographically. you know, if people talk about, I wanted to move to Colorado for a long time, or, you know, I’ve had family in that area, or we went skiing when I was a kid, you know, or something. Those are kind of the things. So it’s really like a chance to personalize the pitch, so to speak, and show us that, like, you actually care about our site. We’re not just a number, you know, or another site on the list that is getting the same, the same.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (26:42)
I definitely agree with those two. So yes, so this is one area I will say it becomes very clear whether or not you’ve read our brochure. We’ve had people talk about, they’ll write brochures about how excited they are to get involved in the EMU in WADA. And I’m like, that’s awesome. We don’t have that here. ⁓ Or like, that they’re really excited about the polytrauma team. Again, we don’t have, I mean, we have one, but it’s not available to trainees here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (27:01)
Yeah.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (27:09)
And so you want to make sure that when you are writing your cover letters, that you’re truly making sure that you’re talking about the right facility. ⁓ But that is like, I do see like when people have done their research, even about the staff. And so like one thing that does stick out positively is when you have mentioned something that our staff has been involved in research.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (27:17)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (27:33)
So like, you know, that they’ve looked at an article or they’ll bring up a particular measure that we’ve been working on or that actually does stand out. And even saying, you know, like we look at people who have sometimes, you know, it’s nice to see like if they have ties to Texas or ties to this area that maybe that is, you might, it kind of gives you a clue. Maybe that’s one factor that may.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (27:35)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (27:55)
kind of put you on their list a little bit higher because it’d be closer to family or more convenient to them. So yeah, we do take those things into account sometimes. I think that comes more into account for like, you know, what we, when we kind of have those like split decisions of like, these two people are so close in every other way. But maybe the person who is from Texas may have a better, like may have more reasons to come here versus the person who’s not.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (28:11)
Hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (28:24)
and who’s actually expressed like, want to come back home to Texas. Like that may tip the scales a little bit for some two people who are completely kind of equal in every other way. So yes, we will use the cover letter for that for sure. So guess I do use the cover letter more than I think, but.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (28:28)
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I’m right with you.
How about before we leave the application process? There’s so much we could dig into, but I definitely want to talk about interviewing. Before we leave though, I’m curious what you do with letters of recommendation and how big of a role those play.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (28:55)
Yes. So the one nice thing about being in this field, as long as I have been, is a lot of times you see the same letter writers over and over and over again, writing with people. So you kind of get an idea of how those letter writers write. And so that’s one thing is if we, if it’s a known letter writer to us, we kind of know like, this is a really good letter or okay, this is like their standard.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:05)
Hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (29:21)
letter or okay, maybe there’s a couple of red flags that they’re trying to subtly tell us because this is, you know, they usually write a page and a half and this is literally one paragraph ⁓ endorsement letter. And so part of it is like kind of knowing the players. So we do look to see who is writing the letters. I think that again, for our facility or like just my practice, like I feel like if you have somebody who is board certified to write at least one letter.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:32)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (29:49)
I really encourage you to do that. Because again, it just kind of shows like who the supervisors you’ve had are. With that, I’m looking at the one thing that it’s kind of been funny and even at a national level, I’ve been involved in a couple of things. So for example, on the national level, I was involved on the committee that was looking at the standard reference form for APIC. And one of the things that has been talked about
a lot at the national level is not everyone is the top 1%. But that is like one of the most common phrases you see in cover letters is this person is the top 1 % trainee I’ve had or top 10 % trainee I’ve had. And when you’re getting the same letter writer writing that this is the top 1 % student for 10 years in a row, you’re like, are they?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (30:37)
You’re right.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (30:38)
And so one thing that we try to, like, we, so we look at other things. So it’s not like, there’s not really a magic word that we’re looking for. It’s not magic sentence. It’s not like you have to have like this specific thing. We’re really looking at like, how much is the person also, their letter writer also talking about the applicant versus the site. So we see this happening a lot where a lot of the letter is talking more about
what the site does and not much about the applicant, that doesn’t stand out as much to us. It’s kind of like a standard letter, okay, they basically just like, yep, they came here versus somebody who is writing truly about the applicant, about like, how did they perform, maybe giving an example of how they stood out or at a demonstration about what they’ve accomplished. But the one thing that we actually appreciate as well is when there’s a balance.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (31:08)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (31:34)
of like, here’s what they’re great at, here’s what we are working on. Because everyone, I don’t care if you’ve been in the field for 20 years, everybody has growth edges. And so part of what I’m looking at for some of these letters of recommendation is one like kind of interpersonally, what are we looking at? And I feel like this has been helpful in cases where people, maybe their anxiety gets the best of them in the clinical interview, or maybe they just don’t, that’s just not their skill.
But if a letter writer is telling me, this person is a little bit maybe on the shy side or reserved side, but once they get to know you, it’s a whole different story. Once they get comfortable with their situation, it’s a whole different story. That means a lot to me when I hear those types of things, especially when I know I’m going to have like an hour interview and that’s the only other piece of information I have. So kind of get that interpersonal side of things. But also I’m looking at what do I have?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (32:30)
as a training director and as a supervisor that can help you. So if you’re coming here and you already know all the things and you’ve done all the things, like I want to make sure that you coming to me is going to actually be beneficial for you. And so that’s part of the reason why I don’t get upset. And I actually kind of look for recommendation letters that have kind of like, here’s what this person continues needs to continue to work on. ⁓ because again, you’re an intern, you’re a postdoc.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:55)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (32:59)
Even if you’re a staff member, there are things that you can work on. There’s always ways to improve. So that’s kind of some of the things I kind of think of when I’m looking at those recommendation letters.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (33:04)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would emphasize that for sure. And this is more speaking to letter writers, probably than the, you know, the applicants. But I feel like it’s the same as the cover letter and the descriptions in the CV. Like, it’s real easy for things to look pretty generic, you know? And I kind of expect, honestly, I I expect most, if not all applicants to be professional and kind.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (33:19)
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (33:39)
and respectful and have a good grasp of ethics, right? Like that’s just sort of like table stakes at this point. And so, right, right. Yeah. So I want the letter to do exactly what you say. Yeah. Like give me some like insight into their personality that is meaningful, you know, like so-and-so like told this amazing joke their very first day in the office and everybody was immediately endeared to them, you know, or so-and-so’s like.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (33:46)
Let’s go to one.
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (34:04)
quiet, but still waters run deep. You just have to get to know that, you know, or like something that gives me a sense of what this person is like. Stories go a long way. Examples, like you said, give me specific. And I know this is more work and I know we’re all writing a lot of letters in many cases. So I want to acknowledge that, but those are the things that really help.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (34:24)
And that’s
when I write those letters of recommendation for myself, cause I write a lot of letters of recommendation. That’s one thing I actually asked my trainees is like, what is one thing not neuropsychology, not psychology that you want people to know about you that I can write? And it may be something I know, it may be something I don’t know. And you know, part of it, it’s great. It’s actually kind of a great exercise to get to know your trainees a little bit better as well. Cause like I’ve had people, like I’ve had one that I remember that was talking about like,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (34:47)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (34:54)
Part of the reason why she feels she’s very resilient and that she’s kind of how she was looking at things is because she’s moved around so much in her life that starting over again doesn’t really throw her and that, you know, she’s really, she’s been through all, has lived in every part of the country at some phase in her life. And so, and like the lessons that she’s learned from that. And so I included that in her cover letter as kind of a unique aspect of.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (35:06)
Hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (35:20)
The fact that, sometimes when a trainee moves across the country, it’s, it’s hard. and it takes a little bit time to kind of get them used to that part of the country, to get them used to a new climate. Where for her, I mean, it was very true. She hit the ground running because she’s like, okay, cool. New environment. Let’s do this. This is the, I think it was like the 25th time she had moved in her life. I mean, it was crazy how many times this woman had moved, but yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (35:42)
gosh.
Yeah, yeah, these are great examples. Gosh, I feel like we could talk about applications forever, but we are moving into interview season and this is super important as well. So maybe we transition and start to talk about interviews here. I can start with a similar opening question, I suppose, which is, you know, some of the things, at least from your perspective, that make an interviewee really stand out in a good way.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (36:07)
Yeah. and it kind of goes back to even like we talked about the cover letters, but be prepared. Read about the program. I always encourage my trainees, even if you’ve read the program brochure before, take an hour before your interview and reread all your materials for that particular program, because that will help you get that program fresh on your mind. It’s going to help you.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:13)
Yeah.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (36:34)
answer questions better, it’s going to help you generate questions more. But I always tell people take 30 minutes an hour, whatever you need to truly prepare right before that interview by reading the brochures, going on the internet, you know, looking at their website, ⁓ because it’s very clear in the interview who knows our program and who doesn’t. And those who know our program and can speak about
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:52)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (37:00)
the details of the program really are more like stand out in a positive way versus people who are like when we ask you, why do you want to come to our program? And their answer is like, you know, it’s because it’s a VA or it’s because I want to do neuropsychology. that’s, mean, okay, those are not bad. mean, yeah, but at the same time, like there’s a lot of VA’s.
There’s a lot of people who practice neuropsychology in this world. So why this particular one? And so I think that’s kind of what I, one of my first things I think of is how prepared you are. The other thing too, and I think this is coming more so true now that we’ve really switched to a virtual world versus in-person interviews that we had for so long, but think about, you know, just your professional identity that you’re trying to.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (37:25)
Sure.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (37:51)
display. So you want to make sure that when you are doing a virtual interview, that you’re in a quiet space, that you have internet connection, that you’ve tested your speakers, you’ve tested your mics, and that you’re dressed appropriately. I mean, you don’t have stand up. You can be wearing shorts. I don’t care. But like, or, know, like lounging pants. I don’t care. Yoga pants are great. But like from the top up, like you need to look professional. So it has kind of been surprised me in the last couple of years that
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (38:12)
You
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (38:19)
People will not dress up for interviews. And again, this is a professional identity thing. So looking professional, whatever that means for you, I think is important because this is the only kind of moment that the people who are ranking you are gonna have for you. And so that stuff does really stand out sometimes.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (38:41)
Yeah, it does. does. I don’t know. There’s a lot that’s kind of out of people’s control ⁓ and little things. Sure. And, you know, try to, you know, get in front of a window and have decent lighting and, you know, a background that looks reasonable. It doesn’t have to be, you know, a well-crafted professional office setting or anything like that. But, you know, just make sure there’s no, like, psychedelic mushroom.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (38:46)
Mm-hmm. yeah. We understand that.
no.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (39:06)
poster in the background or something, you know, even though, you know, we could probably talk about that on the interview, but still.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (39:06)
chips.
Yeah, like
we actually had somebody do an interview in their bathroom. Don’t do that. Like they were really was like their mirror was behind them. I’m like, don’t do that. Yeah. So just be mindful. Be mindful of what’s in your background.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (39:16)
Ooh, yeah.
Yeah, little things. Sure.
Yes, absolutely. So being prepared, knowing the site, appearing professional, of course. Are there other sort of key takeaways or positive aspects for interviewees?
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (39:34)
Yes.
I would say one thing that I was told when I was going through this process and I had so many positive compliments when I was going through the process as the applicant was to come up with a list of questions for the site. Some of these can be generic questions that are just more general and some of them need to be more specific but literally have a piece of paper or something on your computer that is truly listed out.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (39:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (40:03)
And then what I did in my interviews was I’d like, I, you know, I want to make sure that I remember all my questions. So I wrote my questions down. Is it okay if I look at this piece of paper that has my questions on it? And every single person I asked that was like, oh my gosh, that’s great. I’m that, you know, please look at the list. Cause I think one, it shows me, it shows the person that I was preparing for the interview.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (40:15)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (40:26)
and that the questions I had were kind of a combination of both like general questions, but also like site specific questions. So I will say that the biggest kind of interview buzzkill is when we say, what questions do you have? And the person says, none. If you don’t have any questions, you’re not coming here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (40:43)
It’s terrible. Don’t do that.
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Even just, I mean, make something up, know, find something in the moment to ask about the culture. That’s like an easy, just what’s the culture like there, you know? ⁓ Find something. Yeah, zero questions is a huge turnoff in interviews for us as well.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (40:54)
Yes.
Exactly.
And we always tell our trainees to like, it’s okay if you ask different people the same question, because you might actually get a different response. Um, and so especially if you are having interviews that have like, okay, you’re going to meet with these people for 30 minutes and you’re going to meet with these people for 30 minutes, you’re going to meet with the trainees for 30 minutes, or maybe it’s on different days and you’re meeting with different people, ask the people the same questions. You don’t have to come up with different questions for every person.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (41:16)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (41:36)
I did this when I was going through the process and I was actually kind of surprised what the various answers actually were for some sites because the trainees would tell me something very different than staff. And even there’s been a couple of sites that I interviewed with where the staff had different responses. versus, one thing as a trainee, I was looking at was the consistency of answers I was getting. If the staff are telling you one thing about a question and then the trainees come back, they’re like, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (41:43)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (42:02)
and they tell you the exact same thing, in my head, that means it’s true and it’s consistent. And so I have more faith that whatever experience or whatever that thing I was looking for in that question is actually gonna be true.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (42:15)
That’s such a good point. Yeah. Are there… I’m curious about your perspective on sort of personal sharing versus professional content in an interview. This feels like a tricky balance.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (42:27)
It is. And I think, you know, we as staff really can’t ask a lot of personal questions. ⁓ But it is okay for trainees if they want to, to ask a personal question, especially if that personal question is really going to either become that they are maybe worried about that personal issue being part of
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (42:35)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (42:54)
their experience in the program. Like if it’s going to impact some portion of the program, I think it’s more than okay to ask. Or, you a lot of times the personal questions, kind of like what your question about the culture is, you can kind of get some of that answer by asking more broad question, like what is the culture? And maybe that personal question you were going to ask was already answered by the culture question.
And so kind of starting more broad and then going more specifically, I think is good. I do think it’s one of those tricky things. You don’t want to overshare ⁓ different things. And so I think that sometimes, you know, the question of like, what brought you to this field? A lot of times, I mean, it very well may be that you had a personal event happen to you or a personal story that really drew you to neuropsychology.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (43:29)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (43:46)
And I think it’s okay to discuss that, but I feel like if you have that personal story, you also need to bring it back to some of the science and the professionalism of the field. So it can’t all be personal. ⁓ And you don’t want to go too far down into that personal rabbit hole of why you want to go into neuropsychology. So it is, it’s a really tricky kind of balance of things.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (44:01)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I appreciate you articulating that. I struggle with like how to explain it to people and it’s hard, know, like you want, or we anyway want to know who we’re talking to and try to get some sense of like who we’re going to be working with on a deeper level. And there is certainly a line and a way to do that appropriately and share more about yourself.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (44:36)
Yeah,
think like one, I know one example that kind of stuck out to me was it was a person who, their brother had a brain injury at a young age and they witnessed this brain injury. They witnessed him being in the hospital and that really kind of sparked this person’s interest into the field of neuropsychology. But what really
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (44:48)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (45:00)
got them motivated and exciting was more so when they got into college and they started taking neuroscience classes. And then they started kind of putting the pieces together for other pieces of research. So I mean, yes, they started off with a very like brief, like, yes, my brother had a brain injury at a young age. I watched him go through it, but it wasn’t like, let me tell you the gory details. Let me tell you my own personal reactions.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (45:26)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (45:26)
let me
not tell you. So it was kind of like, yes, this happened. It introduced me to it, but this is also how I became more invested in it.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (45:35)
Yeah, that’s a great example. Yeah, I love that. And I always want to go back and highlight something you said about, know, we as interviewers cannot really ask like deeply personal questions, right? Like we can’t really ask, do you have kids and are you married or partnered or what? You know, we can’t do that. And so, you know, my advice to interviewees is whatever you’re comfortable sharing. So I would love
for you to find ways to work that into other answers. know, like when I was listening to X podcasts the other day, you know, like give me some insight into your personality or, you know, like my dog and I, we were hiking the other day and I, you know, whatever. So, you know, try to infuse some of that into the interview, just knowing that we can’t explicitly ask all the things we may want to.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (46:11)
Definitely.
Definitely.
I did that when I was, so my husband is ex-military and my family is, a lot of my family members are military and career military. And so I brought that in as when I was an applicant, when I was applying to various VA medical centers was I brought in the fact that my husband is ex-military. I come from a long history of people who have been heavily involved in the military. So I feel very comfortable around the military culture.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:25)
Mmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (46:47)
And that was part of the reason why it drew me to kind of the mission of VA and being able to work for here. that, mean, I was able to kind of take that bit of personal information and bring it back into a very real way of why I wanted to train here and work here. But it wasn’t overly emotive. It wasn’t overly the focus of things. ⁓ So I think, you know, kind of finding ways to like interject little pieces of yourself, I think is helpful.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:07)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love them. I love them. Now, we have started doing a vignette in our interviews. Do you all do anything like that? Kind of a clinical component? Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (47:21)
We do. Yes, we do.
And so I think that’s pretty common practice. And so one thing that we will do is we also, and this is kind of part of the vignette is a lot of times we’ll let you choose, we’ll only, you know, we’ll have a young person and an older adult and you get to choose which way you want to go. And then it tends to be one of those things where we continue to kind of build on that vignette related to different aspects of
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:26)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (47:50)
what we’re thinking about. One thing I would recommend for people is to be mindful about what the actual question is regarding the vignette. Because I know being given a vignette is very anxiety producing to people. And I think your mind just kind of goes blank and you’re like, vignette. And then it’s like, let me verbally vomit everything I’m thinking about this answer onto you versus answering the actual question.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:04)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (48:14)
And so for us, you know, I think about like, what is the actual question we’re asking you? So for example, if I’m asking you what parts of the clinical interview would you want to know, what domains of the clinical interview would you want to know about to help you with this case? I’m not asking you about testing. I’m not asking you about other things related to scores or what test. I’m only asking you about the clinical interview. And it’s okay to repeat questions. I encourage you.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:38)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (48:41)
if you are somebody who runs anxious and I run anxious, so I practice this myself, is that if I, if when I’m in those situations, I will say, okay, so you’re, I just want to make sure you’re asking just about the clinical interview, correct? Because that kind of helps center yourself. It helps you kind of focus on what aspect of that vignette they’re actually asking you about. Because I do find the vignettes is where people kind of go off the rails a little bit. And then their anxiety sparks and
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:45)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Sure.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (49:11)
things go down versus people who do really well are the ones who kind of take a step and really think about what am I actually being asked?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (49:18)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. love that. Something that we see, I’m guessing you all see this too, part of our venue, you know, we give scores and ask people to look through the score. And many times folks may not be familiar with that specific test or measure. rather than saying, I don’t know, you know, or I don’t know that measure, it’s really cool for us. Like, take a guess, you know, like from what I know about this, whatever.
the brief, you know, this is what it’s looking at and you know, I know a T score means this. And so I guess it means, you know, like take a stab at it, like show us your reasoning versus just dropping it entirely and moving on to something.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (49:53)
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, if you don’t know the title of a test, I mean, that’s one thing. Like you can be like, know, I’ve never been, I’ve not seen this test yet and that’s fine. But if you recognize the test and you’re like, I know this is a test about language. I know this is a test of something. And you know, I know a T of 50 is average. So I’m guessing this would be, you know, below average if it’s T of 43 or whatever. ⁓ That’s…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (50:21)
goes a lot more far. That goes pretty far on those things. And it’s also, think for me, it’s okay if you say you don’t know, because again, I’m looking at what can I teach you? And so I think you saying, being honest and saying, you know, I’m not really sure, but this is what I’m thinking, that’s gonna go a long way with me in the interview.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:30)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Are there other do’s or don’ts from interviews that come to mind before we…
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (50:46)
Yeah,
I have a couple. One is I always tell people, this kind of goes along with that vignette question, but there’s a lot of sites that will have a question similar to tell me about an assessment case that was unique or challenging for you. That is a very common question and that’s something that I always tell people to have, like that answer should be in your back pocket. ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:53)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (51:09)
but you also want to be mindful of the time of your interview. you telling about a case, if you really went in detail, it could take 30 minutes, right? So you really want to be very mindful about how you present the case. So starting off with like, this was the referral. This was the presenting problem. This is what the testing, this is, know, like here’s like, think about your, I always tell people, think about the summary of your report.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:20)
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (51:39)
It should be like,
here was the kind of complaint, here was how they were doing functionally, here was their one sentence about a psychiatric history, here is the one sentence about the medical events, here’s a sentence about any psychosocial abnormalities or things that you need to know about a case, one statement about behavior observations, here is the one sentence summary of testing, and this was my conclusion. And then at the end, what made this…
case stand out to me was XYZ. So if you can take that format, that’s going to give you maybe a four to five minute answer. It’s going to show the examiner that you can think about a case in a very sequential, logical manner, and it’s going to show them, okay, I’ve took information from the clinical interview, from the testing and combined, this was my results. And that’s what we do as a job.
So I think being able to have that kind of vignette, your own personal vignette in your back pocket that you’ve practiced with somebody else or even just in the mirror, I think that really helps people stand out. You can tell the people who are prepared for that question versus like, oh gosh, let me think of a case. And then it’s just like kind of dead silence for a while. And so, because you know, that’s gonna be a question that a lot of people
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:58)
Yeah, yeah.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (53:03)
ask. That’s, think one of my, that my biggest pieces of advice that I give people is just have that vignette. And then one of my other big kind of ideas that I’ve had for people is one is a lot of cases, a lot of places are going to ask, you know, what are your strengths? What are your areas of growth? And that’s pretty, you know, standard.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:04)
for sure.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (53:29)
But what sets people apart is when you can actually show evidence of what that strength is. So instead of saying, my strength is time management, or no, actually let’s say that’s not typically an area of strength for people. Let’s say my area of strength is like report writing. And I know this is an area of strength for me because
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:37)
Hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (53:58)
Over the last year, the number of edits I’ve had on my reports has significantly dropped and I’ve been given direct feedback about how I have become more sequential and logical in my outline of my report. So you’re saying this is my strength and this is how I can prove my strength. Same thing for my growth edges is like, this is, know, time management is an area of growth, which honestly, it’s still an area of growth for me. But,
And this is what I’ve done so far to rectify that. So you’re showing that, you have awareness of what your growth areas are, but you’ve also taken steps to help correct some of that area. So again, you’re kind of proving what your responses are. I find like if somebody can do it in that fashion, it really kind of lands much more positively than people who are just going to say,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:29)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (54:51)
just like one general statement. I also encourage people not to say that developing therapeutic rapport is their strengths. At this point in your career in graduate school, I would just expect if you are a psychologist, if you’re a neuropsychologist, you should be able to generate rapport with people. So I feel like that’s really like a non-response when somebody tells me that their area strength is developing rapport.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:18)
Yeah, agreed.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (55:18)
except maybe
the practicum level. The practicum level, I’ll take it, but like internship or postdoc level, I really don’t want to hear that.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, you need specifics that go beyond. Again, I’ll use that term table stakes. It’s like this is just kind of part of the deal to get where we’re at. yeah. These are great. These are great. I do want to shift, I guess, to bigger picture, maybe looking ahead kinds of questions. I’ll start with more of a philosophical question, I suppose. But I’m curious where you see
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (55:31)
Yes. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:48)
the selection process heading in the future, given that we are doing more virtual interviewing. certainly, I’m going to pin the AI question so we can hold that. We’ll hold that for just a minute. let’s just generally, where do you see the selection process heading, especially with more virtual work and other shifts and competencies and things like
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (56:00)
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that a lot of us struggled during COVID with the transition from in-person interviews to virtual interviews. There’s a lot of, I think virtual interviews does equal the playing field. It doesn’t cause the trainees to spend a lot of money on travel because it’s expensive. Like when I had to go through it, I was spending a lot of money that I didn’t have.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (56:33)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (56:39)
on just trying to travel and get to places. That’s actually kind of why I liked INS because it was one location, multiple sites, but you still got that in-person experience. I feel like that’s one of the struggles is, and this may just be me being now in old school, I still feel like you get a lot more information both ways, in-person versus virtual. ⁓
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (56:39)
Right?
Ha
I agree.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (57:05)
but that’s just not where the field is headed for some very good reasons. And so trying to find things from a virtual standpoint that can still make you feel like, okay, I walked out of that interview with a good sense of who these people are, or if this was a good fit. Because again, the interview is about fit. Usually when we’ve reached the interview stage, we’re no longer looking at your application materials.
I mean, we’re not, mean, your application materials got you to the interview point, but now we’re looking at you more as a holistic person about like, how well are we going to be able to work with you? Are we going to be able to give you what you need? How good of a fit is this interpersonally and clinically and research wise? And so I think that’s the struggle right now with some virtual interviews.
is just trying to figure out how that is. Because there’s a lot of things you get when you’re standing in front of somebody in person that you may not get through virtual interviews. So I think that’s, there’s good and there’s bad to it. But trying to find the solution of how do we get to that point. I think that’s kind of the million dollar question.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (58:19)
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t have a great answer either. I do agree. Access is super important and I’d love the idea of interns not going into debt to do these interviews, right? Interns and post-docs. mean, that’s a lot of money, especially now, you know, flying and hotels and whatnot. I mean, it is a lot. And there’s, there is something pretty important about being in the same room with someone and just getting that feel. So to that end, mean, there, I think there are
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (58:29)
right.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (58:47)
are some things online as far as like how to do virtual meetings, right? So, I mean, just for me personally, I have to be mindful of my face. You know, I’m like, make the facial expression that matches what you’re feeling, Jeremy, you know, because people, you know, you lose those layers of nonverbal communication, right? And so like be a little more animated, maybe like speak a little more clearly. You know, you can’t use proximity and body like.
stuff like that. even simple things like that just to keep in mind on these interviews.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (59:18)
Yeah.
And I think part of one thing that, you know, I was thinking back to when I was, especially for internship, because, postdocs, you don’t get it because you’re all at INS, at least I was. But like for internships, when you were going in person, it wasn’t just meeting the people you’d be working with, but it was actually seeing the site that you’d be at. So like where in the city is this place? What does the facility look like? What does, you know, like, is there like…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (59:36)
Sure.
Mm-hmm. What’s the parking? Uh-huh.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (59:45)
Is there a coffee shop there? mean, like there’s all sorts of other things that go along in that in-person experience that you kind of miss doing virtual. So I think, you know, one thing is that a lot of sites are kind of trying to come up with creative ways of how do we show the facility? How do we show you this is where you will be sitting? This is, you know, where we live. Like, and even like the city itself, like I remember going to some cities that I was like, can I really live here?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (59:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mm hmm. I love that.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:00:13)
And then I
got there, I’m like, I’m actually kind of impressed with that city. But I would never have known that had I not gone to the city to go interview. And so trying to find other ways even about either like demystifying the city that you’re living in or trying to show like, what else can you, like, for example, what is there to do in Dallas? There’s actually a lot of things to do here. And I think that sometimes, you know, Texas and Dallas gets a bad rap for things that they,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:00:17)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:00:38)
maybe is not necessarily true for different parts of Texas. So I think that is something that we have to come and come up with with our interviews and our process about how do we share what it’s personally like to live where we live in an interview when you don’t have that person coming to visit you.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:00:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah, I’m going to be thinking about that too. We try to do some little things, but it could be much more clear, think, and comprehensive. If you can afford it, like doing a video of the office space or a little tour and things
Yeah, I’ll be thinking about that and hopefully other training directors will as well.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:01:19)
Yeah, I
know like one thing that we did is that we actually have like a Dallas, fun things to do in Dallas sheet that we send our applicants. It’s like, these are all the different festivals that come through. Here’s like some unique things about Dallas that you may not realize and outdoor things that you can do. all the, like some things you may not realize that we offer.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:01:29)
yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that’s fantastic. So now I’m going to circle back to the AI question. How are you all approaching this in interviews, if at all?
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:01:54)
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:01:55)
And applications actually, that comes into play there.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:01:57)
That, yeah, that is,
think, at a national level is what the question is right now. ⁓ And one thing is partly related to the interaction you’re having on screen is that it is actually kind of obvious when you’re reading something on screen. And so you’re also looking at the delay that somebody has.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:02:03)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:02:21)
And so
I know there are different sites where you could literally like type a question in or they can listen to the question and they kind of generate a response. ⁓ But I think part of that too is if you are interviewing with somebody trying to have that more looking to see like how natural of a reaction is the person responding versus like you can tell that the person is reading something on screen. But I think the
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:02:29)
sure.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:02:49)
It’s such a new area that it’s hard to really give like strong advice or good advice or like, you know, the do’s and don’ts of it.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:02:51)
No.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:02:59)
because I think some of it’s still the unknown, but I that’s kind of at the national level, things that we people have talked about is just even looking at the body language of like, is the person like looking over at their screen on the other side versus looking at you when you’re talking, or is it clear that they’re typing something as you’re talking with them, or is there a delay in responses between what the question is and what the answer is?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:03:07)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Sure, sure. This is an interesting angle. I wasn’t even really thinking of it in terms of using AI during the interview to cheat, so to speak, or augment their performance. I was even thinking more in terms of competence and how they’re integrating it in clinical work. And if that’s even a door that you’re opening in VA’s and medical settings, we’re certainly asking about it.
here in our practice. just assume everyone is using AI and in some form or fashion. So yeah, I’m thinking about it from that angle too.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:03:59)
Yeah, don’t, I know we have kind of like the co-pilot chat, GBT options available, but it’s still pretty much in their infancy stage. So I do feel like a lot of times people will come in like our, and I think this is one those generational differences as well, where it really, really becomes prominent is that we have a lot of trainees coming in with a lot more experience on AI than the staff have.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:04:04)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:04:26)
And so trying just to even like catch up right now, I think is where a lot of the staff is, is trying to figure out how do we use this, how do we use it appropriately? And what is this going to look for our field? Like I know we know there’s a lot of research already out there about machine learning. How do we incorporate that in our assessments? Looking at…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:04:36)
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:04:46)
how do we use AI in report writing? Because there probably is some very useful tools in report writing and helping with time management, helping with conciseness, but also making sure that it’s not taking over critical thinking on an individual level. And I think that’s where I struggle with it sometimes as well.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:04:51)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:05:07)
And I think you can kind of tell, even with some work samples, I know there has been at a national level and local level, sometimes we’re like, was this AI driven product or is this an actual product? And it’s really hard to tell.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:05:19)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was really on the lookout for that in the applications and you know, saw some examples certainly in the applicant materials, but also in the letters of recommendation, which is kind of funny, you know, but it is, it’s kind of everywhere. We’re not, we haven’t gone super formal with it, but we are introducing a question in our interviews just around like, what’s your philosophy on using AI and assessment and what experience do you have or not have? Just to kind of see where people’s heads are at and
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:05:53)
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. Yeah, I think it’s a great question. We haven’t gone to that level yet, but I mean, I may be stealing that from you.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:05:54)
You
and their experience.
That’s totally fair. Yeah. Yeah. I’m totally open to that. Like I said, I just assume everybody’s doing it and but nobody’s really talking about it, you know, because the philosophy is so different at different training sites. Like some are going kind of like a no. What’s the phrase? No zero tolerance. Like you can’t use it at all. Some are a little more supportive. Some just aren’t saying anything. So it’s kind of wild west. So we’re just like running into the fire and assuming everybody’s doing it.
may as well just talk about it.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:06:31)
Yeah. And I think, I think a lot of it is what resources the actual facilities have. Cause I think that’s, you’re going to have a wide variety of places where some are like full into AI and have the opportunities to do it where others, they just don’t have the, the infrastructure to use AI or there’s firewalls that don’t let you use the AI. So I think that it also kind of depends on where you’ve trained at and where you’re working at.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:06:36)
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Definitely. Yeah, I mean, know y’all as medical centers are a lot more locked down than private practice, for example. There’s a lot more red tape to even get access to those tools.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:07:04)
yeah.
Yeah, mean, we don’t like just the level of AI that we have is not the same as outside just because of the infrastructure and the firewalls that go along with medical centers.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:07:15)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. This has been a super fruitful conversation. I love talking about this and it’s very top of mind right now, obviously. Anything that we could close with a quick, like, absolutely do this in your application or interview. Absolutely don’t do this. Quick takeaways. People love that stuff.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:07:26)
I do.
Like the two things that I would say is one,
be nice to everyone that you’re interacting with in this process. Because I know like office managers or secretaries who are helping coordinate things, they talk to us. So they’ve had a negative interaction with the trainee, ⁓ they will tell us and it does play a factor in how we view that person. So again, it sounds so simple, but
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:07:45)
Yes, yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:08:06)
you’d be surprised that it’s not universally done. ⁓ But be kind, be professional to everyone in the process that you are interacting with because you don’t know how much weight that person actually holds. And that includes the trainees. The trainees will tell you the real dirt of a place. They will tell you the truth, but also they will tell us their own thoughts.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:08:10)
Mm-hmm.
sure.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:08:32)
and so I think a lot of times, you know, like the trainees are not going to be ranking people. They’re not going to be doing the things that are like what the staff do, but at same time, I can tell you there have been multiple instances where our postdoc had a negative interaction with an applicant and that applicant dropped in our rankings because of the interaction they had with our postdoc. And so again, just be mindful. Like the trainees are wonderful. They are like, they will tell you the actual truth.
listen to what they have to say, but also know that they’re going to tell us, you know, if you’re having, if they have a big reaction to you for whatever reason, they’re going to tell us most, most times and not, that’s kind of like my biggest one is just be kind. The other thing too, is be yourself. Like this is about fit. And so there is no magic.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:09:11)
Mm-hmm. Definitely. Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:09:28)
formula of how to act in an interview. There’s no magic formula of like, this is what I have to say exactly. You don’t want to sound overly prepared. What people are looking for is your own personal identity. Are we going to like you in two years after postdoc is done? Are we going to like you a year later after internship? It’s so much about fit.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:09:45)
Yes.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:09:51)
So be yourself as much as you can and ask the questions. Those are the big ones. Ask questions, be yourself, and be nice to others.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:10:00)
I love both of those things. Yeah, I’m right with you. I can tell a quick story just about like being kind and courteous. And this is, you know, an artifact maybe of when we were doing in-person interviews or orientations, right? But there was a year, this is, I don’t know, six or seven years ago, something like that. And one of the candidates I noticed after our lunch went around and asked folks if they were done and gathered their plates and, you know, took them to the trash or whatever.
And that’s just like one of those very small things. I was like, I’m paying attention to this. Like this person is thinking of others, they’re kind, they’re courteous, know, little things like that just go a long way. And then I was going to say something else about the, oh yeah, being yourself. Again, I could not agree with that more. And people, you know, are concerned about like what that means and how much of yourself to reveal and whatever, but I’ll just.
I will say I’ve written the phrase endearingly quirky so many times over the years on interview notes and the, know, whatever you might be, that’s what we want to see because we’re going to be spending a lot of time together. And it goes, no, no.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:11:13)
Exactly. And quirky is not bad. I mean, I love endearingly
quirkily. That’s great. Like, yeah, I think everybody in the field is a little quirky, you know, to get in this area, but it’s, yeah, we want to see who you really are.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:11:20)
Absolutely. ⁓
Absolutely, that’s what, yeah, nothing either way on being quirky or not. I think I’m probably pretty quirky, you know, it’s just like people think they have to like hide or mask or whatever. You know, we don’t, we don’t want to talk to robots. You know, I want an endearingly quirky person, you know.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:11:43)
No, no. And it is funny because like
every, like, I feel like it’s happened so many times where we’ve actually like, you know, we’ve been interviewing somebody, we’re like, okay, I’m not quite sure how their personality is going to fit in here. And then they get here and they’re like a different person than who they were on the interview. And I think it’s the anxiety piece that, I mean, it’s going to be hard to, everybody’s going to be anxious to some degree.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:11:59)
Yeah.
Yeah. Sure.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:12:12)
I know it can be hard to control the anxiety at times, but it’s okay even like to say, I’m anxious. It’s okay to say that in an interview ⁓ because it shows that you have insight. And then it also is kind of like, okay, well we can break the ice a little bit more and get to really know you now. ⁓ That’s making assumptions about something else.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:12:19)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. That in itself is endearing.
Yeah. Yeah. I’m right with you. This has been a great conversation. feel like we could talk for two more hours probably about all of this, but yeah, I’m super grateful for your time. Thanks for being here, Andrea. And I hope that folks are taking away a lot of different things from our conversation.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:12:39)
I know.
Thanks so much for inviting me. really enjoyed talking with you about this really fun topic.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:12:54)
Good, good. Yeah, same, same and good luck in your interviews.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:12:58)
Thank you, you too. We wish, I want to wish everybody good luck in the interviews for even the applicants who are listening to this, that I will tell you, and this is why I tell everybody, you will land where you need to land. Like there is a reason it will all work out. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I have so many experiences of it will work out. It doesn’t feel like it sometimes in the process, it’s stressful, but you will end up where you need to end up. It’s just a weird.
fact of the universe. So don’t stress too much.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (1:13:29)
Mm-hmm. Well said.
Yes. Yes. Well said. That’s a great note to end on. Thanks again.
Andrea Zartman, PhD, ABPP-CN (1:13:36)
All right, thank you.
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