Nursing · graduate programs + RN jobs
The nursing interview you can't rehearse with a friend.
Graduate nursing selection comes down to a handful of behavioural questions answered out loud, often into a camera with nobody on the other end and a timer running. It is the one part of the application that notes and a polished CV cannot carry — and the one part almost nobody practises properly, because practising it properly means speaking, being interrupted, and being told where the answer thinned out.
Two very different interviews, depending where you apply
In Victoria the graduate round is a single recorded video interview: questions appear on screen, you get a couple of minutes to read and think and a couple of minutes to answer, there is no interviewer, and the one recording is sent to every health service on your preference list. In New South Wales the state runs a live interview period instead, where applicants are interviewed across a few concentrated weeks after invitations go out. Same profession, same month, completely different skill: one rewards composure alone against a timer, the other rewards handling a panel that follows up.
What they actually ask
Both formats lean on behavioural questions answered in STAR shape — a situation from placement, what you did, how it turned out. Expect the staples: why nursing, what a placement taught you, a time you disagreed with a colleague, a patient deteriorating and who you escalated to, a medication error and what you did next, and how you handle the workload. Clinical knowledge matters less than judgment, honesty about limits, and whether you escalate. Panels are listening for someone safe to put on a ward in February.
The calendar runs a year ahead of the job
This is the part that catches people out. For a February start, most states open applications around the middle of the preceding year — roughly June — with interview invitations and interviews through July and August, and offers landing around September. So the preparation window that matters is the back half of the year before you start, not the summer before. Dates move each year and differ by state and health service, so check the current handbook for the round you are applying to rather than trusting last year's.
Why spoken practice, specifically
A recorded video interview is the hardest format to prepare for alone, because the thing that goes wrong — freezing, rambling to fill two minutes, answering the question you wish you had been asked — only shows up when you are actually speaking under a clock. Reading model answers does not surface it. Interview Station already does exactly this for medical candidates: timed stations, spoken out loud, an interviewer that probes past the rehearsed answer, and written marking afterwards on communication, reasoning, empathy, integrity and insight. The nursing version would be the same machinery with nursing scenarios and nursing panels.
What it would cost
A single mock nursing interview with a coach in Australia generally runs somewhere between about $150 and $385. Interview Station is $29 a month, month to month, for repeated stations rather than one session — because interview preparation is a season, not a lifestyle, and most people subscribe for the month or two before their interview and cancel when it is done. That is the price the nursing version would launch at.
The fine print, up front
Every scenario is an AI-generated original — never any health service's actual interview questions, and never any university's material. Interview Station is an independent practice tool, affiliated with no health service, university or regulator, and promises no job outcome. Nursing stations are not built yet; this page exists to find out whether they should be.
In the meantime, the machinery is live for medical candidates — see how the stations work, or read the guides to how panel interviews run.