May/June 2026 Issue

Rad Tech Education: On the Hot Seat
By Michael Grady
Radiology Today
Vol. 27 No. 3 P. 32

Rad Tech Program Prepares Graduates With Mock Job Interviews

Can you tell us your greatest professional achievement?” Sophia, a radiology student, is a little surprised by the question. So far, she’s done everything right. Direct eye contact with the panel, positive demeanor, succinct answers about work experience and technical proficiency. But now the question is much more personal. She asks for a moment, then draws a breath.

“It was a pelvis,” she tells them. “A construction worker who’d fallen. He needed surgery, or else he wouldn’t be able to walk again.” She paints a chaotic scene: a man in severe pain, a surgeon needing a difficult X-ray angle, and the challenge of getting the image they need. “I feel I did a really good job, asking what he needed to see and then moving the C-arm as needed.” It’s a good answer. But she gets no time to savor it.

“Now,” a panelist says, “please tell us about a time you made a mistake.”

One Final Hurdle
Yavapai College (YC), a community college in Arizona, puts its students through a rigorous, two-year-program in pursuit of their Radiologic Technology degree. Students bond over long shifts, complicated equipment, difficult patients, and 1,800 service hours before taking their board certifications. Then, before they leave, the program coaches them over a challenging final hurdle: Getting a job.

“We do mock interviews in the students’ final semester,” radiology program director Tracy Rogers explains. The department creates a fictional health care provider that the rad tech students apply to, with query letter and résumé. “Then we set up the panel interview,” Rogers says. Each student sits before a “hiring panel” from a hypothetical health care company, answering questions about their résumé, and describing their work and aspirations in an effort to convince their inquisitors they are right for the job.

“We bring local health care managers in, to be part of the interview,” Rogers says. “It gives hiring managers the opportunity to meet students, but it also helps students work out the nerves of when they have to do real interviews.”

The mock interviews run at a crisp and formal pace. The panel reviews each résumé and query letter before the student/candidate takes the chair.

“Katherine Anderson, from YC’s Regional Economic Development Center, gave a presentation to the students last week about cover letters, résumés, and interview tips,” says radiology professor Emily Underwood. “Today, they come in and do the interview for a grade. And at the end we give them feedback.”

Each interview runs about 20 minutes until Underwood calls “cut!” Then the room relaxes, and the panel does a “round robin” wrap-up, telling each student what they liked—and what they didn’t—about the impression they made.

“I think you did great,” Underwood tells Sophia. “I liked when I asked you about the patient care question and you said, ‘I’m going to think about it a second.’ That’s a tough question.” The rest of the panel chimes in. Sophia’s answer about collaboration in trauma situations was perfect. The panel appreciates honest answers over corporate-speak. Sophia’s candor about a prior mistake demonstrates accountability and a willingness to learn from the experience.

“I think the only thing for you to work on would be more specifics,” one panelist says. Sophia is encouraged to bring more examples—like the construction worker story—to illustrate her points. “If you’re pulling from a story, use that story as your answer,” the panelist continues. “It shows that you’re learning from an actual experience instead of just saying words you think the managers like to hear.”

Making Your Case
This is the second year of mock interviews. With a 100% job placement rate, the program may not seem to need it. “A lot of it came from feedback,” Underwood says. “We’d interview students when they graduate and you could just tell they weren’t really prepared.” Four- and five-page résumés were common. Many candidates had never interviewed before—or at least not in a long time. “So,” she says, “Tracy came up with the idea of doing mock interviews to help prepare the students for the real world.”

The students found the interviews useful, if not always comfortable. “I’m the oldest student in this class so I’ve been on quite a few job interviews,” says second-year radiologic technologist Allison Hall. “But I had never done one with a panel like that. It was interesting having all that pressure, all those questions coming from different people. It gave you a true sense of how a real interview would go.”

It took two mock interviews, she says, to get hers right. “My first interview came after a late-night clinical shift in Phoenix. I went in confident, but at the first question, I went blank,” she says. “So I was glad for the chance to redo it. I was much better with more rest.”

Hall also enjoyed meeting prospective employers. “I got to ask them, ‘How do you measure success?’ And I felt people on the panel gave me an honest answer about what they look for, rather than a ‘company’ answer. It was nice to get that insight,” she says.

Those insights help both sides. Radiology candidates learn more about local employers, and local employers can identify rising stars to look for at hiring time.

“Anything that eases that transition, I think, is a really positive thing,” says panelist Michael Locke, who is also operations manager for Dignity Health’s Prescott Valley Imaging Center. “Some of them do really well. But some of them are interview-shy, and they come in and freeze up. This helps them break the ice and get a little more familiar with the process. It’s good to see them grow.”

— Michael Grady is a freelance writer, reporter, and playwright who lives in Arizona and covers education for Yavapai College.