About Career Clinic

The story

Career Clinic was created by Charlie Winstanley, an NHS manager who has sat on over 50 interview panels across multiple bands and specialities. After years of coaching colleagues through applications and interviews, the same patterns kept coming up: strong candidates giving weak answers, not because they lacked experience, but because they couldn't articulate it in the way panels need to hear.

Why Clovis exists

Most interview prep tools give generic advice. Clovis is different. Every rubric is built from real NHS scoring criteria, calibrated across bands 5 to 8d, and refined through hundreds of hours of 1:1 coaching. The AI doesn't guess what a good answer looks like - it checks your example against the specific criteria that panels use to score.

The result is feedback that sounds like it came from someone who's been on the other side of the table. Not vague encouragement, but specific guidance on what's missing and exactly how to fix it.

HOW vs WHAT

The biggest mistake candidates make in NHS interviews is telling the panel what they did without explaining how and why they did it. Saying "I led a team meeting" tells the panel nothing. Explaining how you structured the discussion, why you chose that approach, and what your reasoning was at each step gives them real evidence to score.

Panels score against specific criteria. They need to hear your thinking, your decision-making, and the rationale behind your actions. A candidate who explains the how behind a small project will outscore someone who vaguely describes leading a trust-wide initiative.

This is the core principle behind everything Clovis does. Every rubric, every scoring criterion, and every piece of feedback is designed to push you from surface-level descriptions towards the kind of specific, reflective detail that panels actually score highly.

The methodology

Clovis uses 10 competency-specific rubrics, each containing 8-12 scoring criteria. These criteria were developed by:

• Analysing gold-standard answers across all 10 NHS competency areas
• Mapping scoring patterns from 50+ real interview panels
• Calibrating expectations for each band level (5, 6, 7, 8a-8d)
• Refining through hundreds of coaching sessions and candidate outcomes

Each submission is scored against these criteria, with feedback explaining exactly which criteria were met, which were missed, and what to change. This is the same approach used in 1:1 coaching sessions - now available on demand.

Get in touch

If you'd like to discuss coaching, partnerships, or have feedback on Clovis, reach out at charlie@career-clinic.co.uk.

For 1:1 interview coaching, visit the coaching page.