Post by Deborah Udy Okusaga Akanne (@deborah_udy_okusaga)
The Occupational Therapist Who Keeps Getting Told They Are A Good Candidate — And Not Getting The Offer.
This post is for the occupational therapist.
You have been told you interviewed well. You have been told you are a strong candidate. You have been told the decision was very close.
And you are still waiting for your first NHS Band 5 or Band 6 offer.
I want to tell you the specific reason — because it appears in almost every OT interview I review feedback from, and it is not what you think.
The reason is not your clinical knowledge. It is not your communication skills. It is not even your values alignment.
The reason is that you are describing occupation-focused practice in the language of activity — and the NHS interview panel is scoring it against the language of clinical outcome measurement.
Let me show you exactly what I mean.
The HCPC Standards of Proficiency for Occupational Therapists — Standard 10. 1 — require you to be able to use research, reasoning and problem solving skills to determine appropriate actions. Standard
10. 2 — requires that you be able to select and use appropriate assessment tools and techniques.
NHS Band 5 and Band 6 OT person specifications translate this into essential criteria like:
Evidence of using validated outcome measures to assess occupational performance and evaluate intervention effectiveness.
The validated outcome measures the NHS OT community uses — and that NHS interview panels score against — are specific and documented:
MOHOST — Model of Human Occupation Screening Tool — for assessing occupational participation across volition, habituation, skills, and environment.
COPM — Canadian Occupational Performance Measure — the gold standard client-centred outcome measure for identifying occupational performance problems and measuring change over time.
AMPS — Assessment of Motor and Process Skills — for evaluating the quality of a person's ADL task performance.
KELS — Kohlman Evaluation of Living Skills — for assessing functional independence in essential living skills.
GAS — Goal Attainment Scaling — for measuring achievement of individually defined therapy goals.
If your interview answer describes your OT assessment process without naming the specific validated tool you used — and without stating the baseline score, the intervention, and the outcome score — you are describing good clinical practice in non-scoreable language.
Here is the before and after:
Not scoring: I completed a comprehensive occupational therapy assessment with the patient, identified their functional limitations, and developed a personalized intervention plan that supported their return to meaningful occupation.
Scoring at Band 6 threshold: I used the COPM to identify the patient's priority occupational performance concerns — they rated meal preparation as their highest priority at a performance score of 3 and satisfaction score of 2 out of 10. Following a six-week kitchen assessment and adaptive equipment intervention, their performance score increased to 7 and satisfaction to 8. This outcome was documented in the MDT record and informed the decision to proceed with community discharge rather than intermediate care placement — which had direct cost and quality of life implications.
Same clinical work. Completely different interview score.
The second answer evidences: validated outcome measurement, client-centred practice, outcome-directed intervention, MDT contribution, discharge planning, and service-level impact.
Six competencies. One answer.
You are a good candidate. Your practice is strong. The gap is entirely in how you are communicating it — and that gap is completely closable.
📩 My NHS OT interview preparation service is built specifically around HCPC Standards of Proficiency for Occupational Therapists, NHS England's AHP strategy, and the validated outcome measure framework that NHS OT panels score against.
DM me "NHS" and I will show you what your rebuilt answers look like.
Post 5 drops at 5:00 PM — and it is the final post of Day 3. It covers something no other post this week has touched — the NHS interview question that is asked in a different way to every profession but is assessing the same competency across all of them.
The competency that decides whether you get the offer or get feedback that says -we felt another candidate demonstrated greater insight into NHS service priorities.
This one will stay with you.
#OccupationalTherapy #OTuk #NHSInterview2026 #HCPC #AHPsNHS #COPMOutcome #MOHOST #NHSShortlisting #Band5OT #Band6OT #NHSRecruitment #SovereignHealthcareAdvisoryGroup #NHSJobs2026 #OccupationalTherapist #HCPCregistered
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