Medical Sales Interview Tips & Tricks, Part I

In both pharmaceutical and medical sales, many interviews are required during the hiring process – sometimes as many as 5-6 interviews.  The first interview might be with the recruiter and will probably be via phone.  If the recruiter choses to put you forth as a candidate to the company, then you might have a phone interview with the internal corporate recruiter (depending on the size of the company and the position).  If that interview/screening goes well, you will advance to the hiring manager, who would more than likely schedule an in-person interview (this person would be your day-to-day boss).  As you continue to progress through the interview rounds, you may also interview with members of the local sales team (who report to your same boss).  At the end of the interview process, the hiring manger typically sends 2-3 candidates to the regional VP and/or the national VP of sales (their boss), depending on the company’s structure.  They will include their recommendation for the top candidate.  Based on a final conversation between the hiring manager and the VP of sales, the top candidate will be offered a position.

During the interview process there is a lot of correspondence to coordinate all of these interviews.  Please proofread (and enlist a qualified friend/family member to proof) your correspondence with hiring managers and recruiters during this process.  When you are in a pool with many candidates vying for the same position, it can come down to grammar and attention to detail.  They will assume the way you communicate with them is how you will communicate with their customers.  Also, in the role you are interviewing for, there is a lot of internal and external communication required.  Start “interviewing” for the position during your interview correspondence to show off your skills.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I cannot stress enough how important this step is.  After all, this is the skill they are hiring you for – presentation skills!  If you don’t practice walking someone through your resume or the skills comparison sheet, you won’t be polished.  Even trained professional salespeople practice, so depending on your background, you may need to spend extra time preparing how you’re going to present.  Be prepared for a hiring manager to kick off the interview with an open-ended question, such as, “Tell us about yourself.”  Maybe you were expecting to be asked several questions, so this catches you off guard. What are you going to say?  Where are you going to start?  My recommendation is to go straight to your resume, starting with your college degree.  Don’t go back to your birth, childhood, high school, etc.  (I’m sure those things are interesting, but they are not applicable to this job interview).  Practice presenting the information in your resume conversationally – do not read it off the page.  Make it interesting and compelling for them.  Have a story prepared or an interesting project you worked on at each of your positions.  If they also happen to show leadership, ingenuity, out-of-the-box thinking, all the better!  If you don’t practice with a live person, record yourself presenting and play it back for review.  Revise your content or style, and then do it again.  Practice makes perfect.  (FYI – this is important to do throughout your medical sales career.  Even if I had demonstrated a product 100 times, I would always practice a sales presentation and product demonstration before being live with a customer.  There were occasions I did not practice for whatever reason, and it never went as well.)

Prior to the interview, find out as much as you can about the product the position will be selling.  Conduct research– most companies have sales pages featuring their products on their website with features, benefits, clinical claims, etc.  If they have clinical data or research studies featured online, read those as well.  This will help you develop a well-researched list of questions and show how prepared you are (maybe even more so than a candidate with 3-5 years’ experience).  Additionally, research the product’s competition so you can begin to see how they are positioned in the marketplace.

Be proactive! 

Show them you have spent time preparing for this interview. Whether they ask you for this information or not, be prepared to do a quick product presentation for the product you would be selling.  You might not present it the same way they would train you to, but you will have shown a lot of initiative! 

Recommended Interview Materials

• Have a nice leather-bound book with pocket and notepad.
• Resume and Cover Letter 
• Skills assessment sheet – see previous blog post and/or sign up to receive my free ebook.
• Attaboy binder - I will do a blog post on this soon.
• Be prepared to proactively present a 30-60-90 day territory business plan at some point in the process based on everything you’ve learned about the position during the interview process. I will do a post on this soon as well.

I will continue with more interview tips and tricks next week.  As always, please feel free to schedule a coaching session with me via my website so I can work with you one-on-one and get you ready to interview!

Have a great week!

Cathy