The first thing I’ll say about interviewing for a pharmaceutical sales
job, or for any job, is to be on time. As far as I’m concerned, there
is no excuse for being late. About thirty to forty percent of
candidates are either late for interviews or don’t show up at all. I
would never offer a job to anyone who is late for an interview. I find
people’s behavior during the interview process to be very
consistent with what they do on the job. If a candidate is late for an
interview, then they will usually be late to meetings and field rides
with their managers.
Plan to arrive an hour early. Sit in your car, drink coffee, review
your notes, or practice what you want to say during the interview.
This extra time also allows leeway for possible traffic delays, a flat
tire, or even getting lost, all excuses that I have heard and never
accept.
During a particular day of interviews, I started looking for my next
candidate. She was already five minutes late. I noticed a missed
call on my cell phone and dialed it. A woman answered from a
service station. I asked her if she had just seen a young woman
dressed in a business suit. She told me that a nice young woman
with red hair had used her phone to call a cab because her car
had broken down up the road, and that she had left about fifteen
minutes before. Then the voice on the other end of the phone
erupted into laughter. I asked her why she was laughing. She first
apologized, and then told me she had noticed that the redheaded
girl had a long rip in her stocking. Laughing myself, I asked her
which leg, just so I could verify the claim. She told me it was the
right leg and then erupted again.
About twenty minutes later, I decided to walk around the hotel to try
to find the redhead with the rip in her right stocking. Sure enough, I
found her walking in the back entrance of the hotel. She told me
she had just paid $250 for a cab. Of course, I admired her
persistence in dishing out the money in order to get to the
interview. She was going to get a fair shot at convincing me to hire
her.
Sometimes incidents like these help demonstrate people’s tenacity.
On the other hand, if she had planned to arrive an hour early, she
would have arrived on time for the interview, with a great story to
tell me that would have demonstrated her persistence, tenacity and
foresight.
As I led her to my interviewing spot, I told her that I had spoken to
the service station person, just to reassure her that I knew her
story was legitimate. As she walked ahead of me to sit down, I ran
my eyes down her right leg…following the rip in her right stocking. I
smiled, fought back my laughter, and couldn’t wait to start the
interview!
To give her time to settle down and organize herself, I went to the
bathroom and brought her back some water. During the interview, I
learned that the car breakdown didn’t seem to be an isolated
incident. Her résumé was spattered with coffee stains; she ruffled
through papers and notes that were crunched in a dirty folder; and
she knew nothing about my company or my products. Although I
was entertained and developed a genuine liking for this person,
she didn’t make it past this interview.
To avoid getting lost and being late, plan ahead by driving or
taking public transportation to the interview location a day or two
before the interview. This shows foresight and good planning skills.
One of the first icebreaker questions asked by many interviewers
(including myself) is about the drive. In this case, an icebreaker
question can turn out to be an interview question that benefits you,
because you get to show your potential manager that you had
enough brains to plan ahead. What most of you don’t realize is that
the interview starts as soon as you walk through the door.
Find Me
Once you enter the hotel doors (hopefully on time), start looking
for your interviewer. Don’t just sit down. Walk around and
approach anyone who may appear to be the interviewer. Stand in
the middle of the lobby and make eye contact with everyone until
someone reciprocates.
Sometimes I sit near the hotel entrance, working on my laptop, just
to see if the interviewee will make an effort to approach me. Some
candidates make no effort at all. They sit and wait to be
approached. Timid people usually don’t make it in sales. I need
people who are not afraid to walk into a doctor’s office and talk to
everyone¾to be the mayor!
During an interview at the New York Hilton on 6th Avenue and 53rd
Street, I sat in the lounge facing the front doors of the main lobby,
where I could see everyone who walked in. When I had spoken to
the candidate earlier in the morning, she had described herself as
tall, with blond hair, and said that she would be wearing a black
suit. After I described myself as, short Italian from New Jersey, we
agreed to meet in the lobby at 1:00 p.m. At 12:45, people were
scampering in and out of the front doors, making it difficult for me
to see. However, I would have noticed a tall blond woman if she
had been walking around trying to find someone.
Many people were sitting on a circular sofa positioned in front of
the lobby doors. Between 12:59 and 1:01 p.m., I noticed a blond
woman wearing a black suit sitting on the circular sofa. I must have
missed her arrival. Whether she had walked in at 12:59 or 1:01, it
wouldn’t have made much of a difference; she was late regardless.
On occasion, she would move her head from side to side, as if she
was looking for someone, but that was the extent of her effort. I
was thinking that if that was the candidate, how could she expect
me to find her sitting in a crowded lobby? I sat for a few minutes to
see if she would make an effort to look for me, then finally gave up
and approached her. Sure enough, it was she. As I write, I can’t
remember much about that interview, which makes me believe she
did not impress me.
I asked another candidate to meet me at the LaGuardia Marriott in
New York at 7:00 a.m. I arrived at 6:00 to beat the traffic and to
“candidate-watch.” I sat near the front entrance of the lobby,
working on my laptop and drinking coffee while I waited. At about 6:
55, I walked around the lobby looking at my watch and making eye
contact with everyone, until a young man finally met my eyes. After
we introduced ourselves, he told me he had arrived about forty
minutes before and that, earlier, he had seen me getting coffee. I
asked him why he hadn’t approached me. He had no answer.
Needless to say, he bombed during the interview.
You cannot be afraid to approach people. If you want to be in
pharmaceutical sales, crawl out of your shell. Always be talking and
selling. Start now by greeting and talking to people you normally
wouldn’t.
When I sold in hospitals, I would sell in the elevator, the
cafeteria¾whether doctors were on line buying lunch or sitting
down eating. I would sell in the library or in the parking lot. I would
talk with the valet people who parked my car. Be a good person
and be nice to everyone.
What About the Products?
“I really want to work for your company.” Many tell me this, yet most
of them can’t tell me a thing about my products. Sure, they might
be able to tell me all about the history of the company, but I don’t
care about the history tell me about the products! Show me sales
literature, a sample box, an ad, and then sell me! Most people
have no clue what the job entails, yet they claim to be certain that it’
s what they want to do.
I was interviewing a young man who initially struck me as being
confident and aggressive. This was his first interview with me, but
his second interview with my company, so I expected him to be fully
prepared to discuss our products.
He told me that his mother was a gynecologist, so I asked him what
he knew about one of our flagship gynecological products, which,
at that time, was the number-one written branded drug in the
United States. I was amazed that he couldn’t tell me a thing. All he
would have had to do was ask his mother. I’m sure she had
prescribed it every day that week. He hadn’t had the foresight to
talk with his mother about a company he might had worked for and
hadn’t even thought to inquire during his first interview about what
products he would be selling. He was no more prepared for this
interview than he had been for the first.
My next question was, “Do you have any questions for me?” (I
usually ask that question to end the interview. If I ask it within the
first ten to fifteen minutes, it is not a good sign.)
The more you know about the products, the better. But it also
depends on the situation. If you are attending a job fair with many
pharmaceutical companies, then you could get away with a brief
overview of the each company’s biggest-selling products. During
job fairs, the interviews will often be short. When you land that
second interview, then you’d better be fully prepared. Forget the
history lesson and be ready not only to discuss the company’s
products, but also the competing products.
Here is an example of how to be fully prepared to discuss a
pharmaceutical product during an interview:
· Drug A is an ACE inhibitor that was originally FDA-approved
to treat hypertension, but is now the only ACE that is proven
and indicated to prevent the risk of cardiovascular events.
· ACE inhibitors work by preventing angiotensin I from
converting to angiotensin II increases vasodiolation therefore
decreasing blood pressure.
· Drug A is the only ACE inhibitor with a landmark trial that
showed that adding it to other agents further reduced the risk of
cardiovascular events.
· The trial was published in the New England Journal Medicine
in January of 2002. It evaluated over 9000 high-risk patients. (If
you come prepared with the actual trial, as opposed to a summary
of it from the Internet, and use a few bullets, you would impress the
hell out of me.)
(Excerpt from Pharmaceutical Landing)
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