For Candidates :

For a guide to successfully interviewing in the Biopharmaceutical industry go to www.megandriscoll.com

Tips for Successful Interviewing

How to Prepare for an Interview:

Research the company. No one expects you to be an expert on their company before you interview, however, having a general understanding of the company history and the product portfolio/pipeline will:

• Show the hiring manager that you are interested enough to have done some due diligence up front.
• Lead to more productive conversations since you already have a fundamental understanding of the company.
• Help you when preparing your questions and your strategy for presenting your background.

Have a strategy in mind of how you would like to present your experience during the interview. Do not rely on the hiring manager to ask the right questions. Have examples in mind that you would like to work into the conversation. Be ready to discuss your role on previous projects and why you feel that experience is relevant to the position for which you are interviewing.

Go over the agenda with your recruiter ahead of time. Be familiar with the title and role of the various people that you will be meeting. Anticipate the types of questions they may ask and how you would interact with each person if you were to accept the position.

Things to remember:

• Always wear a suit.
• Don't be late, give yourself plenty of time in case you get lost.
• Have several copies of your CV with you to pass out to any interviewer who does not have one.

Tips for creating a resume that will spark a positive response:

Forget the objective. Unless you are being incredibly specific in your job search and only applying for positions for which your objective is relevant, the objective is a useless space waster. Most times people write an objective that is broad so that it can apply to multiple positions. If that is the case, just skip it all together.
• Make sure the resume is "easy on the eyes". The best way to achieve this is to make sure there is white space so that it does not look too busy. Resumes that are overloaded with text are intimating to read. If you have enough relevant work experience, it is much better to go onto a 3rd or even 4th page rather than to shrink the font size and/or margins in order to squeeze everything into 2 pages.
• Use bullet points rather than long paragraphs detailing responsibilities / accomplishments. Bullet points are easy to follow and allow for short summary sentences to highlight the most relevant details. This will help ensure the resume has white space and is easy to read.
• Use strong descriptors whenever possible. Words like "completed", "led", "delivered", "accomplished" are strong descriptors. Do not mislead or fabricate your accomplishments, but, whenever possible avoid weak phrases like "took part in" or "part of a group responsible for". The hiring manager wants to know what you specifically accomplished rather than summaries of what your group was responsible for.
• List your experience chronologically with the most recent experience appearing first as the resume is read from top to bottom. List your responsibilities and accomplishments under each company / position on the resume. Avoid a list of jobs / dates followed by an overall summary of your career accomplishments. Hiring Managers want to clearly see what you accomplished in each specific position.
• As a general rule of thumb, if you have more than 4 years of professional work experience, your work history should be listed first on the resume. If you have less than 4 years of professional work experience, your education should be listed first. Do not list high school education. If you never advanced beyond a high school diploma, then skip the education section all together.
• Always have your resume proofread by a neutral party. Be sure that tense and punctuation are consistent throughout. Do not use abbreviations, slang or contractions. Mistakes in grammar, spelling or similar are the quickest way to get your resume thrown into the "no" pile. This is especially true for people who work in Quality Assurance where attention to detail is a necessity.