Even something as simple as “Tell me about yourself” can trip up biopharma professionals during job interviews. Two recruiting experts discuss what candidates should and shouldn’t say when answering five specific questions.
In today’s biopharma job market, the stakes are high during interviews. A bad answer to an important question may not disqualify candidates, but it could drop them in applicant rankings, according to Todd Gabianelli, vice president, business development, at life sciences resourcing firm ClinLab Solutions Group.
“It’s an employer-driven market, so being slow and selective is just this market that we’re in right now,” Gabianelli told BioSpace. “So, the bar for ‘good enough’ has definitely risen.”
To identify which questions trip up biopharma professionals the most, BioSpace spoke to Gabianelli and Angie Allen, managing partner for pharma/biotech at executive recruiting firm Kaye/Bassman.
1. Tell me about yourself
The first question Allen prepares candidates to answer is “Tell me about yourself.” She noted that it’s not always easy to formulate the right response.
“People get stumped on that question routinely, and the No. 1 challenge for that is people’s answers are way too long,” she told BioSpace.
Allen recommended that candidates prepare a 90-second-max discussion about who they are and what they do—an elevator pitch that serves as a professional introduction. It’s not the time to share personal details such as how long they’ve been married, how many children or pets they have or their favorite football team, she noted.
However, Allen said, it is acceptable to state if they have a personal connection to the job they’re interviewing for, such as experience with a health condition the company is targeting.
2. Why are you leaving your current role?
It’s difficult for some to answer “Why are you leaving your current role” because they may overexplain the reason or speak negatively about a previous employer, according to Gabianelli. In addition, he said, those who’ve been laid off sometimes get defensive.
“Hiring managers I feel like in today’s environment know that layoffs happen, but candidates still stumble on this, on how to navigate it,” Gabianelli said. “It’s still such a sensitive thing.”
Candidates can address layoffs by briefly explaining what happened. For example, they can state there was a company restructuring or the role was eliminated. If there was a long employment gap, candidates can also share what they’ve done to stay current in their profession.
For those who are employed, Gabianelli recommended that when discussing why they’re job hunting, candidates frame their response less about what they’re running away from and more about what they’re pivoting to. He also advised aligning their answer with the prospective employer’s pipeline or projects.
“Focus on what you want to accomplish in that next phase of the career,” Gabianelli said.
3. What is your experience with this particular skill or therapeutic area?
The question “What is your experience with this particular skill or therapeutic area?” can challenge candidates who don’t have that exact experience, according to Allen. She also noted that some interviewers ask this question even when they know the person falls short in that area.
“They want to see how they’re going to handle the question,” Allen said. “And so obviously the most wrong answer a person can give is to really overembellish or overpromise what their experience is.”
The better approach, Allen said, is to talk about adjacencies and close and transferable skills. For example, if a candidate hasn’t done direct-to-patient marketing but has worked on a healthcare practitioner team and partnered closely with the patient marketing team, they can highlight that experience. Allen also recommended referring to the target position as a development opportunity.
4. Tell me about a time that a clinical trial didn’t go well
Based on client feedback, Gabianelli said that when answering “Tell me about a time that a clinical trial didn’t go well?”, candidates tend to pick low-stakes examples to avoid an uncomfortable discussion. However, he noted, hiring managers simply want them to explain the problem and their role in helping to solve it.
“It’s clinical trials, so things happen,” Gabianelli said. “Things happen probably more often than clients and CROs and customers would prefer. But having that transparency around it and focusing on the outcomes and what you could have done differently is really all these teams want to hear, because half of them, or probably all of them, have been in your shoes before. So, showing some real genuineness about that is what we recommend.”
Gabianelli advised that candidates use a real, meaningful example of what went wrong, spending 20% of their time on the problem and 80% on their decision making, then discuss the outcome.
5. What are your salary expectations?
Everyone’s “favorite” question, Gabianelli noted, is “What are your salary expectations?”
“Oftentimes, candidates will get tripped up by naming a number too early without understanding the total comp package,” he said. “So, we always recommend learn about the total comp package first, and then anchor it to a well-researched, market-driven number.”
If candidates are working with recruiters or headhunters, those people should provide an idea on compensation and coach them on how to navigate a conversation with the prospective employer, Gabianelli added.
Answers to the salary question can vary depending on what point someone is at in their career, he noted. For example, salary and bonuses can matter more in the early years and deferred compensation or stock can be more important in later years.
“That’s why our recommendation is to take a holistic approach to full compensation and treating it as a compensation package rather than just a definite base salary number that you’re very strict on,” Gabianelli said.
Righting the wrong answer
Whether someone can come back from giving the wrong answer to a question depends on what happened in the interview, according to Allen. For example, if a candidate lied or made something up, that’s a red flag. But if they didn’t unpack their thought process enough, Allen said, they could provide additional information in a thank-you note.
Gabianelli also sees value in thank-you notes, describing them as strategic tools that allow candidates to circle back to questions they answered incorrectly. They could write, for example, that after thinking about the conversation and something they said, they wanted to reframe their response to more accurately reflect their experience. Gabianelli said this approach shows a level of self-awareness that senior leaders respect at an intellectual level.
“It’s biotech and pharma, and at the end of this are patients, and everybody’s trying to deliver kind of these life-changing therapies, right?” he said. “So, there is a sense of compassion. It’s a business, don’t get me wrong, but we always find that the candidates that are the most authentic tend to win, and that strategic thank-you note could be a great opportunity to kind of close that loop with the hiring team.”
