Norris and McKee Talk Tatts
Tattoos and body piercings are extremely popular these days, and becoming more and more common. Does that mean that it’s acceptable to let them be seen when you go to a job interview? In a word…no.
Two medical sales managers, Chris Norris (Sales Manager formerly with GE, CCS, Bayer) and Kraig McKee (Sales Manager formerly with Ventana Medical, Transgenomic, Bayer/Chiron) chat about tattoos, piercings, personal style choices and political views of interview candidates. Hear what they have to say:
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Ten Popular Behavioral Interview Questions for Medical Sales
Behavioral interview questions are the norm for job interviews in medical sales, laboratory sales, medical device sales, pharmaceutical sales, imaging sales, and other health care sales–because they work so well. Your answers give hiring managers real, verifiable insight into how you handle customers, specific actions you’ve taken to increase sales revenue, and everything else they might need to determine if you’d be a good fit on their sales team. A critical part of your interview preparation is constructing your answers to potential questions (use the STAR technique or the PAR technique for this), and practicing your delivery. To help you prepare, I found Marc Krajnik’s article on ten behavioral-based interview questions. I’ve listed them here for you:
1. “Describe for me your greatest accomplishment up to this point in your career. When was it? What did you do? What was the outcome?”
2.“Tell me about a time when you didn’t accomplish the original objective. When was it? What was your role? What was the result?”
3. “Describe the most prominent mistake you have made during your career. What did you do? What were the results? What did you learn from it? Have you ever repeated that same mistake?”
4. “Walk me through the last time you worked in a team and didn’t get along with one of its members. When did this take place? What did you do? What could you have done differently? What was the outcome?”
5. “Tell me about the toughest decision you have had to make in the past three months. What made this decision so tough? What information did you consider when deciding? How did you reach your decision? How did it turn out?”
6. “Take me back to the last project that you were involved with that required extra effort on your part. When was it? What adjustments did you have to make to meet these demands? What was the outcome?”
7. “Describe the last important task you delegated. What instructions did you give? How did you check on the progress of the assignment? Was the outcome satisfactory? Why or why not?”
8. “Describe a recent situation that best illustrates your style in leading others to accomplish a task. When did this occur? What was the situation? How did you motivate the team? Who was the hardest team member to get on your side? How did you do it?”
9. “Tell me about the most recent goal that you achieved. When was it? What was the goal? How did you set up an action plan to achieve that goal? What was the result?”
10. “Tell me about a recent customer complaint that you handled. When did this take place? What was the complaint? How did you learn about it? What did you do? How did it turn out?”
I’d also like to point you back to my discussion with Chris Norris on Behavioral Event Interviews. Chris is a commercial leader who has documented performance excellence in various capacities including Vice President of Sales, National Sales Director and General Manager with a diversity of experience, having served with Abbott, Bayer and GE Healthcare. He brings great insight to this topic, and I hope you find it helpful.
Phone Sales Tips: Use Phone Skills for Medical Sales Job Interviews
Mark Hunter has some great tips for you when contacting customers by phone. I’m reprinting them here because (1) they’re good sales advice; and (2) I want you to think about them in terms of phone interview skills for your medical sales job interviews. Sales calls and interviews require very similar skill sets. Get good at one, and you should be good at the other.
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Phone Sales Tips:
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Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter”, www.TheSalesHunter.com, © 2007
LinkedIn Tips for Your Medical Sales Job Search
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals in the business world. It allows people to interact with other professionals in their industry and maintain a profile that contains career-oriented information. Other job databases and networking sites can be expensive or hard to navigate. LinkedIn is free for most and very specific to the business world. This is the place to toot your own horn about your skills, abilities, and career goals.
Why it is so valuable?
As of October 15, 2009, LinkedIn hit a new milestone with over 50 million professionals now a part of this ever-growing database (as reported by the CEO of the company). This large number should get your attention. 80% of employers and recruiters use this database to prospect for new candidates because it is perhaps the easiest and most cost-effective tool employers and recruiters have ever had available to them. There is a strong chance that your next employer, recruiter, client, or business partner is already on LinkedIn. So all you have to do is leverage LinkedIn to begin that relationship.
How does it work?
LinkedIn provides a profile format that the job seeker completes. The profile details past employment, interests, specialty skills and experiences and allows you to include a profile photo. [Tip: Be sure to use a professional (business-appropriate) headshot photo for this, although it doesn’t have to taken by a professional photographer.] Your profile can provide an employer or recruiter with a wealth of information before they ever speak to you. You can even reach out to those you have worked with in the past to get a recommendation about the quality of your work that will be displayed on your profile. These testimonials reinforce the details that are listed as well as help build trust about your work ethic—making them one of the most powerful aspects of your LinkedIn profile. One of the most valuable features of LinkedIn is its ability to show these recommendations, which allows hiring managers and human resources as well as recruiters to see if a potential employee is worth hiring. [Tip: You get to choose what recommendations you show on your profile. If the ones you have aren’t strong enough or persuasive enough about you as a great employee, don’t use them.]
What can it do for me?
LinkedIn is not just a networking site—it’s a resource center. Once you have your profile set up you can start checking out the different areas of LinkedIn and learn how you might use them in your job search.
- You can use the “Companies” section (top of the page) to find companies in your particular industry, along with an enormous amount of information about them—such as current employees, former employees, market size, location, website address, media age, jobs they have posted on LinkedIn, and stock information. Remember—candidates who get the job offer usually have done more research into the company and the job than other candidates. [Tip: Some candidates contact former employees of a company they are interviewing with to get an “insider” perspective as to what it was like to work there—that’s pretty strong research, right?]
- You can use the “Jobs” section (top of the page) to view jobs that have been posted directly on LinkedIn. If you use the “Advanced job search” you can see LinkedIn job postings and web job postings. The web job posting is an aggregation of all jobs on “the web”. [Tip: Remember to check out the job posting areas of the Groups that you join. These postings don’t cost the members (like the ones that are in the “Jobs” section) and they can represent great jobs that have just come open or available.]
- You can use the “Answers” section (top of the page) to view questions that have been posted over the last few years and the answers that were given to see what advice everyone has for the topic that you are interested in at this time.
- You can join the Groups that are relevant to you and your interests. These Groups can be industry specific, product specific, function specific, college alumni specific, or company alumni gathering spots. For example: if you search in the search Groups area for “sales rep,” you will see that the Groups you find are specifically for sales folks and will probably have a lot of great discussions, news bits, and job postings.
- You can use the “People” section (top of the page) to search for people that you want to “connect” with on LinkedIn. You should think about co-workers, clients, service providers, mentors, and other relevant contacts (both at present and in the past). Send them an invitation to connect. If they accept your invitation you will be able to see their profile as well as what people they are connected to in the network. [Tip: If someone invites you to connect that you don’t know or don’t want to connect to, just hit the “Archive” button.]
So, what should you do now?
Develop a selling profile for you! Think of it like an online resume (only not). With the way the economy is right now, the need to sell yourself well is even more important—you are competing with more people. You need to be both confident and competent to achieve maximum success. [Tip: Someone viewing your profile should be able to look at your resume and what type of positions you would be interested in pursuing.]
It’s extremely important that you have a LinkedIn profile, and that you put as much thought and effort into it as you did when you created your resume. Your profile will be the first impression of you for hundreds of people. Make sure that your objective or interest is clear, that the profile is neat, checked for spelling and grammar and as complete as possible. The more time and effort you put into LinkedIn, the greater the payoff will be for you! I promise. Check out this LinkedIn Profile Tutorial for jobseekers.
[One last tip: Just like every other online network, what you say and do on LinkedIn will be available for others to see for a long time (this means comments on discussions or news articles, questions and answers, job posting comments and other areas). Make sure that you are thoughtful about your remarks and apply the golden rule when judging others.]
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