Pharma Job Interview Fatal Mistake: Avoiding One Of The Biggest Pharma Job Interview Mistakes

I know you might have many answers for this but what would you consider as the Pharma job interview fatal mistake? What are they? Are they behavioral or content? Having succeeding a recent job interview for a diagnostic pharma company myself, let me give up a head-up.

Hint: it's NOT about the way you behave in front of your interviewer.

It's about what you say i.e. content. Sometimes candidates tend to say this because they think it's 'transparent' to do so and as a person, they see themselves as being honest but let me assure you that in hunting for a better jobs, be it in Pharmaceutical or others, being 'selectively' transparent makes more sense.

Plus, it doesn't hurt your ego as an honest person that much because you're not lying. You simply choose not to tell the whole truth, right? ;-)

Last two weeks, after about 11 months enjoying a 'free-job-stress' life, I submit to the urge of receiving monthly paycheck. Many people said that, due to my previous job post and remuneration, I'm going to face a hard time looking for a new job.

Through some 'old-time' contacts and Pharma company insiders, I managed to land a job in a diagnostic Pharmaceutical company. But that's not the interesting part.

The interesting part is the part of who compete with me and didn't get the job. As far as I know, she didn't take an 11 months 'job-break' like I did. So what could go wrong here?

After I got the job and during one of the training days, I was waiting for one of my colleagues to go out for lunch. During lunch, as usual, the story got out.

"Back at the base, you're going to have a branch office," said A.
"Oh yeah? O.K. Is it the same old D-H office?" I asked.
"Yup. The same area. And you're going to share it with a few other Pharma companies reps," said A. "One of them was the one who compete with you for your current post," she added.
"Really? That's interesting. If that so, maybe I know him...or her..." I quipped, waiting for a reaction.

The whole story unfold from there on.

Before we walked to the car, A said," It's very important to remember that point. It could make or break your new career."

I couldn't agree more.

So what's the point? It's this:

Don't talk 'bad' things about your boss especially if you're still working with your current company.

My friendly 'competitor' got caught up with this question: If your new boss did the same thing like what your current boss is doing, are you going to say and do the same thing like what you're doing now?

That's a red flag. It signals lack of persistence and initiatives on your part.

How to avoid this mistake?

1. If you're not satisfied with your Boss, talk to the right person and tell them the right thing. Your potential employer is not consider the right person.

2. If you still need to talk about it, put it in general terms with no specific. Talk about the behavior and not the person.

3. Turn your disappointment into improvement and make it clear that you're going to get that with your future employer.

These are some of my suggestions on how to avoid pharma job interview fatal mistake. I see that if more people do these, we're going to have a good, healthy competition.