Interviewing Success in Biotech

I've had a lot of experience interviewing people, as my current company firmly believes in a lot of up-front screening and then a 4-6 hour marathon interviewing session with 5-7 people. So as a dutiful Product Manager I've interviewed my fair share of technical service scientists, field engineers, technical writers, and product managers from associates up to senior-level people.

Some observations of this process:
1. Please do your homework. Not that I'm expecting for you to read every .PDF and every page on my company's website, but there's a lot of information about any company available if you know where to look, and more importantly who to ask. Nothing says 'I really not excited about this opportunity' than someone who hasn't bothered to do their homework. Just because you are smart doesn't mean that you can get away with 'faking it'. (I've noticed more and more lots of smart people overly depend on their smarts.)
2. Please show up on time. People notice. And try to be as polite as you are able to - it goes a long way to getting people who are doing the interviewing to get to the point of liking you, and frankly, people hire the people they like.
3. Lastly, as one who has interviewed many people from competitor companies, in the marketing world there are a lot of people who are good at selling themselves, but the truth about their performance does come out. I'm finding that excellent people are really hard to find, in particular ones that I would be happy to trust with a lot of investment in time, effort and most of all being able to replace me someday as I move on up.

Stand out from the crowd, put forth a sincere effort, be like-able, and don't make me make a high-risk decision. :)

Comments

[interviewee]

Let's look at the interview process from the other side, does the 'likable' guy want to replace you when you move 'up'?

people afraid of 'risky' decisions should never be in managing positions.

[jessica kardon]

Hello

you have to have high self esteem to be a great manager. I have to say, I really enjoyed reading your blog. Its hard to find a well written blog like this. In my search for free traffic hits, I found http://www.autosurfmonster.com . If I were you , I would submit this blog to them so thousands of others can see it for free. Well, I look forward to all the updates. Thanks again.

Jessica

[jenny adams]

nice blog. great info on interview.. i also believe that one shoudl prepare themself for interviews.. for example if you are going for a job interview at a herbal place go to an herbal site like http://www.youherbal.com and educate yourself.

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