Interview Questions

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 You can talk about your passion for writing about pharmaceutical compounds and healthcare. You can also explain the importance of medical education and the role of a medical writer in improving awareness about diseases, treatment options, pharmacological agents, devices, safety issues, etc so that the clinician can make informed choices when providing treatment recommendations to his/her patients. 

You can talk about your specific strong points such as research skills, editorial skills, storytelling, a specific therapy area, or a deliverable. For example, if you are good at handling advisory board meeting reports and pursuing opportunities in this area, then you should discuss your strengths in developing meeting agenda, invitations, speaker slides, moderating the meeting, and developing the meeting report. 

You can talk about the different specialties you have worked in so far for example cardiology, diabetes, and oncology etc., Pick a few strong areas so that your interviewer can understand your strengths. If you are fresher, you can inform the interviewer that you are keen to work in a specific area such as oncology as you have done extensive research during your academics. 

Since you are exploring opportunities in medical writing your response should be around that. You may talk about your plans to work with a senior medical writer or an experienced medical writing team and progress in your career toward a professional medical writer. If you are keen to work in a specific area or a domain, and progress to be a team lead, then you should discuss it.

You have to demonstrate your literature search skills. You can talk about the search engines you are familiar with such as PubMed or Embase. You should talk about the various search strategies you follow such as using Boolean operators, advanced search, Keyword search, Using Mesh terms, etc., 

You have to talk about the importance of healthy criticism and how you handle it to improve the quality of the content. You should also explain how you try to prevent quality issues and the steps you take to share content that is of good quality and that is not plagiarized. You should explain how it is important to get the brief from the client and match the output as per the brief from the client. It will help if you can present some case studies to establish your point on how you handled the discussion earlier. 

 You should do a bit of research about the company and its services. Every medcomms agency has a specific focus and you should understand the services and areas of operations clearly. While some agencies focus only on medico-marketing material some handle all domains including manuscript writing. Some agencies even focus on a specific therapy area such as rare diseases. A bit of homework will help you ace the interview. 

You should talk about research skills, content development, referencing style, editing, and providing a reference binder. You should talk about the importance of thorough research before getting into writing for the topic. You should talk about the editorial skills and how it improves the quality of content before it is sent to the editorial team. You can also refer to story-telling skills. You should also talk about providing a reference binder and how it helps for quick processing of the content. 

 You can answer this question based on your own unique style and pace. The interviewer is keen to know your turnaround time so that the company can plan your project volume. Don’t overpromise as it can impact your future profile. You should honestly inform how many you can develop and why do you need that time. Also, understand the industry average and try to stay as close to that number as possible. 

 You can talk about various tools that are used for different needs. For example, you can talk about plagiarism checkers such as Copyscape, Grammer checking tools such as Grammarly, end notes for referencing, or any other tools that you are familiar with. 

 You can talk about various medical writing projects you have worked on and how you have contributed to the projects individually and as a support to the team. You can talk about the way you have moved up from supporting the team with research to developing your content pieces that were published or shared across the industry. Some case studies will help establish your strengths. 

 This is an opportunity to talk about a project that you are proud of or made an impact. This is also an opportunity to guide the interviewer on the areas of interest (where you are planning to grow). Be ready with a case study to have a conversation. 

You have to talk about the importance of medico-marketing and various medico-marketing material. You should also talk about the ethical issues of developing branded communications and how you have handled some projects so far. 

 Talk about a project where you worked with a group. You should talk about how you contributed directly and the areas where you played a supportive role. 

If you have done it earlier, this is an opportunity to establish your leadership skills and your intent to grow as a team lead/supervisor in the company. Even if you don’t want that role, try to establish your skills in supervising content from other team members and your contribution as a team player. 

You can talk about any challenging instances during your career and how you handled them. These can be with missing deadlines for some critical projects or a complete change in the project brief. Conflicts do happen in our day-to-day work and you should be prepared to handle them and minimize escalations. 

You should answer this tactfully without sounding overconfident. You can talk about how your peers felt that you are a team player and always deliver work on time. You should talk about your time management skills and your focus on providing content of high quality. 

Talk about the various steps involved in developing a literature review. You can use a case study to establish your strengths. 

In multichannel marketing all available channels including emails, websites, print are used to communicate with the customers. However, these channels are deployed independently with a specific objective and may not be connected to other channels. This can result in fragmented communication experience to the customer. In omnichannel marketing all messages and channels are coordinated and personalized based on the customer needs and preferences. All communication channels are integrated and work seamlessly together. The goal is to create a consistent and coherent experience for the customer, regardless of the channel used. It is challenging but can heap rich dividends for pharmaceutical companies.