Tips for a Successful Phone Interview
Life sciences employers ranging from academic institution to private sector companies are increasingly turning to telephone interviews as an initial means to screen prospective job candidates. While in many instances these interviews are perfunctory, they are conducted for two main reasons. First, the employer wants to verify that the information presented by the candidate in his/her curriculum vitae is correct and accurate. Second, and perhaps more importantly, to determine whether or not a candidate has sufficient oral communications skills that warrant the cost necessary to bring a candidate in for a face-to-face on site interview.
The use of telephone interviews has become increasingly popular because of the escalating costs associated with bringing candidates in for onsite interviews and a growing number of foreign born applicants applying for life sciences jobs. Put simply, a prospective employer can easily determine an applicant’s command of the English language and his/her immigration status in a telephone interview. Both immigration status (permanent resident or citizenship) and outstanding command of the English language have become of paramount importance to most life sciences employers over the past five years or so. However, it is important to note, that individual employers place different emphasis on the qualifications and skills of applicants for different job opportunities within an organization.
Like it or not, you may find yourself in the position of having to participate in a telephone interview before a decision is made on whether or not you may be invited to visit for an onsite interview. To that end, Pete Kistler, CEO of Brand-Yourself.com, recently posted a great piece that describes how to best prepare for a phone interview. He offers seven easy-to-follow tips that are likely to increase the probability of a visit for an onsite interview.
1. Use a landline. You don’t want to risk having problems with cell phone service. It is irritating for employers to conduct interviews if the call breaks up frequently or is dropped completely. If you don’t have a land line at home, just make sure you are in an area with as much cell phone service as possible. Do what you can so the process runs as smooth as possible.
2. Keep your materials handy. In fact, lay everything out in front of you. This includes your resume, notes about your career objective (even if it isn’t included in your original cover letter it’s a good idea to have this out depending on the questions he will ask you), a pen and pad of paper for note-taking and anything else you think may be helpful during your interview. Because you won’t have to schlep into an office, you can have anything out in front of you to aid with your success.
3. Steer clear of distractions. Find a quiet place to interview and stay there! There shouldn’t be any noise in the background to distract you or your potential employer. However, it is understandable that this can be tricky if you have young children at home who need your attention. When you set up your interview appointment, try to schedule it for as precise a time or window as possible. That way, you are able to avoid possible distractions (ex.: your phone interview is between 4 and 4:30, so no one can have company over during that time, the kids are fed and occupied or a sitter will watch them, if need be.)
4. Speak slowly and clearly. When you speak to people face-to-face, you are able to understand what they are saying more clearly because you can see their mouth move. So in a way, you are reading their lips! Neither you nor your potential employer will be able to do this over the phone of course, so speak clearly and a little bit more slowly than you would if you were talking to this person in person. If you can’t hear him, drop hints that he isn’t speaking clearly or loud enough by politely asking him to repeat himself. If this makes you uncomfortable at all you can always blame it on your phone: “I’m really sorry, it’s hard to hear you, the volume on my phone just won’t go up!”
5. Remember – you can’t be seen. That means that anything you say cannot be interpreted by your body language. Beware of jokes or sarcastic remarks that would have been harmless had he seen your facial expression. Maintain your professionalism; stay on target with the interview topics and focus on the key information about you that will get you hired.
6. No eating, drinking or chewing gum! This is self-explanatory. But, we humans are creatures of habit and might pop a potato chip in our mouths at just the wrong moment. However, when I say no eating or drinking I mean during the phone interview. You should eat beforehand to get your brain going so you can focus.
7. Prepare questions ahead of time. Just like in a personal interview, prepare a few questions to ask your potential employer at the end of your phone interview. Some examples are:
“What is the start date for the opportunity?”
“What software/equipment would I be using?”
Remember – do not ask about salary or benefits until the employer has brought it up.
Fortunately, it can be less intimidating interviewing over the phone with these telephone interview tips and you may even feel more confident that you’ll do well. Great! As long as you are fully prepared and take the necessary precautions, there is no reason why you shouldn’t have a successful phone interview.
Until next time....
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

I am frequently asked by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are having trouble finding a research and development job, whether or not it makes sense to go to business school to get an Masters of Business Administration) MBA degree to enhance their business acumen. While I don’t think it would hurt (especially if you are interested in business), I also don’t think most scientists benefit from enrolling traditional MBA degree programs. With this in mind, some forward-looking academic institutions have launched joint PhD-MBA programs which allow students enrolled in these programs to graduate with PhD and MBA degrees at the end of their graduate training.
I have previously written several
Like it or not, writing a carefully-constructed resume or curriculum vitae (as resumes are known in scientific circles) is a vital part of any successful job search. Inexperienced job seekers tend to hastily craft resumes without paying much attention to format, style or content and then wonder why they can’t land job interviews. The best way to approach resume writing is to think of a resume as a work of art–something that requires a lot of thought, creativity and attention to detail. As one well-known professional recruiter and job search expert put it”Trying to find a job without a smart, well-crafted resume is like showing up for dinner at a fancy restaurant in a T-shirt and cutoffs. They won’t let you in.”
The “
BioJobBlog and
While life sciences companies are still reluctant to take the “social media plunge,” many other companies (with active social media programs) frequently hire employees known as social media managers who oversee and run their social networks. This is because successful social media websites require daily attention and are extremely time consuming and labor intensive. In general, employees who are hired for these jobs have strong backgrounds in social media and technology but frequently possess little expertise in the industry that they are working in. Because social media is so new, many hiring managers believe that the social media and technology skills of these managers are more important than an understanding of the industry that they work in. However, while this practice may be acceptable in other industries, it won’t be the case for the social media managers who oversee pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices and diagnostics social media websites. These managers will likely be required to have a firm understanding of current rules and regulations guiding drug development and marketing and advertising of approved life sciences products. This will be necessary if the drug makers who hire these managers want to steer clear of regulatory scrutiny by the US Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies.
While I was at the Experimental Biology meeting in New Orleans, LA this past week I presented a seminar entitled “Using Social Media For Career Development in the Life Sciences.” This was the first time that I presented this talk, and was expecting a large turn out given the popularity of Facebook and more recently Twitter, a microblogging platform. Much to my surprise only 15 students showed up for the talk—many of whom hadn’t heard of Twitter and were only vaguely familiar with Facebook. Luckily, a few attendees had Facebook profiles and one or two were on Twitter so the talk wasn't a complete bust. Nevertheless, the lack of interest in this talk was extremely puzzling to me—my other seminars, “Interviewing Tips” and “Alternate Careers for PhDs” were very well attended and I was booked solid for one-on-one resume critiquing sessions during the five days I was in New Orleans.
Are you a life sciences or healthcare professional with a passion for computers, IT or software development? If so, you might want to consider a career in health informatics—one of the hottest, new fields in the life sciences and healthcare industries. Health informatics specialists typically have expertise in medical records and claims, clinical care and programming. In other words, they have a foot in two worlds— medicine and technology — and can easily bridge the often daunting gap between them. It is important to point out that there is a difference between healthcare IT and informatics personnel. The health IT people run the servers and install software, but the informatics people are the ones who analyze and interpret clinical/ medical information and work with clinical and other healthcare staff to advise and help them.
The US economy has lost about 7.1 million jobs since December 2007 and nationwide unemployment is hovering around 8.5 percent. Despite the lost of about 80,000 pharmaceutical jobs over the past three years and unprecedented consolidation taking place in the life sciences sector—Merck-Schering Plough, Pfizer-Wyeth and Roche-Genentech—the job prospects for scientists at biotech companies, medical devices and diagnostics, and government appear to be stronger than anticipated. While drug discovery and sales jobs may be scare, there are rapidly emerging opportunities in the fields of medical communications, regulatory affairs, biomanufacturing, clinical trials management , bioengineering, medical devices/diagnostics and website development and management.
For the past five years, I have been giving career development seminars that offer graduate students and postdoctoral fellows alternate careers choices (instead of research) for life scientists. The intent of these seminars is to get students who may not be enamored with a possible life long career at the bench (I know that there a lot of you out there) to think about what they really want to do after they complete their graduate or postdoctoral training.
The social development of the web 2.0 has largely bypassed science. Hugely popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and the like have millions of members and generate huge amounts of traffic. But those who use these sites come from all walks of life. None are devoted solely to science.
For the past 60 years, American science was second to none. However, the US is perilously close to losing that distinction. Put simply, American science, like its economy, is in free fall.


