By Patrina Pellett, PhD (Follow me on LinkedIn)

Preparing for the first MSL usually makes people feel two very strong, but completely opposite emotions:

1. Extreme excitement
2. Blood pressure rising nervousness

It's high-stakes, so it makes complete sense to have this type of reaction. On my first interview, I sweated through my shirt and needed to rest for several minutes afterward to let my heart rate go down. I was so nervous! Read to the end to see how my interview turned out and if I got the job.

It’s natural to want to be as prepared as possible, but there’s a fine line between being well-prepared and overpreparing. Many aspiring MSLs fall into the trap of overpreparation. It gets to a point where there are diminishing returns and you make your nervousness and anxiety worse. In the worst case, you underperform in the interview and blow it.

Here's how to prepare smart, not hard for your first MSL interview to increase your chances of making a great impression in your interview and landing that coveted MSL role.

For general interview prep tips, this quick Medical Affairs interviewing checklist has you covered.

How to Prepare Smart, Not Hard for Your First MSL Interview

Know the Process

Avoid overpreparing, or worse, preparing for the wrong thing, by deeply understanding the interview process and what to expect. This is critical when you already have a full-time job and do not have a lot of time.

This means knowing each step of the process, what typically happens during that step, who the interviewers tend to be, and what they will be looking for. With this knowledge in hand, you can get laser-focused on your interview prep.

To stay organized with all the interviews, here is a Medical Affairs Interview Tracking Spreadsheet.

Get Help From Others

You can get a better understanding of how you should prepare by getting help from others who deeply understand the process or are slightly ahead of you.

This is one of the biggest benefits of the Aspire MSL program. You could wake Tom and Sarah up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night and ask them to outline the typical MSL interview process and they immediately rattle it off without having to think.

Not only that, when you are in the Aspire MSL Program, you also get access to the community to help you optimize your interview prep. You can interact with other aspiring MSLs who have recently gone through the process and get top tips and support. Learn best practices around what worked and didn't work from others later in the interviewing process.

Don't Overthink It

To avoid overthinking and overanalyzing, get and stay organized. When you know the process and have others helping you, this really helps prevent the overthinking trap. Remember that you have skills that are valuable to the company. This is your opportunity to show it.

Something that helps me is to remember that people/companies want to work with confident people. So if I am confident, they will be confident.

Tom and Sarah have a whole module in Aspire MSL to help with this. I took the lessons and did the exercises. They are amazing to help with confidence in general as well! Highly recommend!

Conclusions: How to Prepare Smart, Not Hard for Your First MSL Interview

Overpreparing will lead to burnout and unnecessary stress. The trick is to prepare smart, not hard for your first MSL interview. Knowing the process, getting help from others, and not overthinking will help you focus on prepping efficiently for your interviews. It also gets way easier the more you do it!

If interviewing is one of your weak areas, reach out to us! We can help 💛. And definitely check out the Aspire MSL program!

How do you prepare smart, not hard for interviews? Reach out to me on LinkedIn to let me know or comment on the MSL Mastery LinkedIn page.

P.S. On the interview I mentioned in the intro, I made it all the way through to the final interviews (Seven 1-hour interviews onsite. It was brutal!) and they decided to go with someone with more experience. Disappointing, yes. But it was practice and I was so much better on my next interviews!