25 Interview Mistakes Biotech Candidates Keep Making (and how to fix them fast)

This is going to be a fun episode because who doesn't love hearing about mistakes? I'm going to go over 25 common interview mistakes. We're going to go over why they're mistakes and how to avoid them. Basically, it doesn't matter if you're interviewing or not. We all can use some of these tips in our daily conversations. So this episode, I think is for you if you're a human. And if you're an AI listening, you're welcome as well. So let's get to it.

I'm Karina Klingman, scientist turned CEO of a talent strategy consulting firm. I've helped over 85 biotechs hire and develop thousands of amazing employees.

So I know what works and what.

Doesn'T work when it comes to landing a job and then excelling in it. I created the Biotech Career Coach Podcast to give you simple, actionable, step by step strategies to help you land your dream biotech job, then move up the career ladder. If you are exploring career paths, looking to learn about biotech, or simply striving to be the type of person who makes an impact and gets promoted, you're.

In the right place. Mistake number one is rambling 90 seconds or more without a point. So I teach my students to set a timer for 90 seconds and not to exceed two minutes. But what's really key is taking the time before you start answering to actually realize what the point is. What are you driving toward? Because that is a hard skill. And so when somebody asks you a question, listen deeply, take a moment. If you have a glass of water or a coffee, you can always take a little sip to kind of give yourself a moment to pause and think and then launch into your answer concisely. Getting right to the point in under two minutes, 90 seconds is preferable. If you are talking for longer than two minutes, you are making a mistake. We don't have time for that. We don't want to hear that much detail. And that brings me to mistake number two, which is talking too much. So you might think this interview is all about you and you're not wrong. But it is also a conversation. And in order for an interviewer to walk away from the conversation feeling like it was a good interview, they need to have done some of the talking. I spoke last week about how to ask good questions during your interview and that is how you keep the conversation going. You definitely want to interject some small questions throughout and have some really good prepared questions for whenever it's your turn to ask questions. And if you don't get a turn to ask questions. Make a turn to ask questions. Just let them know, hey, I had a couple of questions and then launch into your great questions. Mistake number three is rehashing your CV as if it is a biography instead of telling a tight story about the mission of the company and why you're aligned to it. So often I ask candidates to tell me about their background and they just regurgitate their cv, which is right in front of me. I don't need that. What I really want to know is what drives them? Why did they go where they went? Why did they do what they did? It's really more of a story and not just a resume review. So remember that mistake number four is over indexing on technical details. So it is very likely you're going to be speaking with a recruiter as your first step in the process. And that person is probably not in the technical area that you are. They're probably not a scientist or a technical specialist. They were probably just a really smart human that ended up in human resources. And because of that, they tend to glaze over when people start to go into the really technical nitty gritty of what they did. I am a scientist and I glaze over. So the thing is, we're not looking for you to prove that you know everything by going into nauseating detail. We just need to know that you can do the job. So if you. We're going to go back to number three. If you tell a really nice story about your motivations and you stitch it all together with what you're great at and it relates to the job, that's going to answer that question. Instead of going into great detail about every instrument you ever used in every experiment you ever designed. Mistake number five is not answering the actual question I asked. This happens all the time. I'll ask a question and I will get not an answer. And that's not helpful because I actually do need to uncover that information. So again, take a pause, listen deeply and answer the question. Don't go off on a tangent. Mistake number six is not having a clear why this role and why this company? Motivation. We are hiring humans, so we want to know what they care about, what they're passionate about, and does it align with how our needs and our passions. Because people who are excited about the role for more than just the technical details are more likely to stay with us long term. It is expensive and time consuming to hire people, so we really don't want you leaving within a year. We really want you to hit that two year mark, if possible. That's when hiring becomes profitable. So if we can see that your motivation goes beyond just the paycheck, it's going to make us feel better about making the decision to hire you. Number seven, last week we talked all about questions. If you don't show up with three prepared questions and several questions that are going to be peppered throughout that are more general about gathering information, you are leaving information on the table. And again, it's not going to feel like a conversation. So your interviewer is going to feel it was more one sided. Take a little time, prepare, show up with those questions and it's going to feel so much more natural. Mistake number eight is speaking negatively about past teams, bosses or companies. You never want to speak negatively in an interview. You might have had the worst boss in the world and it might have resulted in you getting fired and the whole world's coming to an end or whatever. It doesn't matter. Do not speak negatively about them in the interview. We are evaluating you again, as a human, as a teammate. And negative people are not people we generally want to work with. So you can still tell a story about why something maybe didn't work out, but without the negativity. And here's an example. Let's say a company did a reorganization and you were let go and you didn't feel like it was really fair. Well, you're not going to say that. Instead you're going to say something along the lines of, I had the privilege of working with XYZ team to develop abc. It was so much fun and unfortunately the company had to do a reorganization and my whole team was let go as a result. I moved to. And then you can say the next move. Or maybe this is your next move, right? And then you can say the next company and the next move. So you can stitch together a concise history of your employment in a very positive way without speaking negatively about anything and keep rolling through your history so that we are seeing that you're actually an optimist. You loved this role, you liked that role. You contributed to this. That's what we really want to hear. Mistake number nine is taking credit without naming your team's role. I want to hear a good mix of I and we. When you're interviewing, I want to know that you're a team player and that you own things within that team. We don't do science in a bubble. I know that you didn't do every single thing in the company. So I'm looking for you to give Credit and take credit, but in a reasonable way. So again, a good mix of I and we and make sure you actually name your team's contribution. That goes a long way with me. Mistake number 10 is not including metrics and numbers within your explanation of things. So if you have done a good job of tailoring your resume and if you need a great template for that, come jump into our school community and get my template. You will see I have lots of numbers and outcomes, really tangible things in those resume templates because then it makes it easy for you to communicate exactly what the impact was. You can take that right into your interview as well. If you're on a zoom interview, it's an open book test. You can have your resume up so that you can quickly cite those numbers. If you're on site, it can be something you slip into conversation. You might need to just memorize a few little things so that you're speaking about your impact. But be sure to sneak some numbers in. We are scientists, we like numbers, so give me numbers. Mistake number 11 is not asking what the impact of this role will be in the first 90 days. I cannot tell you how revealing that question is when you ask it right. So you can ask something along the lines of what does success look like in the first 90 days and how is it measured? Or what are the priorities in the first 90 days for this position? Or what does the team care most about accomplishing in the first 90 days? This is going to give you a little glimpse into the culture of that team. You're going to know how much they're expecting from you. It's not going to be a surprise. If they tell you they expect you to go to the moon and back, you're going to know it's a pretty ambitious team. But if they tell you some pretty reasonable expectations for those first 90 days, that's going to ease your mind about what that might look like and how you might have time to get settled in. And look, if you are an ambitious person and going to the moon and back doesn't sound terrible, that might be the job for you. So I'm not saying it's bad either way, but that question gives you a glimpse at what the culture's gonna be like. Mistake number 12 is getting way too hung up on title or compensation, especially in the first interview. Kind of get the lay of the land. See, if it's a no go. Like, honestly, if it's, you know, tons of money, less than you can make, or the title is way off, then yeah, it's probably not a fit for you, but if it's close, there are many times when we will upgrade a role or increase the salary because of a fantastic candidate. So don't rule things out and don't get too hung up talking about it. Put your expectation out there, get their expectation back and move on, because the recruiter is going to rule you out. If it's not going to work, you don't need to do that for them. Mistake number 13 is interrupting or talking over the interviewer. It happens a lot. Please don't do it. Mistake number 14 is reading the answers or sounding scripted. And I think this is happening more and more because of some AI tools that help people during interviews, but actually make people seem like they're really distracted and a little bit robotic. So maybe don't use those AI tools. I don't know how good they are. I haven't tried using them myself. But don't sound like you're reading answers or sound scripted. That's like an evolving tip that I'm starting to notice every once in a while. Mistake number 15 is ignoring cues to be concise. I will give visual cues when I want somebody to stop talking. So I'm, you know, I'm trying not to be rude about it, but I might give you a facial cue, like, I'm gonna start talking. So I might pause with my mouth open, like I'm about to say something. That should be your cue to kind of wrap it up and say, oh, did you have a question or something? Like, all right, so just look for those cues. If you start to see your interviewer starting to, like, glance off, look really distracted, whatever, that's another visual cue. You are boring them. So be concise. If you're concise, you're not going to have to worry about it. But if you have a longer story to tell, start to think about that and watch for those cues. Mistake number 16 is using jargon or acronyms or terminology that recruiters probably won't know. Like I said, they're probably not technical experts. And so if you start down a really technical path and you start to drop all kinds of weird words, they're going to glaze over. And again, that goes back to being too technical. But this can happen to anyone, right? We're all specialists in different areas. We'll have this sort of insider language, and not everybody knows that, and it feels exclusionary if they don't know the code. So try to explain acronyms if you need to use them and try to include them in that conversation. So they don't feel like they're dumb for not knowing something. Mistake number 17 is dodging failure questions. Instead of owning the lesson, we all fail. One of my favorite expressions is, we win or we learn, right? We never lose. It is totally human to fail and to learn from it. If you can explain a failure and explain the lesson, that's going to be so much more powerful. Let's say, for example, you were on the Quality team and maybe an audit didn't go well or something along those lines. That's a learning opportunity and it's totally normal. And every single person in Quality has had that happen. So to talk about it positively as, oh, you know, this happened and we learned that X, Y and Z, so we made these changes and then we were successful. That's a much better story than, oh, you know, my teammate didn't know better, so we didn't do this thing. And then the FDA came down on us like, I don't want to hear that story. That's a terrible story. This is a true story, by the way. I'm basically telling you what happened in a recent interview. So that candidate was not successful. And so it sort of brought this up on this list of don'ts during the interview. Along those lines, mistake 18 is saying the words no and but when I'm working privately with people and helping them to improve their interview skills, a lot of the time I tell them they have to get a butt jar. This is a jar that their family can hold them accountable for saying the words no and but it is a common tool that speaker trainers use. So if you're learning public speaking, this is pretty common no and but put the brakes on a conversation. So if you can train yourself to use them very sparingly and instead use yes and it keeps the conversation rolling and it feels much more positive. I'm going to give you a real world example of this. If you are lacking a skill and they are going to ask you about that skill, have a really good answer prepared. That's a yes and answer. So it could be something like this. Do you have experience in X? And you can say, that's actually one of the things that drew me to this job. I have experience in Y and Z and my institution didn't have X, so I'm really excited to be able to get experience in that area. So now I have turned a no into a yes and into a listing of your transferable skills and an eagerness to learn and do better, which we're all scientists and we all love. To learn and do better. So that's a much better answer. And you still didn't lie. You didn't say, yes, you had experience in that you did highlight your experience in a better way. Mistake number 19 is not highlighting the tools and techniques that are directly in the job description. This goes for your resume, too. So I have been reviewing a lot of resumes for a role where the title of the job is really telling. So it's a quality assurance job. Can I tell you how many people don't have the words quality assurance anywhere in their resume? Same thing goes when you're interviewing. You should be crafting your elevator pitch for your specific interview to make sure that you're highlighting the actual stuff in the job, the things we care about. We're listening for those keywords. And so we're going to be getting little pings in our brain every time you say the right words. It's really easy to do and a lot of candidates don't do it. Mistake number 20 is not following up within 24 hours. Sooner, if better. But sending a nice thank you note where you highlight what you learned in the conversation and how grateful you are for that conversation is such a nice thing to do and not many candidates do it. So if you're one of those people who doesn't send thank you notes consistently, rethink that. We really do notice mistake number 21 is technical problems. Look, it happens to all of us. You try and log into a Zoom meeting. It doesn't work. Your zoom needs to update and it's locked you out. Whatever it happens, try to think very deeply about getting to the interview on time. Consider time zones. Check that the links are there and the calendar invites. Do a tech check, if you can, beforehand. Make sure that Zoom is updated, whatever. But if all else fails, which sometimes it will, be prepared immediately to send an email to your interviewer letting them know you're having technical problems. Earlier this week, I had a candidate who was 10 minutes late to the interview. I actually left the interview, but Microsoft Teams actually let me know that somebody popped into the room, which was helpful. And they said that they had technical problems. And my thought was, why didn't you email me? You should have just emailed me and then I would have known. So do that. Try your best to not let them happen. And when they do. I said when, not if. When they do, be ready to fire off that quick email. Mistake number 22 is being low energy or monotone, and this one's hard. You might have to amp up your personality. A little bit. I actually have an entire book club book on this that is in the community on how to increase your energy and have a better, higher energy, more enthusiastic delivery. But when we see a low energy person on Zoom or in person, we kind of think they're going to be low energy in general. And that's not always true. But we're human and that's the impression we get. Mistake number 23 is not framing your job changes with a positive through line. So I'm not going to belabor this because I actually touched on this a little bit earlier. But get used to a quick way of talking about your job changes in a really positive manner. Even if things didn't end great because you've always learned something and you can take something from every single job and you can apply it in a positive way. And you can also then frame a disappointment like a lost job, like a riff or a layoff, as an opportunity to try something new with a different company, which is a great thing. Mistake number 24 is not asking about success metrics. And this kind of goes back to what you're going to ask during that interview and why. But if you ask about how they're measuring success, it's going to give you a glimpse into how organized the company is, do they have that set up, et cetera. And finally, mistake number 25 is not closing the deal just at the end. Restate your fit and your interest in the next step and then send that thank you note. Close the loop. It is a sales pitch after all, so you really want to end it strong. Those are the 25 mistakes that I'll highlight here today. It's not an exhaustive list, but if you nail those things, you will be doing pretty well in your interviews. If you want more tips like this, if you want scripts and you want resources, please jump into the community. We are there for you and we will see you next week.

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