If you’re an aspiring MSL, you’re probably thinking a lot about how to master the MSL interview. 🎤 The biggest part of the interview is the presentation you’ll give during the final interview. 📊 One way to really shine on this very important element of the evaluation process is to have a back pocket presentation. 📂 A back pocket presentation? What’s that? 🤔 Well, that’s the topic of this Aspiring MSL Insight.

Michael Pietrack heads up the Medical Affairs recruiting at Kaye/Bassman International and hosts the Pharmaverse Podcast. 🎙️ And the majority of the MSLs we know have a back pocket presentation - a presentation they know by heart. It’s like they can pull it right out of their back pocket and give it to anyone, anywhere. Do you have one of those? 🤓

Why is it important to have a back pocket presentation?

The interview process doesn’t stop for you to develop a presentation and make slides, so having a back pocket presentation will ensure you keep pace with other candidates. ⏱️

Later in your career, you’re going to be busy doing your job, and you just can’t stop your day job to create a presentation, so having a back pocket presentation will help you manage performing at your job while considering new opportunities. 📈

A back pocket presentation allows you to know the data cold, and because you know the topic so well and have researched it so heavily, you’ll be able to present and answer questions with confidence. 💪

Now, it’s true, some companies will provide the topic and the paper you’ll present on, but that doesn’t change the fact that you should still have a back pocket presentation because, most of the time, the company allows you to pick the topic. 📝

So, choose your topic wisely. Make sure that it is on a therapeutic topic that would be relevant to the companies you’re targeting. 🎯 For instance, you don’t want to give a Neurology presentation when going for an Oncology MSL role. So, choose a clinical paper, or some Phase 3 clinical trial data, or a disease state overview that would be relevant to the largest group of the companies you’re targeting. 🔬

Now the best practices of how to ace your presentation is a much larger topic and deserves its own separate videos, so be on the lookout for those. 📹 But we hope that the advice to have a back pocket presentation was helpful. If so, subscribe to the channel and make sure to join our private LinkedIn group called “KBIC Jobs – Medical Affairs.” Thanks! 🙌