Welcome to MSL Talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical.

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Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. My guests today are Josh Yoder, Regional Director, and Kendra Peltz, who's an MSL. They're both with Syneos Health, and we talk about how to architect a presentation for an MSL interview. And it was awesome. These guys are really, really amazing. I think you're going to like this. And as always, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and Instagram. And, um, MSL Talk Live. Join us. It's, uh, the first Tuesday of every month, 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Hope to, uh, see you there.

Hey Josh and Kendra, welcome. How you guys doing today?

Great, couldn't be better.

Awesome. You're doing well. Thanks for having us on.

Well, thank you guys. Thanks for joining me. This is, uh, I've been telling Josh this is something I've been planning for a long time. I know Josh for a long time. I see him, like, at least once a year, but that was pre-COVID. Um, so this is long overdue. So I'm excited. And I'm really excited, Josh, that you brought Kendra along because I think that this is going to give us an awesome one-two punch. So before we get started, why don't we do some introductions and disclaimers and stuff like that? And maybe we'll start with Kendra.

Yeah, hi. My name is Kendra Peltz. I'm a pharmacist, PharmD by training. I spent about 10 years in clinical practice between retail and, uh, United Healthcare, or with OptumRx. And made the transition over to Medical Science Liaison in March of 2021. Super excited. Josh hired me on at Syneos with BBI Vaccines.

Awesome, awesome. Well, welcome. We're so happy to have you here.

Thank you so much. I'm excited and a little nervous.

That's all good. It'll be fun. So Josh Yoder, again, Tom and I've known each other for a while. Been in the MSL game for about six years now. Um, my background's in, in academic research. I spent about 15 years doing academic research on viruses and then switched over to a small biotech for a little while in R&D. And then, um, kind of looking at what I want to do when I grow up, that always came back to science communication. Like a lot of people, found out what an MSL was, it sounded awesome, and jumped into it. And it turns out it is awesome. So I've had a lot of fun doing it. And I recently switched over to being a manager back in March, and I had the pleasure of hiring people like Kendra on my team, and she's really, she's made it easy for me. So it's been a, it's been a good time. And, uh, as we mentioned, intros and disclaimers, we work for the same company, obviously. Everything we say here today is kind of our own personal opinion. Doesn't necessarily represent the opinions of the company.

Awesome. And not that we're going to get too far into this, so we'll just, I like to talk about, sometimes you got to throw a little something personal out there. And we, the three of us have something in common, right? So we all have wrestling backgrounds or have wrestling in our family, right? So.

Right. So Josh, wrestling background. Kendra, what's, now, how are you affiliated with wrestling? Is it family?

Uh, yeah, it's family. I always grew up with a wrestling school. My cousin won state at 103 as a senior. And then I went to Oklahoma State to support the, uh, the Cowboys. Go Pokes.

Awesome. All right. So for any wrestling fans out there, if you have any good wrestling stuff, send it over to us. But we're not, we promised not to talk about it. Although I had to bring it up.

Indeed. I, I warned that this, this could devolve into the first wrestling podcast on MSL Talk.

Right. It could. It absolutely could. It could. It's, you know, stuff goes south fast here. You know, it goes south fast.

Or north, depending on how you want to look at it.

There you go. I love it. Um, so for those of you don't know, wrestling reversal is actually a wrestling move. So Kendra, you get two for that. Anyway, so let's jump into this. So this topic, we've kind of covered before. What we have covered before, so it's about how to architect a presentation for an MSL interview. Now, the difference in what we're going to talk about is a lot of people have asked me, and we had a great podcast on, um, MSL presentations with Catherine Gann. The difference is a lot of people like, well, I don't like, I would love to hear from somebody that's been successful doing it to see what their framework was like. How did they actually put it together? So we're going to talk about that today. And what I think is going to be great is we're going to get a hiring manager's perspective from Josh, and we're going to get the candidate's perspective from Kendra because she just went through this fairly recently. So I think the best place to start is with the instructions. So what types of presentations? Because there's a lot of different types of presentations that companies might throw at you. So let's start with that. I mean, maybe if you guys want to talk about a couple of different scenarios or, or different types of presentations that you've been aware of or that you guys have seen out there, um, you know, from companies and hiring managers. Kendra, why don't you go ahead with the experience you had here?

Um, the experience that I had, um, with Syneos was, I was sent an email in a recent press release for phase three clinical trials on the therapeutic area that I was being hired for or interviewing for. And so they asked, the ask was 30% of background information and 70% of clinical information. Basically, the unmet need, um, with the background, the kind of the therapeutic area overview, the landscape, what's out there. And then going 70% into the actual clinical trial and kind of tailoring that to the strategy of the company and, um, disseminating that data, kind of tying it all in at the end to to see the unmet need, kind of what we're doing here with the company, and then how that's going to look in the future is what the ask was. And, and really, I'd never seen anything like this. I Googled myself presentations, and there's not a whole lot of framework behind it, and there's absolutely no examples that I could find, so to speak, on YouTube either. And so my first step in this was, I got the email and I immediately sent it to my mentors to have them read it so I understood they asked, and they were able to help me out with that. And then also send me their presentations. So I kind of had some kind of baseline framework. Wasn't the same therapeutic area, but I knew what order I needed to go in, what flow I needed to go in. And that was kind of my starting point.

All right. Well, let's, let's, that's brilliant, by the way. So tip number one, ask a friend or colleague or mentor if they can help you out and you can take a look at what maybe they've done. So in this scenario, how, what was the timeframe like? How, like, how long did they give you? How long did they say you should do, you know, slides versus Q&A?

So it was a 20-minute presentation. 15 to 20-minute presentation. Um, they did not mention, they said that there would be Q&A, but I didn't have an outline whether or not the Q&A was going to be a part of that 20 minutes. So I reached out to the hiring manager to ask that question because that's important as well. Are they expecting you to do a 20-minute presentation solely 20 minutes, or are you going to have that question and answer period within that 20 minutes? Um, I talked to one of my mentors, and he said, I feel like you present about the same speed as I do. I would focus a minute on each slide. Some slides are going to be less than a minute, some slides are going to be more than a minute. So I had about 20 slides, um, for the actual bulk of the presentation, and, uh, turned out to be about 15 minutes for the actual presentation.

Awesome. And so Josh, you were obviously a part of this, right? So you, this, this came from you, from your company. Um, so what was your perspective? Was, um, so that was the right amount of slides in the right timing? Left enough room for Q&A? So from your perspective, what are you looking for? And then when do you just jump into the Q&A portion? And then how does that work?

Yeah, so, you know, obviously there's going to be some variability all the time, you know, depending on how each interview goes and that sort of thing. But I think the whole kind of thought behind sending out something like a press release or, you know, phase three data from your own company or anything is to standardize it for everyone, right? So, you know, as you know, there's tons of different approaches at different companies. Sometimes you pick your own topics and things like that, but that can lead to a lot of variability, right? Some people will pick something they're an expert in, some people pick something your company does, some will pick something way off topic. Um, so I think just to standardize it a little bit, give us a little bit of, of, you know, frame of reference on our end. Um, this, this was kind of the approach that was adopted. It wasn't really my decision, but it does make it a little bit easier when you're looking at everything in the same, in the same way. And I know when I've interviewed, I've done the same thing. About a minute a slide. Um, and we're not sitting here timing, making sure you're right on 15 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever it is. You have to tell the story, right? This is a communication role. Can you tell the story in that time frame? Be concise, be clear, get to, get the point across. And it can go either way. Sometimes there's questions sprinkled throughout, sometimes, you know, people are sitting there listening to the presentation and ask questions at the end. Um, you know, I think as long as you're, you're telling the story, you're responding to questions appropriately, whether they're throughout or at the end, that's kind of what we're looking for is, you know, do you kind of get what this is? Did you do the background research on the therapeutic area, the company, the, you know, the overall context of why this is meaningful?

So, and what makes this a little tricky is that everybody that's interviewing has the same task, everybody has the same instructions. So Josh, you're comparing all the candidates against the same assignment. So does, like, what, so then what would you say separates the good presentations versus the ones that don't stand out as much?

Yeah, and, you know, some of these themes will go throughout the interview, obviously. Um, you know, it's, it's preparation again. Did you, did you really dig into this and figure out what is important? Um, you know, obviously you can focus on, on certain things that you know may or may not be important, right? Did you get the gist of the data? Did you tell me, you know, my my colleague on the, on the East, as a regional manager, always likes to ask people, what are your three top takeaways if I have, you know, two minutes to talk with you? So I think things like that, if you can focus on what the real message is, how does the company message it, right? This information is out there. Companies put press releases out, they put, you know, social media, however they want to distribute it, how are they saying it? And are you on board with that, right? You know, you're going to go out and represent this company. Do you know what the company wants to say? Ultimately, that's, that's what we're doing in our job. So I think those sort of things. Um, but, you know, one thing that I, that constantly comes up, whether I'm thinking about it or not, is what's your passion for it, right? Why, why do you want this job? Why do you want to work for this company? How are you invested in this particular therapeutic area? And I think that can come across, like I said, throughout the interview, but certainly even in the presentation, just the, you know, do you have a little story to tell? Why is this personal for you? Or, you know, what's meaningful about about this for you? Because, you know, we're all going to have lows in our job, lows in our personal life. What's going to motivate you to come out here and and tell this story when you don't feel like telling a story, or you have a person on the other side that doesn't seem interested? Can you engage them? Can you get us excited about it when we've heard this 20 times?

Yeah, so I think, you know, those sort of things really can differentiate it. Like you said, the data is going to stay the same, right? But how are you getting it across? And are you convincing me that this is important data, and this is important for patients?

That is so true, man. I could tell you, I am 100, 1,000% agree with you, Josh. I think that number one, when all things are equal amongst candidates, the position is always awarded to the person that shows they want it the most. So if you bring that level of interest and excitement and enthusiasm, you're gonna separate yourself from everybody else. Um, but then the other thing too, is you keep talking about, you know, telling the story and and and making the presentation compelling, making it interesting, showing that you put a lot of work and a lot of time into it. That just translates. And then when people leave that presentation, like, wow, that person did a really good job.

So Kendra, question for you. So when you were given this, a lot of times our clients will give candidates a certain time frame to prepare. Like, everybody will get the article or the instructions five days before the presentation, so that it's a totally equal level playing field. So how much time did you have to prepare? And then how did you prepare? Like, did you do it all in one night? Did you obsess over it and do it like 10 hours a day for five days? I'm curious how much time do we have for me to explain this? Honestly, I feel like I got the assignment, um, about a week before I was asked to present it. It had a weekend in between. And that's kind of what the framework that I knew from just Sam Dyer's book. I knew I would have some kind of weekend. I had a vacation scheduled, and so luckily I had some time off with work, um, to be able to prepare for this. But my first step was to get the slides down, you know, just get it all down on paper. Second step was to script out what I wanted to say. And, um, after I got that scripted, I read that off to an MSL or a couple of MSLs, and then they were able to tell me how an MSL would present it. Because I know how I would say the data and things like that, but I didn't realize the intricacies and like the art of MSLing. And somebody was able to show me that and how they would present, just, you know, inclusion and exclusion criteria. You don't want to read the whole slide, but he would pull out certain things, or just epidemiology information, and making it personal to to my clinical experience. I had never been an MSL before. So in those kinds of where could just be a data dump, I was able to use my clinical experience and be like, oh, you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm sure you are too. Or, you know, I've been a pharmacist for 10 years, I didn't think this was a problem, but when I dug into the data, then this is what I'm seeing. And the most compelling thing is here's a personal story to it. And so I think that's what they're looking for. People aren't going to remember the numbers, but they're going to remember how you made it personal and what your experience is analogous to the MSL role. And so where was I? So I scripted it out, heard somebody else help me out and and communicating this data. Also, you know, one of the pro tips was, use more pictures, make your PowerPoint as easy as possible, take breaks between slides. Something I didn't realize is, or especially in the virtual world, I use my hands a lot in person-to-person presentations, but you have to orient those folks to the slide. If you look at the figure on the top left, you can see in the navy blue, this, that, and the other thing. So being able to orient folks to know what you're talking about is incredibly important. So I kind of got those down in, in a couple days, and then the rest of the time is just perfecting what I wanted to say, make sure I wasn't reading it. I made everybody listen to it. My girlfriend, that presents a lot, she had three screens. I didn't. And so I went to her house, um, that way I could look into the camera. And those are things that, those are some points of feedback that I got from Josh and Mark during my interview. Is I was looking into the camera, um, but I also had three different screens to set myself up for success. My girlfriend stole my slides and told me to present the data. Yeah, so I didn't have anything to look at. Had a girlfriend set it up completely on Teams. I presented to her. She recorded me. I mean, I did everything that I possibly could within myself, and also with a person that knew nothing about the therapeutic area, and got their feedback and was able to create a presentation that was that was personal to both audiences. And I think that's really important because you have no idea who you're going to be speaking to. It could be somebody that works for the state of Kansas that has no scientific background, or the top hepatologist for the liver center that cured Naomi Judd. Um, you know, and so it's really important to get that feedback from different audiences because you're, you're interviewing to a panel. Different people pick up on different things.

Some companies will let you share your screen and then you just present to the slides. Some companies say no, we don't want you to share your screen, we want to see you on the full screen, send us your slides, we'll follow along. How do you guys do it?

Yeah, we, we have the people share their screen. I mean, I think that's closest to what you're going to do with a KOL. Um, you know, a lot of times again, it's not like you're going to be giving a presentation every time when you go out to a KOL, right? Um, we need to know that you can. And a lot of times it is just a conversation. But I think, you know, just again, handling the technology like Kendra said, you know, practice and make sure you can do that. Make sure your technology and your environment is good enough, right? If your internet's not fast enough, go to your friend's house or, you know, make sure you're in a controlled environment where it's quiet and you don't have, you know, animals running around or, you know, whatever the distraction is. We all know that happens. And, you know, if something does happen, we kind of play it off. Someone makes a joke about it, you move on, and it's, it's real life. But at the same time, you're in control of this, right? So find the environment where there is good internet or where you have a a quiet space where you have, you know, again, maybe it's interesting stuff behind you, don't have distracting stuff behind you. Just any of those sort of things, you know, it's in your control. You can do the practice and you can, you can test things out. And I'll say, you know, we'll sit there and we try not to hold it against people, right? You're sitting there and you're like, well, they had this technical difficulty, you know, that might have interrupted the flow of it. But at the same time, are they going to fix that before they go see a KOL? So, you know, it's, it's a real thing that, you know, you knew you had this interview coming up, you had the time to prepare and the time to get ready. What did you do about it, right? So I think, you know, to an extent, you're not here to make sure someone's an expert on Teams and can share their screen properly and has the best microphone. But, you know, I've had examples where someone had bad sound and they literally had a microphone from like Guitar Hero or something and they used it and it became a point of conversation, but the sound was fantastic, right? They, they knew they had the issue and they found a solution to it. So I think those sort of things show that, you know, the kind of preparation people will do and what steps they'll take to, you know, make sure that they can do this job and when they have an interview or a KOL call to do that, they're going to figure out how to do it in a way that's effective because a KOL's not going to want to sit there and, you know, stumble through technology and bad sound and whatever. So I think it's, it's, it's all part of the package, right? It may not be the major part, but it is a part of it, right?

And what about pants? Are pants optional, mandatory? Like how do you feel about that?

Yeah, I encourage the Zoom mullet. When you're, when you're presenting online, you know, be professional on top and the rest isn't anybody's business. So if you go in person, you might want to wear the pants. But listen, I've had people on interviews where the, the someone on the hiring team says, can you stand up for me? So they want to see if they got fully dressed. So, um, and that's a real, I, I'm not making that up, that really happened. I believe it. I would, I would personally never do that to a person. Yeah, I wouldn't. You wear what you want, be comfortable. If it makes you more comfortable and you deliver the science better. Yeah.

So guys, I think we're out of time here. Wow, we went long. Um, this went fast. You guys are good, man. You guys are good. Uh, listen, when we get on the phone, we could talk all day. We always have fun things to talk about. No doubt. And you guys have to come back. We have to do a part two. So start thinking now about what we can talk about. Absolutely. Probably, probably we'll talk about Penn State's dominance in wrestling. That sounds like a good topic. Let's do it. Oh no. Oh no. Kendra's like, Oklahoma State. Well, listen, guys, thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Um, you guys are the best and, um, I can't wait to have you back. But I really do appreciate all your knowledge and, uh, and I'm sure everybody else does too. So you guys are awesome. Thanks for having us. Super fun. Yeah, this is awesome. Cool. Take care, guys.

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How to Architect a Presentation for an MSL Interview | The Perfect Presentation | MSL Talk #102

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