Key Takeaways

Life science interview tips to succeed in a senior-level interview:

• Review your CV and quantify your achievements,
• Research the organisation’s pipeline and competitive position,
• Map your experience to the role requirements,
• Prepare a 30-60-90 day vision,
• practise telling your career as a connected narrative.

The ten sections below break each step down.

The 10 Life Science Interview Tips, Explained

If you’re preparing for a senior-level or executive position in the life science industry, you already know the stakes. But even experienced leaders benefit from targeted life science interview tips for executives. Because the higher the position in the organisational hierarchy, the more scrutiny and the more interview stages you’ll face.

You know the interviewer is evaluating your fitness for a leadership-level position, so the key is to convince them you have the necessary skills and experience to advance the business while being a good cultural fit. Interview preparation can make it easier to accomplish this goal.

If you’ve made it to interview, whether telephone or face-to-face, you’ve already overcome the first hurdles in the hiring process. That means you’ve been shortlisted by an executive search firm, recruiter or member of talent acquisition and put forward to the hiring manager of the life science organisation you’re interviewing with. But you’re up against tough competition. In our experience,  4-7 other candidates are typically shortlisted for senior-level life science roles.

The interview is your place to shine. You only have a small window in which to impress, but by following the steps in this article, you’ll be fully prepared and confident in your delivery. And when the interview ends, you can rest assured that you left the hiring manager and other hiring stakeholders in no doubt that you are a talented life science leader who can transform their department, function or organisation.

This is the second in our series of life science interview tips for executives. We also cover:

• The 7 Different Types of Executive Job Interview
• How to give an outstanding interview presentation
• How to handle compensation questions during interview
• Competency-based interview questions for life science executives
• Post-interview etiquette for senior managers and executives

Here’s how to make it happen, step by step.

#1 Review your CV and key accomplishments

Management and executive-level interviews typically begin with questions designed to validate the skills, experience, qualifications and accomplishments listed on your CV.

Following formal introductions by the hiring manager and accompanying interviewers (often an HR member), expect probing questions about your past achievements and how you handled difficult situations.

Before the interview, make sure you can list your major accomplishments, especially those that relate directly to the role you’ve applied for. Wherever possible, quantify your achievements. “I reduced audit findings by 40% over 18 months” is far more compelling than “I improved quality performance.” Likewise, if you led a regulatory submission, be ready to discuss the timeline, the team structure, the outcome, and what you’d do differently. The hiring manager expects specifics and will ask follow-up questions. Don’t fall at the first hurdle. Know your CV inside out.

What interview questions do life science hiring managers ask most often?

Senior-level interviewers typically ask competency-based questions about pipeline leadership, cross-functional stakeholder management, regulatory strategy, commercial growth, and how you have managed adversity or organisational change. Many use situational questions alongside behavioural ones. For the full list with guidance on how to answer each, see our competency-based interview questions guide.

#2 Research the organisation thoroughly

As the interview progresses, the hiring manager will likely want to find out what you know about their company, what interests you in the position, and why you want to work for them and not another life science company. A surface-level glance at the About Us page won’t cut it at executive level. You need a well-rounded understanding of the organisation’s mission, values, products, competitive position and recent trajectory.

The good news is that most of this information is publicly available. The challenge is pulling it together into a coherent picture, quickly and thoroughly.

Use AI to accelerate your research

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can conduct thorough research across multiple sources far quicker than you could do yourself. They can also identify patterns across different data types and surface connections you might have missed. Ask an LLM to summarise the organisation’s recent press activity, map their clinical pipeline, profile their leadership team, or compare them against key competitors.

Just be sure to validate the output. Ask the AI to cite its sources and check every one to ensure accuracy. AI is a powerful starting point, but never the final word.

Company sources: website, social media and press releases

Start with the organisation’s own channels. Their website provides information about products, services, history, mission and culture. Don’t stop at the About Us page. Seek out annual reports, full accounts, white papers and blog articles to get a true understanding of the organisation’s activities and direction over the past five years.

Follow the organisation on LinkedIn, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and any other platform where they maintain an active presence. Social media reveals how the company wants to be perceived by customers, partners and potential employees, and monitoring it in the days before your interview may surface developments that others miss.

Press releases deserve particular attention. While they inevitably place a positive spin on topics, they provide a wealth of information about recent discoveries, product and service launches, mergers and acquisitions, and CSR initiatives, all of which offer great stimulus for questions during the interview. Some press activity will surface during your broader research, but it’s good practice to visit the press page on the website separately, just in case your wider research misses a key development. Be sure to have read the last few releases before heading in.

External sources: media coverage and industry journals

The organisation’s own channels tell you how they want to be seen. External sources tell you how they’re actually perceived.

News coverage provides a more balanced view of the organisation, its competitors and its reputation. You can search manually by typing the organisation’s name into Google and selecting the News tab, but an LLM will get you there faster — ask it to summarise recent media coverage, flag any negative press, and identify recurring themes across the last 12 months. Publications like STAT News, FiercePharma, BioPharma Dive and Endpoints News are good starting points for pharma and biotech coverage.

Industry journals go a step further, covering not just individual organisations but the broader life sciences landscape. They report on significant breakthroughs, regulatory shifts, and emerging trends that could shape the responsibilities of your target role. Reading the latest issues before your interview gives you the language and context to hold a strategic conversation with the hiring manager.

Map the competitive landscape

An LLM can map the competitive landscape for you in minutes. Ask it to identify the organisation’s top 5–10 competitors, compare their pipelines, summarise recent market share shifts, and highlight where each company is investing. You can also run a manual search – type “top [life science function] companies” into Google – but an LLM will typically give you a more structured, comparative output in a fraction of the time.

For pharmaceutical and biotech companies specifically, ask the AI to compare clinical pipelines across competitors in the same therapeutic area. Understanding where the organisation sits in the market, including who’s ahead, who’s catching up, and where the white space is. demonstrates the kind of strategic thinking hiring managers expect from senior leaders. As always, verify the AI’s output against a reliable source before citing it in an interview.

Depending on the size of the organisation, some competitors may be aspirational, especially for startups, so clarify this with the hiring manager during the interview. For more questions to ask at this stage, see our guide: 13 of the smartest questions to ask a life science hiring manager.

#3 Research the hiring manager

Researching a potential employer is an excellent way to understand the organisation as a whole, but it can also be beneficial to learn more about the person or people who will be interviewing you. You may or may not report into them in future, but they definitely make hiring recommendations, so you want to create a positive first impression.

The hiring manager calls the shots in the interview and hiring process. Like you, they are busy individuals who manage a team, department or function. And they’re looking for their next new hire to help ease their burden. The more you can find out about the hiring manager before the interview, the better you can tailor your responses to their questions.

First things first, find out who they are. If you’re not sure, seek clarification from the person arranging your interview, whether that’s a member of HR, a recruiter or an executive search consultant. Once you know who the interviewers are, look them up on LinkedIn. What is their role? What are their recent accomplishments? Where did they go to university?

You can also Google the individual to see if they have contributed to any media articles, press releases or hosted any events which could suggest they are subject matter experts in their field. In the life sciences, senior hiring managers often publish in peer-reviewed journals or speak at industry conferences like DIA, CPHI or BIO. Finding a recent presentation or publication gives you excellent material to reference during interview.

#4 Map your experience to the role requirements

Interview success depends on your understanding of the role and using that information to deliver a standout performance. Examine the job specification and, for every requirement, prepare a case study of a similar situation in your career where you excelled. You might need to do a little detective work to remind yourself of the objective, deliverable and core metrics.

Where possible, draw from experiences that occurred in the last 3–5 years. The more recent the experience, the better. That way, if asked how your experience compares with the job specification, you will be able to deliver a clear and concise answer on why you are an excellent fit for the role.

If you lack a particular skill, don’t fret. Job specifications are usually aspirational, and you wouldn’t have been shortlisted if your experience wasn’t sufficient. But the more requirements you have direct experience of, the better your chances of success. You could even consider signing up for an online course or purchasing a book on the subject to better your knowledge. This will help you sound more knowledgeable, demonstrate an appetite for lifelong learning, and show your self-motivation and interest in the role.

#5 Prepare your vision for the role

You should treat the interview as an opportunity to demonstrate how you would develop the role over the next 3,  6 and 12 months if hired. These predictions should play to your personal strengths while demonstrating an understanding of market conditions and the organisation’s mission.

Don’t forget to include shorter-term goals too. Identify clear objectives for your first 30, 60 and 90 days. This helps the hiring manager visualise how you would settle into the role and demonstrates that you can take practical steps to develop the position from day one.

For instance, if you’re interviewing for a VP of Quality role, your 30-day plan might focus on auditing existing quality systems, while your 90-day plan could outline a roadmap for alignment with updated regulatory guidance.

One small but powerful tip: when discussing your plans, use “we” rather than “I.” It signals that you already see yourself as part of the team, and shifts the conversation from evaluation to collaboration.

#6 Use the STAR technique to structure your responses

Impressing at interview is all about the way you tell your story. Any interview for a senior-level management or executive position will include questions about your experience, your management style, past career accomplishments, mistakes and how you overcame them, and expectations for the future.

Your answers to these questions will help the hiring manager judge your competence for the role and cultural fit. Excelling at these competency-based questions is key to interview success. We cover this topic in detail in our guide to competency-based interview questions for life science executives.

Use the STAR technique – Situation, Task, Action, Result – to structure your responses. To give an effective answer, all four elements need to work:

Situation

Set the scene by providing the hiring manager with some background information which will help put the other elements of your answer into context. For example, if the interviewer asks you about your last position, you could say, “I developed and led the regulatory programme for [Organisation], an industry-leading biologics organisation based in California.”

Task

Build on your background by outlining what you had to do to complete all deliverables. Building on the Regulatory Affairs example outlined earlier, you could say, “I assured the compliance of all marketing initiatives by having final sign-off on all marketing collateral and campaigns developed in-house and by external agencies.” Don’t go into too much detail unless prompted.

Action

How did you resolve the situation? Your interviewer will know that challenges are common, so don’t be afraid to be honest. Tell them what hurdles you had to overcome to accomplish your goals. Be sure to align your response with the skills, experience and qualities outlined in the job description wherever possible.

Result

Describe the outcome. Did you achieve your target? If you fell short, explain what you learned from the experience and what you would do differently if you were to approach the task again. Wherever possible, quantify your results with specific numbers, percentages or timescales.

#7 Tell your career story

If you can articulate that story clearly and concisely, you’ll stand out from candidates who simply reel off a list of achievements. The narrative doesn’t need to be polished or rehearsed to the word, but it should feel deliberate. The hiring manager should come away thinking: “This person knows where they’ve been, where they’re going, and why our organisation is the right next step.”

#8 Ask the right questions

It’s often been said that there’s more to succeeding at interview than giving the right answers. You also need to ask the right questions.

While you might believe that the answers you give during interview will paint your expertise and qualities in the best light, don’t underestimate the importance of asking questions. Hiring managers frequently acknowledge that questions posed by leadership-level candidates offer telling insights into the individual’s character, emotional intelligence and cultural fit, and it’s often the part of the interview they most look forward to.

So as the interview approaches its conclusion, the hiring manager will likely ask, “Do you have any questions?”

Here’s a tip: your interviewer wants you to ask questions about the organisation and the role, so come to the interview with pre-prepared questions of your own.

Remember, too, that this is a two-way evaluation. At senior level, you’re not just trying to win the role. Rather, you’re assessing whether the organisation, the team and the mandate are right for you. Asking thoughtful, probing questions signals confidence and genuine discernment.

Detailed inquiries about the position, company, or department are always well-received. They will impress the hiring manager, especially if they reflect your industry knowledge and interest in the organisation. You could ask about the onboarding process, opportunities for personal development and training, and any concerns you have about the role’s remit. Sample questions could include:

• What are the biggest challenges facing the person in this role?
• How do you evaluate success in this position?
• What is the long-term strategic vision of the organisation?

For more on this topic, see our guide: 13 of the smartest questions to ask a life science hiring manager.

#9 Get the logistics right

The final life science interview tips are practical, but they matter. Getting these wrong can undermine all of your preparation.

Dress code

When deciding what to wear, visit the organisation’s website or social media for clues about the dress code. If in doubt, ask your recruiter or executive search consultant for guidance. Err on the side of smart business attire, and make sure your outfit is clean, pressed and ready the night before so you’re not scrambling on the morning.

Punctuality