What do MedComms agencies want?

Getting your first MedComms job can be hard.

I got mine back in 2004 without really knowing what MedComms was or why it would suit me. I was lucky, but it’s much better to be well prepared.

I’m Eleanor Steele and I’m the MedComms Mentor.

I want to help make sure that you know what you’re getting yourself into, and that you’re going to be successful and get the job if MedComms is the right industry for you. You’re more likely to have a sustainable and fulfilling career if you are actually working in the right place, in the right way.

You can watch my previous video on getting your first MedComms job to make sure that you are applying to the right places for the right reasons.

In this video, I’m going to be looking at what MedComms agencies actually want, what they’re looking for in their entry-level recruits, and how they figure out whether or not you’ve got what they’re looking for during the recruitment process.

Obviously this isn’t going to be the same for every agency out there, and there are different processes, especially for agencies who have their own entry-level training programme. They might have different priorities based on what kind of work that agency does. Maybe also their company culture, exactly what role they’re recruiting for.

Now my background and focus is obviously on the medical writing side of things, but this video is definitely applicable to anyone wanting to get their first MedComms job, because there are key elements that apply across all roles and all agencies.

How do I know? Well, I’ve been in MedComms for a really long time and for more than a decade of that I’ve been involved in recruitment. I have reviewed hundreds of applications and marked hundreds of tests, and I’ve also interviewed dozens of candidates across several different agencies for medical writing, editing, and client services roles.

I’ve also been a candidate and all of that experience means that I know what agencies are looking for and how they try to get candidates to demonstrate these qualities during the interview process.

1. Are you eligible?

The first thing that an agency wants to see is whether you are actually eligible for the role. So this will usually be covered when you submit your CV or resumé, or fill in an application form.

They need to know where you’re based. If it’s a role that’s based in an office, then you need to be close enough that you can commute. Maybe that would mean relocating?

And if it’s a remote role, then they also need to know where you are based because, usually for legal and tax reasons, they can only employ people who are based in specific countries.

That can also be because they need to know that you’re actually able to work in that country, so do you have the correct visa if you’re not a citizen of that country? They need to make sure that this is all in place, because a lot of agencies won’t actually be able to sponsor visas and things like that. Some will, but not all of them. It’s not a guarantee.

The other thing that they will also be looking at in your application or CV is your qualifications. Now, for medical writing roles, they do sometimes specify that people will need to have postgraduate qualifications or maybe even a PhD.

This is usually worth discussing with the agency if you don’t have these postgraduate qualifications or experience, but maybe you have something else that’s relevant and lots of agencies will be interested to hear about this kind of experience.

So it could be clinical experience, maybe nursing or pharmacy experience, maybe you are a vet – they’re not just interested in people who are qualified doctors as having clinical experience.

They’re also potentially interested in people who are coming from an academic publishing background or maybe science teaching. These kind of related areas will have some hugely beneficial transferrable skills.

If you don’t meet those qualification requirements, it is a good idea to check with the agency whether your other experience might be suitable instead of those qualifications, rather than just submitting an application and investing that time in the application process when actually you might fall at the first hurdle.

This is also relevant for people applying for client services or editorial roles because sometimes an agency will specify that for those roles you need a scientific background, not just for the medical writing roles. Now, this isn’t always the case, but again, it’s useful and can be an advantage to have a scientific background for those roles, which is why some agencies want that.

But, it doesn’t necessarily have to be mandatory, even if an agency is specifying that they want that background, especially if you have other experiences or skills that could demonstrate your aptitude for this type of role without those qualifications. Again, it’s better to ask and check what they think about your specific situation, rather than just applying without having a conversation with them.

They also want to know whether you’ve actually passed the test that they may have sent out. So this sometimes happens before an interview, it sometimes happens after an interview, but there will almost certainly be some kind of test that you have to do for a medical communications role.

So if it’s something that you’re doing before the interview, then it’s usually shorter and less of a time investment than for something that would happen after an interview, because it’s used as a filter basically.

Especially if people are recruiting for a large training programme, then a short first test means that they can cut down the number of people who are going to be invited to an interview day, because obviously that’s much more of a commitment from both sides.

Now, they may well get a lot of people applying at this first stage, and a lot of people may not actually even do the test, they’ll just send in an application form and hope for the best. That’s going to be an automatic rejection, so don’t do that.

Some people will do the test half-heartedly because they’re just applying everywhere, or they will do the test despite the fact that they don’t have the right skills or experience or approach. Maybe they don’t read the instructions properly or just sort of do their own thing because they think they know what they need to do.

Now I have released a previous video on how to ace your writing test, and I would recommend that you watch that video before you do any kind of test, whether it’s a writing test or for one of the other roles as well, because that has got some really good tips from all of my experience of doing tests and marking tests.

Now, there may be other tests live at an interview event or another activity after the interview that you would do at home as well, and I’ll talk a bit more about tests and other activities later on.

But generally speaking, if you follow the instructions that you are given intelligently and you are eligible for the role, then you should go through to the next round.

2. Are you compatible?

Some companies will want to have a short chat with candidates before formal interviews and sometimes before the short filter test. This is what’s known as a chemistry check, and it might be a conversation with somebody in the Human Resources department, it might be with a team leader, it might be with somebody involved in the training programme.

There are a couple of reasons why this kind of chemistry check happens. The first is around the team culture. Now every company has its own team dynamics, and anybody coming into the team needs to be compatible with that.

With small companies, it is particularly important to have a chemistry check because personality clashes within a small group can be incredibly disruptive. Larger companies have more teams, and so it can be easier to find the right place for people with very different personality types and working styles.

Now there are big differences across the industry and it’s worth taking some time to think about the type of company that would suit you, how you work best, what kind of culture you want to be part of, and I talk about this a lot more in my video on what MedComms agencies are like, so watching that could be a really useful starting point for you on this.

Another thing that is important in the chemistry check is whether you have a collaborative approach – you can be part of a team – but also you can work independently.

So all MedComms projects are a team effort, and everyone involved plays a crucial role in the project success, but we all also need to be able to manage our own workloads and do our own tasks to the best of our abilities.

Coming into the industry, new starters will get a lot of guidance and support about this, but it is also something that can be gauged during this kind of informal chat.

It probably won’t seem like a proper interview, but you might be asked questions like why you want to work for that agency in particular, or the kind of work in MedComms that you are really drawn to.

They might also ask you questions about you, but as a person, not as a professional, so maybe asking you about what you think your ideal day would be like, your proudest moment, your biggest achievement, a challenge that you have learned from and overcome. Maybe how your best friend would describe you. They want to get a picture of you as a person, not just a list of qualifications and experiences.

It’s a good idea to have a think beforehand about these kind of slightly more random, slightly more personal, questions so that you’re not put on the spot and you can think of some answers that you are comfortable sharing in that kind of scenario.

Now, some agencies might actually ask you to submit a short video introducing yourself, maybe talking for a couple of minutes about a particular question instead of having this kind of informal chemistry chat. This kind of activity will also be a way of seeing whether you are likely to fit in with the company culture, but it might also be a way to gauge your attitude about some key things, which is the next thing that I want to explore.

3. Do you have the right attitude?

There are some key attitudes that anyone in MedComms needs to have, no matter what type of role they do.

The first is having a learning mindset.

So having a learning mindset is thinking about things that you find difficult as a challenge that you haven’t yet overcome, or something that you haven’t yet learned how to be good at, rather than just thinking, ‘I can’t do it, I’m going to give up.’

Part of this is having realistic expectations. So anybody coming into MedComms has a lot to learn no matter what their background, because working in MedComms is different from anything else.

Also, there is no ‘right answer’ for anything that we’re doing. There are always lots of different ways that we could approach different projects, different data we could use, different interpretations of that data, so it’s impossible to give someone a project and go, ‘This is how you can just get it objectively right, all the steps you need to follow, off you go, no problem!’

All projects are iterative. There are lots of people involved and lots of rounds of feedback. No matter what kind of role you are working in, there will be feedback, there will be rounds of review and you will have to take on board all that feedback from lots of different directions.

And being able to take direction is another key aspect of that learning mindset. So any project that you work on, you will receive a brief from somebody more senior in the team, and you need to be able to follow the instructions that they’re giving you intelligently.

So MedComms is a client service industry. We need to respond to what our clients are asking us to do, and we also work with external experts. Working with the people within our team and people outside our company, that’s an awful lot of people that we need to be able to take direction from, but it’s a huge part of what we do.

To be able to take that direction we often need to actually ask questions because it might not be clear right from the word go. So everybody in MedComms needs to be happy asking questions, and you can demonstrate this by having a few questions that you can ask during your interview process.

Another attitude that is really crucial for MedComms is being resilient.

We need to be open to feedback. So all of those different people who are involved in our projects and giving feedback, we need to be happy to accept it and understand that it’s part of the process rather than feel that it’s a criticism of us as a person.

We are going to get constructive feedback from people within our team – that’s a huge part of on-the-job training for anybody in MedComms, but also from external experts and clients, and sometimes that feedback is a little less constructive.

It can be quite blunt, but we have to be able to find a way to separate the direction given by that feedback from the way that it may have been provided so that we can be resilient and get the project done, but also learn as much as we can from that feedback.

It might not have been phrased in the most helpful way, but it might actually be incredibly valuable.

We also need to be able to cope with stress – sometimes around the feedback that we’re getting – but sometimes around deadlines. There are a lot of deadlines in a MedComms career, and some of them can be very tight.

We often have multiple projects on the go, and we need to be able to prioritise our workload and cope with the stress of lots of things happening at once.

Again, anyone new to the industry will get support from their line manager and their team around this, but it is important to be able to focus on the project in hand and get that done despite the fact that you know you’ve got other things popping up around you, maybe meetings you need to go to, maybe other projects to work on.

Being able to get your head down, focus on what needs to be done, and then move onto the next thing is a really important part of being resilient in MedComms.

We also need to deal with disagreements. Now, this is not usually in a personal sense, but there are people who might have different opinions about how a piece of content that we’re working on should be developed, or how a project should be put together.

Writers will often need to look at conflicting comments and make suggestions about how to proceed, sometimes negotiating between different stakeholders to find a compromise and then put that compromise into play.

Client services team members often need to negotiate with clients around project timelines and budgets, whereas editors also have to negotiate about timelines, though it’s usually with other internal team members rather than clients.

Being versatile is another key attitude that anybody working in MedComms needs to have. We have to enjoy the variety that’s around the different project types that we work on, the different teams that we work with, the different clients and external experts. It’s a very varied industry with lots and lots of different opportunities, and I think that’s actually growing at the moment as new content types come along and new channels for communication with different experts, different stakeholders, patients, parents, caregivers – it’s a growing industry and there’s so much potential.

Despite that need for versatility, we also need to be able to focus on the project that we’re working on, but avoid falling down a rabbit hole. Now those rabbit holes are traps in MedComms, and it might be the part of a project that you find the most difficult that you just get stuck working on and can’t get out of. Sometimes it’s actually the task that you find the easiest or the most interesting.

No matter where your rabbit hole traps are, we need to find a balance so that we can get the project done according to the budget and the timeline so that everything works smoothly. We also need to be able to pick up new types of work quickly, understanding what’s important for our particular project, rather than just wanting to explore the entire area.

We will often get questions about these kind of attitude factors within an interview. Questions about dealing with challenging situations or stressful scenarios are very common, but you might also get other questions that look at your versatility and the way that you would react to having lots of different things on the go, timeline challenges and things like that. Those are all very common questions, and our attitude towards them is really important, but we also need to think about how we approach things.

4. What is your approach?

The test or activities that you are asked to do during an interview day will be the core method that agencies use to see your approach.

Now, whatever the activity, you need to follow the instructions intelligently. You need to use a critical eye and think about what you’re being asked to do and why you’re being asked to do it. Partly for the project, but also partly about what the agency is expecting you to demonstrate by doing this particular piece of work.

So for a Medical Writer, if you are being asked to summarise information like writing an abstract for a paper that’s been provided, or taking some data and turning it into a slide deck, they want to see that, first of all, you understand the data – the information that’s being summarised – and they want to know that you can use it appropriately.

So the right level of detail, the right language for the audience that you are writing for, and also the right format and style for the type of content that you are being asked to develop. For example, the same information would need to be presented very differently if we were writing an abstract rather than writing a slide deck.

Now you may also need to do some research or reading around the area, and potentially make suggestions of a journal or congress that would be appropriate for this piece of work. If that’s the case, think about giving different options, not just journals from the same publisher or congresses from the same organiser.

Think about a range and maybe give a rationale, not just, ‘Well, it’s a breast cancer conference!’ or, ‘It’s a conference in Europe.’ Think about the real reason why this particular journal or congress would be appropriate.

Would the audience that you are aiming for, read that journal or go to that congress? Does it say on its website that it’s particularly interested in submissions about that particular topic? Is the timing right or the region right for a congress?

Having that kind of intelligent critical thinking is incredibly useful, and so we want you to demonstrate it in the test.

If you’re asked to edit a document during your test, then attention to detail is obviously important, but it’s not just about what you spot, it’s about what you do about it. So asking questions or making suggestions about how something could be amended using professional wording is really what the agency is looking for.

Always consider your audience. When the audience is specified in the instructions for the test, then you obviously need to consider that audience. So if you’re editing a document that’s incredibly detailed with lots of scientific terminology, but you know it’s for a patient audience, then that’s something that you should be thinking about when you’re editing it.

But you also need to consider another audience – the person who’s marking the test.

Are you giving them what they want? Are you showing them that you are thinking like a Medical Writer or a Medical Editor?

Now, tests for client services roles are often a lot more project management focused, so it might be something like creating a timeline for a project or developing a budget, using information about the project and the tasks that it will involve.

But again, here they want to see attention to detail and also your logical thought processes.

If you do the test before the interview or do a live activity on an interview day, then there may well be questions about how you approached it during the interview.

They want to, first of all, check that it’s all your own work, especially if it’s something that you’ve done at home by yourself, because even before Chat GPT was a thing, we needed to check whether it was really your own work because there were always one or two candidates who wanted to use other people’s work to try and get through the interview and get the job. They will generally be caught out by questions about process and the details of the approach that you’ve used.

So if you are tempted to try to avoid doing the test by yourself, whether that’s using an AI tool or just getting a friend to do it, don’t. If you don’t want to do the test, you won’t want to do the work.

In an agency you won’t be able to get someone else to come and do it for you, and while I think working with AI is going to become an increasing part of being a writer of any kind, unless the test specifies that you can use an AI tool, I would make sure that all of the content is your own work.

This is mainly because we don’t just use the tests to see if you hit the pass mark to be offered the job. We use them to see what your natural strengths are and where you might need support. We want to see the full picture so that if you start working in our team, we can make sure we are giving you the support you need, but also letting you build on your natural strengths.

Getting AI or a friend to do the test for you will quite possibly mean that that’s an automatic fail and you don’t get the job. But if you do manage to get through, then it’s going to make it much harder for the person marking your test to get an accurate picture of your approach and your skills.

Which brings me onto the next thing that agencies are looking for.

5. Do you have the right aptitude?

Along with assessing your approach to taking on a particular task, the test will also assess your aptitude for it. So, you need to use the skills and experience that you do have to do the best possible job. You won’t be marked on the same scale as someone with prior experience of doing that job.

When we are recruiting into entry-level positions, then agencies know there’s a lot you need to learn, but we need to check that you have the basic aptitude there so that you can learn those skills and develop your experience, do the job well. This is partly the attitude and approach aspects that I’ve already discussed, but there are other key aspects of aptitude that are important to demonstrate, and the test is a key way of doing that.

So the first one is communication skills. This is not just for Medical Writers. Editors need to communicate effectively – partly to explain the rationale for the changes that they’re making, and they’re going to need to work with different team members. So Medical Writers are a key person that editors will be feeding back to, but they’ll also work very closely with designers or digital team members, and they’re going to need to communicate in different ways based on exactly what those different team members are doing and the input the editors are giving them.

Editors need to make suggestions for how to develop different types of content. Editors also write style guides for each particular account, so they need to be able to put together a really clear reference guide that everybody in the team can use.

Editors also need to negotiate timelines, as I mentioned earlier, so here they’re going to be working with Medical Writers and client services team members to make sure that everything’s going to get done in the time available.

In your editing test, think about how you are communicating everything. Who are you communicating it with? The instructions might not say, but you could always pick someone, maybe the Medical Writer who wrote the content and put that into a comment and also ask your questions and make your suggestions, aiming them at that person, picturing them in their head, thinking about how your comments will come across to that person. And also how can you show the person who is marking your test that you are someone that they want on their team.

In client services, team members also need to communicate effectively. So a key thing here is being able to give clear updates in status reports that track the progress of projects. Often there will be versions for internal team members and ones that are circulated to clients, so they need to be done in slightly different ways and communicate different information for those different audiences.

Client services team members also often put together call summaries after client meetings, and they’ll often need to get input from other team members on their projects for these, but need to structure the updates appropriately for the recipient and get the right information from all of the contributors as they’re putting it together.

Obviously budgets are a big thing that client services team members work on, and these need to include clear and succinct descriptions of all of the different tasks involved in putting a project together, along with who’s doing what and how long it’s going to take. Clear communication is a really important element there.

The more senior you get in client services teams, the more you will get involved with the strategy behind different projects and accounts, and so you may well need to put together slide decks for client meetings and business development activities. You’ll learn the ropes along the way, and this is definitely not something that entry-level people will be doing, but it’s important to know that it can be part of the role eventually.

Client services tests might include an email to a client that you have to draft, maybe sending over the project timeline or budget that you developed as another part of the test. If you have to do something like this, don’t waste the opportunity by just saying, ‘Here’s the document. Have a nice day.’

Add value. Pull out key information. Maybe ask a question or two. Don’t write a massive essay. It needs to be succinct, but think about what information you want to get across to the person you’re communicating with, what’s going to be useful to them, and maybe use a little bit of structure to make it really clear and easy to follow.

Maybe bullets or highlighting, subheaders for different sections. Show that you’re thinking like a client services team member already.

Effective communication is an obvious skill that Medical Writers need to demonstrate, but the way that we need to use that skill might not actually always be that obvious.

It’s relatively easy to write content for our peers – people with similar backgrounds and interests. We know how they think and we know what they’re going to want to know about a particular topic because we are part of that group.

It’s much harder to write for an audience that we are not part of, and that is at the core of being a Medical Writer.

We need to know who our audience is, and think about what they want from each piece of content that we write.

Why are they interested? What are their questions? What are the pressures that they are under, and how can this piece of content help?

It’s not easy. Learning how to do this effectively takes time, but proactively thinking about it and making it clear that this is something that you are focusing on, even from your very first medical writing test, will help you get that first job and then help you flourish once you’re working.

Something else that everybody in MedComms needs to demonstrate is organisational skills. It’s again, obvious for client services. Project management and account management are very clearly about keeping everything organised and running smoothly, but it’s also important for every other role in MedComms too.

I’ve said before that every project is a team effort and for a team to work effectively together, everyone on that team needs to do their job efficiently and follow the process for that project.

Everyone in MedComms is going to be working on several projects at the same time, potentially across several different accounts with different team members maybe.

We all have to take charge of our own workload and prioritise our tasks so that we meet deadlines. If we don’t, it can have a massive knock-on effect across the project and maybe across multiple projects.

Anyone starting their career in MedComms, will have support on this from their line manager and other team members.

Any brief that you receive on a project will include a guide for how long things will take. But if things are taking longer than anticipated, it’s incredibly important to flag this. It happens, it gets factored into project planning for new people, but you do need to flag it early, and thinking about these kind of things, how you approach something where things aren’t necessarily going according to plan, because that is another potential question that might come up in interviews.

You need to be able to communicate effectively around these kind of organisational challenges and people interviewing you will want to hear how you would approach them. So before your interview, have a think about some kind of scenario where you have had to communicate very clearly, especially about some kind of challenge or setback.

6. Passionate about MedComms

Working in MedComms can be hard. There are times when it’s stressful and people do sometimes have to work long hours.

In the run up to a big meeting, it’s all hands on deck. But this is usually incredibly rewarding. The team bonds, the client and the external experts are grateful, and when it all comes together, everybody feels a massive sense of achievement.

To get to that point though, you do have to be really committed to what you are doing. MedComms isn’t the place for half-hearted work. Contributing to advancements in healthcare, even if it’s only in a minor way, can be incredibly motivating.

Other people might be motivated by the never ending variety – the new things to learn with every project. Whatever motivates you and makes you think that MedComms is the right industry for you, reflect on this and think about how you could explain it in an interview.

Don’t worry if it sounds like a bit of a cliché. Lots of people have similar motivations and it’s pretty likely that anyone interviewing you will have heard a similar motivation before, but you need to be able to explain it, and if you can find something personal, that can be really powerful to hear during an interview.

More than that, though, it can be something that you can come back to during your career, something that motivates you through those tough projects, or when you feel like the learning curve is so steep, you might just fall off. Those are the moments when we need something to keep us going, to get us to the other side, because that’s where the good stuff is.

Achieving something that you never thought would actually come together. Learning something that felt impossible until it all fell into place, and MedComms is full of those moments. It is a tough career at times, but it’s also incredibly fulfilling. And if it’s the right place for you, then you’re going to have a fantastic time.

Download the PDF summary

There are multiple different recruitment processes within MedComms, but most agencies will be looking for similar things in their recruits, even if the way that they’re looking for those things is different. The need to know that you:

1. Are eligible for the role
2. Are compatible with their current team and culture
3. Have the right attitude to succeed in MedComms
4. Approach work in the right way
5. Have an aptitude for MedComms projects and the types of things that you are going to be doing in that role
6. Have a passion for the industry that will motivate you

If you can demonstrate these things not only will you get your first MedComms job, but you’ll also have a successful and satisfying career.

There is a free PDF summary of everything that I’ve talked about today that you can download from a link in the video description below. But if you have any questions, then please do leave them in the comments.

I’d also love to hear it if you have any suggestions for other topics I could explore in future videos, and if this has been useful, I’d be really grateful if you could like it and maybe share it with a friend.

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