Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Kurt Grady. He is senior director and head of medical science liaisons at Reneo Pharmaceuticals. And we talk about his interview style and approach, what he calls the inside out interview, which is really awesome. It's I think you guys are gonna love this. It's an interesting perspective, not one that we've had on this show before.
Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn and check out the announcements because we do MSL talk live once a month, and that is on LinkedIn. So check out those announcements and listings. And thank you guys for all of your support. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Hey, Kurt. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Tom. I appreciate being here. Yeah, man. I am excited.
So guys, I've known Curt for a while and ran into him at a conference in San Diego. We're having a conversation, and, we started talking about an interview. And Kurt has a really unique interview style and approach. And I really couldn't wait to share it with you guys because I think that this is something that is going to be helpful for both hiring managers and job seekers. And it's very timely because there's a lot of people right now that are on the job market.
So this is actually following kind of a monthly theme that we have going on, that that's geared towards job seekers, but it also is really good, for hiring managers. So before we get into that, Curt, why don't you do a quick introduction and tell everybody who you are and where you're from and all that good stuff? Well, thanks very much. Again, my name is Curt Grady.
I'm a pharmacist by training, and I've had a 3 and a half decade career so far, and, worked in a lot of different, types of of pharmacy. I've been in clinical practice. I've worked in the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, about 2 thirds of my career has been in the pharmaceutical industry. I've been in MSL, health outcomes liaison, regional leader, national leader.
And, right now, I'm, with a a small company that I'm responsible for not only field medical, but also medical communications and, medical operations. So busy times. Awesome, man. Well, we are we're excited to hear from you. But before we get started, we do have a sponsor. This episode is sponsored by MSL Mastery, which is a program that Sarah Snyder and I, have started. It's a it's a coaching program for MSLs. It's actually a whole community for MSLs.
But anyway, there's something called Aspire MSL, which is a step by step guide for helping folks land their first MSL position. So if you're interested in breaking into industry, check out www.mslmastery.com and specifically look at the Aspire MSL program, and see if it's something that might help you out. We are running a Black Friday special.
So about the time that this comes out, I think you might wanna check out, between now and the end of the Thanksgiving season so that you could take advantage of that special. So, Curt, let's jump right into it. Let's talk about your interview style because I really wanna hear about this. So if you could just maybe start by just describing your philosophy and how you came up with this and and just start with what it is. Sure. Well, I mean, interviews are are are a two way street.
I mean, at least they should be. Unfortunately, what happens is too many companies set up a structure where it's all about determining if the candidate is a good fit for the company, and that makes a lot of sense. Candidates go through a number of different interviews, all kinds of different people. You talk about your background, your experience, your skills. And then the last 3 minutes, as a candidate, you get a chance to ask some questions.
What's left out is whether the company is actually a good fit for the candidate. So it's kind of the the the opposite is true. So it should be sort of a two way street. You know, candidates generally meet with human resources, and they hear about salary range and and benefits and long term incentives and things like this. And and that's typical, and that's that's expected. But it's really not designed to communicate all the things that candidates wanna know.
So it makes it really tough for a candidate to, learn about the culture, the processes, and the people. You know, every group has its own personality, and, figuring out whether you're gonna gel with that personality is really, really imperative. So I make sure that the candidates get two way information.
Not only do they get all that sort of traditional kinds of things that we all think about, but they also have, an opportunity to find out whether or not they feel like they're gonna gel with the, with the organization and and the people in the organization, the philosophies in the organization, the processes, and etcetera. So let me unpack that. So your approach is and the reason it's different because this is very unique.
Normally, companies will interview candidates to see if they're a fit for the job, the specific position and the company, company culture. What you're saying is you also make sure that the job seeker has an opportunity to assess whether or not the company is really, truly a fit for them and what they want. So how do you go about that? Well, I mean, those two things are equally important.
So if you start off putting yourself in the shoes of the candidate, and goodness knows I've certainly been in those shoes many, many times in my career, You know, it can kind of be uncomfortable getting answers to some of the questions for the things that really, really matter. Now now I sure.
Money and benefits are important, but getting a sense of the people, your peers, your, your the processes within this particular organization, all those nuances, the working environment, the thing that, you know, we we call culture. Those things are are really, they can really make your role very professionally satisfying, or they can make your days absolutely miserable.
Yeah. Yeah. So being miserable is not worth that extra $10, so it's really, really important for, you know, candidates to sort of find these other things out. And and sometimes as interviewers or, you know, certainly as I've progressed throughout my career, you know, I've I've done things, you know, the other way. And, you know, it's sometimes it just doesn't really work out very well. So it you know, it seems everybody's got a mission statement.
And mission statements are a great place to start, but quite frankly, those are only words on a poster in the break room. Mhmm. So you know how they get lived out by your team, by your supervisor, by your your cross functional colleagues. And so so after my my leaders review resumes and, you know, we get a pool of candidates, I meet with them individually. Before the whole sort of process gets started, I meet with them individually, tell them, you know, don't wear a tie, guys.
You know, don't it this is very casual. And, I so I meet with them and and it's generally takes about an hour. And the goal is not to do all the sort of typical things that you do in an interview as a visit. The goal, I I really want them to listen and to ask questions if they have any. You know, having questions is not a prerequisite, but it helps. Sure. It's it's how are you gonna know if you don't ask? So I'll tell them about the company.
I'll tell them about our team, how we got started, what we're about. As the leader, I'll share kind of my philosophy and how that weaves its way into what it is that we do. I want people to know what they're getting into and how that might be different than where they've been before. So I'll talk about our our field team. I'll talk about our leadership team individually, as well as other team members, how the and and, actually, how the team is very purposefully built.
That's really important to me. It's purposefully built. Plus, there there's a host of other people that support the field team, and it's great to know about them too. So who they are? What's their background? What's their experience? What kind of people are they? What are they it's all these little nuances in in of the organization that are they're so critically, critically important. It's we talk about compliance. We talk about cross functionality.
We talk about in person versus video meetings and two way expectations. Not just one way, what do I expect of you, but what's important to you? What do you expect from me as, and and from the rest of our leadership team? We talk about training. We talk about measuring success. You know, whatever comes to mind because this is not a scripted conversation. It's from the heart. Mhmm. And I think people deserve that. Yeah. I I really do.
So when it's all over and we've had this conversation, I ask people to leave the call and really think about what we what they've heard. Are these the kind of people and processes and culture where they can succeed? Is this the type of environment that they wanna work in? And I asked them to send me an email in a day or 2. Really think about it. And if if this is something that you think is a good fit for you, then that's great.
And then we'll go ahead and start this sort of formal interview process. So that that right there in and of itself is very unique in in that you're you're almost just taking a breath and saying, I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you all this information, and we're gonna have this discovery session where I'm gonna share a lot with you.
I'm gonna learn, you know, I wanna learn about you, but I also wanna share information about the company to give them an opportunity to say yay or nay before going through the rest of the process, as if to say, hey, look, put it all out there. I want to make sure you know what you're signing on for and make sure you're genuinely interested, and then we can move forward or not. So how often does does that happen often? Well, do people say no? Yeah. It does happen, occasionally.
And and if it does, then that's actually great. Yeah. It really is because they can bow out gracefully. Yeah. If we're what we're doing is not a good fit for them in this particular point in their career, that's good for us to know, and that's good for them to know. Yeah. It saves everybody a lot of time. There's no penalty either. I mean, heck, the way our industry works, we could be having this conversation a year from now in a completely different environment, and it may work for both.
So it's it's it could be a great fit there, but maybe it's just not it's just not here. So, you know, we might be in this particular company for for what somebody's looking for. Maybe we're a little too commercially focused, or maybe we're a little too r and d focused, for for their particular liking in small companies. You generally have a much greater scope of responsibility than you do with larger companies, and that could be for some people.
But that might not be a good fit for others either way. Yeah. Be too large. The position may not have that one thing that somebody's looking for, you know, to catapult them to the next level in their career. So maybe there's too much autonomy. Maybe there's not enough autonomy. So whatever the reason, knowing in advance is really priceless, and this really gives people a chance to really gracefully, you know, bow out without it being awkward or or complicated.
Yeah. And you mentioned I know we talked about you had mentioned the importance of sharing the vision with candidates. So could you talk about a little bit and why that's so important? Well, I guess from a vision perspective, the the way that I think about that is people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Moreover, they wanna know how who they are and what they do fits into something bigger. So not everybody wants to be the headliner, and that's perfectly fine.
However, everybody needs to know what they do and how they do it matters. Matters to the company. It matters to the, you know, the their peers, to their department. As I said, it matters to the company. It matters to the HCPs that they're calling on. And then equally important to all of those is it matters to the patients who have the conditions that that, you know, we're we're representing.
And, that knowing that is is that's the vision that guides people when they have to make a tough decision in the field on the spur of the moment, and they can't pick up the phone and call their, you know, whoever's leading their group or whatever. You know, it's that vision that gives them context and the ability to make that tough call, you know, without having to, you know, artificially sort of stop and and etcetera. And it also helps it helps develop people.
And and we tend to focus not just on developing people for the next role, but developing people for the role after that, and that's probably a whole another podcast. But that's why that vision is important is to really give people a a sense and a vision and a pulse of the department, the leaders, etcetera, so that they can go out and do what they do effectively and do it quickly.
And I think that that sharing all that information and providing all of this upfront is just I think it's a great way. It's a retention strategy, I would think, because you're you're making sure that you are getting truly interested candidates because they've had a chance to already say no if they didn't think it was gonna be a fit. But now they're also learning more about the vision and what the future might look like for them, which gives them more insight.
And then they're it's like all the cards are on the table. And then from there, they come into the situation knowing what to expect, both from the onset and what the vision might be in the future. And and it it goes back to when, you know, you have you've given the candidate a voice. Right. And and you've given them a look at the big picture. So do you feel like this is kind of a retention strategy? Well well, it is in a way.
You know, the these are the folks that, you know, a few weeks from now, they're the successful candidate. They're gonna go through training, and they're gonna have that first day in the field. Mhmm. And if they don't know this stuff up front, then, you know, they don't know the expectations. The then then they exit that training very tentatively. It's it's like, I'm gonna have to sort of tiptoe around and, kind of figure some things out here before I can really get rolling.
And, you know, that takes whatever period of time that it takes, and it's a colossal waste of time. Mhmm. I want people to exit the training with excitement, with enthusiasm, with confidence, and get rolling. Day 1, get out there and get rolling. And this is a way of equipping them to be able to do that where they don't have to they don't have to wander. Yeah. What if? What if? Can I oh, should I well, you know, coulda, shoulda, woulda? No. They can they can get out there and and get rolling.
And and that from, you know, very early in the process, they're they're invested, and they're they're onboard and and they're out there. They're rolling from day 1. There's no sort of tentativeness or none of this. Oh, wow. This is not what I expected. Yeah. So patience and all of that is key. Yeah. And getting back to your philosophy in this in this process, in case there's there are others that are out there that may want to adopt this sort of thing.
Can you talk a little bit more about, like, how this process goes from there? Like, how many people are involved? Who should the MSLs meet with? Like, what makes up this whole interview process? Yeah. So in our particular organization and this is different, you know, different places that I've been. But in our particular organization, an MSL coming in to interview, of course, I'll have this, you know, first, first bit of time with me. It's not really part of the interview.
But if they do decide that, okay. This is this this is my jam. I I'm liking this. Then, then we start the formal interview process, and they'll begin with whoever that hiring leader is. You know, one of my folks in the field that that, you know, leads, leads a team. And so they'll start with them. They they'll they'll then, interview with, maybe a couple of more leaders within our medical affairs organization. And the reason for that is because we're a small company, we're very cross functional.
Our MSLs are doing a number of things other than MSLing. And, so they may meet with the head of medcoms or the head of operations or the head of HEOR, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Typically, we'll have them interview with a member of our, either our commercial team or our market access team, kind of depending on, you know, what which of those groups they're they're gonna be supporting. I think that's very important.
And then I have an interview with, somebody who's in the job, and I call that the reality checker. Mhmm. Because we don't script that, and, you know, we don't actually have our our, MSLs interview. That's a conversation. Okay. Listen. Is this stuff that this guy is telling me, is it for real? You know, what's it like in the field? What's it like working with your peers and your colleagues and so on and so forth? It's it's the reality checker.
And I think that's critically important because they get a chance to talk with somebody who's in the trench, somebody that they're gonna be, you know, back to back with, so to speak. And then, of course, there's always somebody from the, human resources team that's a part of the process, you know, to go through all of those things that that we mentioned before. And then quite honestly, it's it's up to the candidate. Do you wanna meet with somebody from patient advocacy?
Absolutely happy to get that set up. Do you wanna meet with somebody from, you know, the the clinical development team? Sure. Absolutely happy. I'll I'll get that set up for you or or, you know, somebody somebody will. You wanna meet with somebody from marketing? Great. Fine. You wanna meet with, you know, the VP of medical affairs and clinical development? Absolutely happy to do wanna meet with the chief medical officer. Great.
You know, we're we're a small enough company that, you know, if you wanna you wanna talk to people, you know, up and down the chain and across, you know, sort of the cross functional environment, happy to do that. So it's it's you know, again, that's part of being, you know, candidate focused. We we want there to be transparency so people know what they're getting into.
You know, and it's interesting because your process is is really no different from any other process as far as the number of interviews, the types of people that you're that are going to be interviewing. What's different is is giving the candidate more of more inside information, more more of a voice. So, for example, you know, having them being able to speak to somebody else that's in the role gives them a chance to really see, okay, what is a day in the life like at this organization?
Whether you're an experienced MSL or aspiring MSL, whatever it might be, you're gonna get a chance to see what is it like to work in that organization, and is it for me? Do I get a chance? Because you know what? Let's guys, like, real talk here. Like, you can you can decide at any point in as a job seeker, you can decide at any point in time that the company might not be for you.
As a matter of fact, I think what Kurt is saying and what I'm saying is if you determine at any point in time that the company or the job or whatever it is just isn't the right fit for you, it's probably better that you speak up sooner than later because you don't wanna make a mistake and take a position that you ultimately aren't gonna stay in, number 1. And number 2, let the best person for the job that really wants it get the job, and you go get the job that's best for you.
I think it's brilliant. I really I do think that this is a really brilliant way to go. So is there anything else that you want to tell hiring managers about or advice that you have for hiring managers that may be interested in adopting this type of philosophy? Well, if we're competing for the same great MSLs, my advice to those hiring managers is don't do any of this. Mhmm. Mhmm. Don't do it. Just don't do it. Doing what you're doing. Let us let us have it.
No. But seriously, if if you really wanna get and recruit the best people Yep. Be as interested in the candidates being a great fit Mhmm. At your company as you are the company being a great fit for the candidate. Yep. They're equally important because if you achieve both, then success is gonna follow. Yep. Yep. Plain and simple. Yeah. And I I mean, it it really it's it is simple, but it makes a lot of sense.
So then let's flip it to what advice, knowing your process and everything that we talked about, what's your advice for the job seekers, people that are interviewing right now? What can you tell them as they go into the knowing that this is your philosophy, as they're going into the interview, their next interview, what advice would you give them in how they should handle it? Yeah. I mean, I think the, the key is to be persistent. Mhmm. Be patient. Ask questions.
You know that 3 minutes that they give you? If you still got questions after that 3 minutes, then you need to get those questions answered in in in Yeah. Form. It's it's kinda like, remember that if you accept a position and you don't have all of your questions answered, you have just taken a huge risk as as a candidate. And and that's particularly true if you've been through a rift and you don't have a job right now.
You know, people tend to sort of take whatever they can get, and everybody's financial situation is different, and I get that. But jumping in without everything that you need to know, like I say, it's a huge risk, and it might put you in the market looking for a job sooner than you you wanna be. And that that has sort of downstream, you know, implications. You have to explain why you only stayed a year or only stayed 6 months or or something like that.
And, and and that, that's just that's just something that you don't necessarily want. So ask questions, be patient, get all your questions answered. Even if, you know, you get a sense that, you know, oh, this is, you know, I'm irritating these folks by asking all of these questions. If you're irritating them by asking questions about the company and about the department and about the people and etcetera, that might not be a good fit. So, be persistent, be patient, ask questions.
Yep. Awesome advice. I think that's, I mean, that's just really great advice for any job seeker. If you're not asking questions, it just comes off as as lack of interest. It looks like you're just not a very detailed person. And, you know, I mean, even if there's a if it's a very thorough process, there's gotta be questions that you're gonna ask of the hiring manager or whoever it is that you're talking to that are that are going to that's going to show that that you're engaged.
You wanna show that you're engaged at the very least and interested and that you really have, a, like, a genuine curiosity. Because if you don't, then it's gonna be like, oh, we couldn't get a read from that person. We weren't really sure why they were here, that kind of thing. So, Kirk, looking at your looking at your philosophy and and and everything that we talked about, I'm just curious, because I think this might be helpful both for job seekers and for hiring managers.
Tell us about your interview style and and, you know, what, you know, how that might play into this process or if it plays into the process. Well, I mean, everybody does things a little bit differently. I mean, I tend to be pretty laid back, pretty casual, pretty conversational. It's, you know, just sort of like this. I lean into the people part of the process rather than the process. Mhmm. Mhmm. And and I think that's important because if we have the process wrong, we can change it. Right.
If you get the people part of it wrong, that's much more of a problem. So making the investment upfront into the people part of it, I I I just think that helps you avoid a whole lot of problems. It's much more genuine, and, it's much much more upfront with people. And I want people to see me, you know, as the leader, I want people to see me as genuine and approachable and willing to listen and, you know, willing to coach. Right.
Since it's not fun to receive, but, willing to cheerlead, you know, willing to challenge. You know, I really like to do that with, you know, my leadership team in particular. You know, they'll come and they wanna do this or that or and and so I just I start asking questions. I really, you know, challenge them to make sure that they've thought things through really from from front to back and and what those implications are, thought about it from a strategic perspective.
And then sometimes I want them to know that, sometimes they have to be rescued. And that with all of those other things that come along, I'm just as willing to do that as well. You know? Come pick pick people up out of the dirt, so to speak. Brush them off, talk to them about what they learned, and then just say, now go. You know? Just just go.
So, you know, rest knowing that there's somebody there to to rescue you, to pick you up, dust you off, and and get you moving forward, That's just a tremendous confidence boost for for somebody, particularly if you're a little earlier in your career. Yeah. For sure. Awesome advice, Kurt. You're the man. This was this was really, really good. Exactly what I expected because you're awesome. And and this approach, I think, is gonna help a lot of people. So thank you for coming on.
And, guys, if you know someone that's interviewing right now, someone that's on the job market, share this with them because I there's so many people out there that need help right now. I mean, I'm hearing from them on a daily basis and so is my team.
So I really think that this would be important to to share this episode with them so that they can get a lot of value and hear from Kurt and this great perspective that he has, because I think that it's really, really beneficial to you as the job seeker, but it's beneficial to the company too. You don't wanna make a and I'm not gonna say a bad hire, but an inappropriate hire or or, you know, worry about hiring somebody that might not actually really be the best fit for the position.
So, Kurt, thank you very much. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. Thank you. Same to you. Appreciate you. Me. Thanks so much. And, you guys all enjoy your holiday season, and and have a great Thanksgiving. We'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And if you enjoyed it, please subscribe so that you don't miss an episode in the future and feel free to leave a rating or a review or a comment. Thanks again, and we look forward to seeing you soon.