Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Sarah Snyder. She is an MSL recruiter on my team here at the Carolyn Group, and we talk about the pros and cons of using AI in your job search. So really interesting stuff. A lot of people have been asking us questions about this recently, so I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn, and check us out for MSL 12 live, which is typically the 1st Tuesday of every month at 1:30 PM EST, and you'll see notifications on LinkedIn.
So please don't forget to follow me and check those out, and thank you as always for the support of this podcast. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Hey, Sarah. Welcome back to the podcast. How you doing? Hi, Tom. How's it going? Going good. Going good. So I'm excited to have you back. And so guys, Sarah's been safe all week. So she's feeling better. You might hear it in her voice, but she is a trooper.
We had this plan because it's a really important topic that we keep getting questions on. So we wanted to do this now for all the job seekers, basically, that has been asking us what they need to do with artificial intelligence, if anything. I was playing a role in the job search process in this day and age, and Sarah's really good with AI. She knows a lot about it. So she's, like, the best person to have on the podcast.
So, Sarah, why don't you as we always do, why don't you do a quick introduction and tell everybody who you are and all that stuff? Oh, yeah. Thanks, Tom. So I actually work for Tom as a recruiter at the Carolyn Group. I do have an atypical background for a recruiter in that I used to work as an MSO at both large pharma and small biotech for about 20 years. My, clinical training is as a PharmD. I always tell the kids my kids that I, you know, play a pharmacist on TV.
You would never see me behind the counter these days. It could be scary. But, yeah, I am so happy to tackle this topic. It's definitely a question that I get from existing candidates through the Caroline Group, and then we also discuss it a lot through the Aspire MSL program. So it's it's a hot topic, and I think this is a perfect episode to tackle. Yeah. And real quick, can you tell it a lot we're getting a lot of questions from people.
So can you just tell everybody what the Aspire MSL program is? Because we a lot of people are asking me, can you give us more information? What exactly is this? Yeah. I think that you and I combined probably get I don't know. We'd have to count in average how many messages we get from people on a daily basis saying, Tom, Sarah, can you help me? What are the tricks and tapes that you have to help me get into the MSL position? We got it so many times, guys.
Tom and I, we would be doing that all day if we tried to just talk to every single person. So we literally took all that advice and rerecorded it, and we made a program that is everything that we know on how to land an MSL job. It is a step by step how to tutorial. And not only is it is an online course, but we also have a community aspect, and we have live group coaching sessions. So just last night, we had an office hour, where we workshopped someone's resume. We took q and a. We went over.
One of our candidates had a final interview, and she hopped on and was gracious enough to spend about 15 minutes just sharing with everyone else what the experience was like, and what kind of questions she got, what was weird, what was, you know, what did she expect, what didn't she. You know, it's this thing where you just wanna know what it's gonna be like. So I think that's the part that people don't expect with the Aspire MSL program.
It's it's everything you and I know, but it's also now advice from other people that are going through the process. So that was a little bit lengthy. I tend to get really excited talking about it. I love working with the program, and the candidates that are in it are just top notch. Well, you're so good at it, and you're so special at helping people. And it's making such an impact on everyone's lives.
So if anyone's interested, just go to mslmastery.com/aspiremsl, and and you'll get more information. So let's jump into this topic. I think the probably the best place to start for job seekers out there, like, is it a good idea to start using AI tools like ChatGPT for their job search or for their resume? Yes. I mean, the short answer is absolutely yes.
But I think you said something that if you don't take anything else away from this whole podcast, remember the one word that Tom said, which is tool. It is not a replacement for any step of the job search process, whether it's on the employer side or the job's teacher seeker side, it's a tool that can amplify, it could possibly make you a little bit more efficient, but it's just gonna be another tool in your tool belt.
And I think, you know, if we didn't try to figure it out and give it a chance, I mean, we would, you know, be doing a disservice to ourselves. I got a message from someone, Holly, when you asked me about this topic, I was looking through questions that I had gotten. And one of them was like, well, I'm really scared of chat JPT. And I thought, you know, the fear about AI is totally normal. And I think we all feel it a little bit like, and it's because we don't understand it.
So almost all, you know, professionals in medical affairs are lifelong learners, this is just something else to learn. And you're probably going to be able to use it a little bit, you know, on the job as well, not to replace anything, but again, as a tool. So I think we'd be wrong not to try to use it, you know, and give it a give it a shot. Yeah. I agree. I mean, I think that it's here. But, you know, I I feel the same way.
I'm kind of like, I don't know if I'm excited or if I'm completely terrified by it. Right? I don't know exactly what it's gonna mean for the future of everything, but I do think that as of right now, it seems like there's really good there's very good practical uses for it. And as we're looking at the job search, I think it can help. So let's talk about the resume portion. So, like, what what are your thoughts on using chat GPT or whatever AI tools for enhancing or writing a resume?
You're probably gonna be surprised by this answer, Tom, but I thought about this a lot. And I think that it's the same as I feel about sending your resume out to a service, which there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm a strong believer in done with you versus done for you.
I think if you send it your resume out to a marketing agency and they pretty it up or they make it fancy and they change some of your bullets, it can come back and not necessarily reflect your personal brand, what you've done, and just, you know, not be you. And then you get into the interview setting, and you aren't consistent with your resume. And that same thing can happen if you start to use something like ChatGibt and just plug it in or these resume builders. I had a a list here.
I know that people have tried teal, and that is a very common AI resume builder. There's nothing wrong with trying it. But what I wouldn't do is just plug all your information in there and think, oh, wow. This is great. And then just save it and send it off. You've got to use it like a done with you tool. Look over every single bullet that it creates, make sure that things are just an adequate reflection of you. Yeah. So I think that, you know, remembering done for you. And I I'm done with you.
For you. I but I agree because I've actually tried some of these tools. Mhmm. And I've had some of, like, our candidates and even some of our the students in our program have tried these tools. And and here is what I'm seeing. So there's like you could do, like, for example, skill matching with certain tools, like, I think there's one called SkillSinker or Jobscan or something like that. Right? I think they're the same thing. Here's the problem.
The problem is it's gonna match your the job description with your resume. Right? Keywords, whatever else. The problem is you have to support the claims. Mhmm. How does how does a machine know exactly what you've done? Mhmm. Now granted, you're gonna say, well, Tom, they're it's the same thing with anything with AI. They're looking at what's already there that's been created, and they're coming up with their own version of what it is that it should be. The problem is you can't rely on that.
Like, that's the caution from my side is that Mhmm. You can't rely on a machine to to speak on your behalf. You have to be the one to do that. So are there any other cautions as it relates to whether it's resume tools or anything else that you're seeing that you wanna share? Because that's my biggest caution. Yeah. I have one other one that which is using it to mass apply.
And there are a lot of AI tools out there that are designed to help job seekers get their applications in front of companies. And when I say mass applied, that's what they're designed to do. If you're looking at something in pharma and biotech, it's almost never gonna be in your best interest to mass apply. You want to be very particular and strategic about each application. So going high volume is not gonna serve you well. And that's one thing that a lot of these tools are designed to do.
And would you say so that's that's one of these tools that is the highest and greatest in aiding in the job search process, like Completely. There's several of them out there. At once. Yes. Exactly. And it's going to speed up your job search. But what it's gonna, it might speed up the way that you can apply. And there's a lot of articles on this. If you just go on LinkedIn, it's galore about how it's gonna allow you to apply to a 100 positions per week.
Who cares if that doesn't get you anywhere, I'd rather see you apply to 3 and have them be the right type of positions. There's statistically I saw a statistic recently Yeah. That the success rate in job applications right now is somewhere between 2 4%. Totally. Yeah. Like, think about how many jobs you would have to apply to in order to get any kind of response. And if you're if you're just randomly applying, it it might even be less. So I think Totally. I I listen.
I think that there's some benefits to some of this stuff, but I also think you have to be very careful. Mhmm. Mhmm. So what about any, like, AI tools that might allow for or help in, like, doing research and preparing for interviews or, you know, finding information on companies? Right. Right. Yeah. This is a tricky one, and I'll put it back to you to to see if you have any feedback on this.
I I generally think nothing is gonna beat the company website, honestly, and trying to find, you know, some things that you can listen to or read about that way. The AI tools can be great, but, unfortunately, they're not updated quite as frequently as maybe the company website. The company website's gonna have the latest publications, presentations a lot of times on there. You're not necessarily gonna find that.
But what things like chat GPT can do for you is if you plug in some information on the company and use the right type of prompts, they can summarize big amounts of data. So, you know, if you had several abstracts or several different topics and you wanted to ask it with a really good prompt, a lot of using AI is having the right type of prompt. So you've gotta do your research on that. But if you ask the right prompt and then, you know, ask it to summarize things, it can do a good job with that.
So that's, you know, where I would use it if I was gonna interview at a biotech or a pharma company. That's great advice. I mean, I first of all, I totally agree. I think you really want to do your own research on the company, and there's like, in this day and age, company websites are usually really robust. It'll tell you everything that you need to know to an extent. But I do like the idea of getting a little more granular with prompts and trying to get summaries.
So maybe a talking points that you can establish for your interview, preparation or whatever else. So speaking and I'm jumping ahead here. So I know we were gonna talk about in the interview process Yes. Are there tools AI tools that will help prepare for an interview? Yeah. For sure. I mean, there's a lot of different things that you can do. I thought about even something like Otter dotai. You could record yourself and then have it transcribe it for you.
I think I haven't used it for a little while, but it you know, you could get, like, 3 free downloads of your own transcription. So you could listen to your you do your recording of yourself, have it transcribed, and then read back and see, like, did I what I said make sense. You can always listen to your recording, but it's a good way to catch, like, the uhs. And you can always put that transcription then into something like chat GPT and see what it thinks.
I mean, there's all kinds of ways you can do this. And I don't wanna send people down a wild goose chase either. But creativity is pretty fun, you know, so you can kind of find some innovative things to do. I would say that if you're not using it at all, you know, during the interview process, one just easy thing to do is use it to proofread. So I mean, proofread your cover letter, proofread your thank you notes, proofread your CV, just for those little typos.
And then that way, you're, you know, if you're a little scared of it, proofreading is something you'd probably use, like Grammarly, which guys that is AI. You know, it's the same type of concept. If you're not using Grammarly, you should, you know, but basically just proofreading your work. So I think that's one easy thing everyone can do. Yeah. I think that makes sense.
And I think when it comes to like, I'm thinking of I'm just thinking about some of the things that you might wanna do before you prepare for an interview, and how does that like, how can that be expedited? So if you're preparing a list of questions for specific interview, maybe you go to chat gpt and say, please prepare a list of interview questions for this specific job in this specific industry and see what they come up with and see what their buttons are.
They could be awesome or they could could be an epic fail. Like, you don't know. Maybe you try, and that's a practical use of chat g p t. Right? So it gets you started. Right? So if you're kind of, like, brain dead, it gets you going. So you're kinda like, okay. Then your creativity might flow. Totally. Yeah. So now what like, that makes me think now about the employer side.
So from the company side, is there anything that, like, companies are doing or should do on their side when it comes to, like, AI? Yeah. It's so this is actually so interesting. So I did a poll at late in 2023 asking, hey, guys, what do you think in the next 3 to 5 years, how do you feel about AI screening for medical affairs or or pharma interviews? 75% are completely opposed to this. It's coming, though. HireVue, things like that, like whether we like it or not, they're coming our way.
And we've had a couple people in Aspire MSL that are going through interviews and had to, you know, go through this HireVue type screening. I've Tom, I don't think we've had a lot of clients rolling them out. I know I had one candidate through the Carolyn Group that had to do some AI video type thing. I think the important thing to recognize about it is it's you're gonna prep repair the same exact way that you would for a real in person interview.
The AI went through HireVue is looking at your body language probably more than a typical Zoom or Teams interview. That's one of the things it's screening for. But your answers, they're screening for all the same things. So it's trying to, I think if we understand, like, what it's trying to do, which is take out the bias, and make hiring, you know, less subjective, you know, that 75% answer that's totally opposed might change a little bit.
We're just afraid of interviewing and turning into robots, but that's not what this is. It's more of a screening tool that's really no different than screening is happening right now. I'm not saying I'm completely, like, everybody should do it, But I just think don't be so opposed to it. If you get a message saying, hey, you know, you answer these questions, and it is AI driven. It's no different.
Don't treat it any different than you would if it was a hiring manager or an HR screening interview. Totally. Because if the if the company is putting value to it, then Yes. They must believe it. They're adopting it. So Yeah. It's like Yep. And this is what I'll be honest with you guys. This is one of the things we're seeing with virtual interviews is people aren't taking it seriously. And here's what's happening. People are like, well, it's virtual. You know, it's a big deal.
Everybody's in front of camera at teams, you know, and and and there's this casual nature to it. And people are showing up, you know, to interviews, virtual interviews, in t shirts. And, guys, I'm I'm here to tell you that that's, like, such bad storm. Mhmm. Like, you're you're literally taking yourself out of the game when you do stuff like that. You have to take it seriously.
So anything that the employer is putting in front of you, they are putting value to, they're adopting, and they expect you to take it seriously. So I then, you know, the other thing too is you mentioned polls. Guys, I can tell you, you need to follow Sarah on LinkedIn. Okay. She just has such great content, and she's so in touch with the job seeker community, and she's sharing best practices.
And I I could tell you that there's just so we get so much feedback on how valuable her content is that and I know I sound biased because we work together. But, like, I'm telling you, it's it's it's amazing the amount of of really helpful content comes from Sarah's LinkedIn on a regular basis. So definitely check that out. Mhmm. So what about post interview? So interview's done. And you're like, okay. Finish my interview.
Is there anything that the job seeker can do with AI tools that can help them after the interview process? Yeah. I mean, let's go back to the thank you notes and, you know, just using it. Sometimes I get messages where it's just like, can you help me know what to say in the thank you note? That would be an easy way to use AI to help you draft it. I'm gonna caution you the same, like, we talked about for the last 20 minutes. Don't just take it and copy and paste. We can tell when that happens.
I actually took my my 7th graders showed me a paper yesterday, for English class. And I just and she's like, oh, yeah. I'm getting ready to turn this in, and I just wrote on it. And I said, it sounds too good. Can tell you use AI. And I don't mind who are using it to get some ideas, things like that. But if your thank you note or any of your information for interview sounds too good, it's just not gonna be genuine.
And the pharma and medical affairs community is so genuine, like, phony stuff, fake stuff is not gonna fly. So using it as a draft and then tweaking it for a thank you, I think, you know, can go a long way. I'm gonna I'm actually gonna give you a very similar example, but it's different. It's just but it's similar. Yeah. Another thing that's just reminded me of something I need to caution everybody. You said fake.
Yeah. Let's keep in mind that the artificial intel like, a lot of this is kind of fake in a sense. So Mhmm. Here's something that I noticed recently that I I wanna caution you guys about. There are a lot of people that are using AI for photos and images. Mhmm. Mhmm. And there are tools out there that you can send photos of yourself, and then it's gonna give you AI renderings. And quite honestly, some you can't some of them, you can't tell. The truth. Like, you just can't tell.
There's other ones that you can tell. And there's one person in particular that's in my LinkedIn network who I really I mean, I really like this person. But their photos are so fake and so obviously fake that you can't you can't kinda take them seriously in a sense because they're so fake. But here's the way I know that they're fake is because sometimes the and there's a couple of people actually that I'm thinking of. They intermingle the fake photos with the real photos. And you're like, okay.
This isn't the this isn't the same person. We know that that's the same person. It's the same person, but it's one's fake and one's real. So I think Yeah. I don't wanna over exaggerate this point, but the point of the matter is and I think that that biggest question throughout this whole episode is you have to be accountable for what you're putting out there. You're responsible.
Yeah. If you're using artificial intelligence, and you're you're now putting your name on whatever it is, whether it's a resume, a photo, whether it's a thank you letter, whatever it is, that that's coming from you. Yeah. But this kinda makes me think of other applications. So is there anything else, not necessarily as it relates to the job search process, but as it relates to someone's professional career that they need to adopt when it comes to AI?
Mhmm. I think that it can be most helpful for medical conferences, aggregating a lot of information, summarizing data. And, again, you have to be careful with this kind of thing because a lot when they get like this, all these messages saying back, like, you have to be the one that reads the entire scientific abstract and, you know, leans the key messages and takeaways.
I'm not saying that you don't, but sometimes the wording of those when you're trying to work super fast paced at a conference can be difficult. So this is one area where I think it can be really helpful. And, again, just like you said, for the job search process, you're gonna be the person that reviews everything, and you are anyway. Right? Typically, the MSO will do it, and then it will go to someone else to review it again. So there's several point places in the process.
But, there's that that is a great area where I think it can come in handy, just summarizing a lot of scientific information and making it in a concise manner, whether you're trying to tailor it to a KOL audience or, medical science ASM. So it usually do for patients, but let's say that you were in a role where you are more patient focused. It can drill it down to a specific age group, and that's something that we've never been able to do with an AI tool so quickly and so efficiently.
So you can uplevel or you can downlevel, like, the same message very quickly. So I think those are just a, you know, a few things. It can definitely you know, I was thinking when you asked me this question, I thought, okay. I mean, you could ask it for innovative projects to uplevel your MSL career, see what happens. You know, it's it's one of those tools that is, I mean, has chat GPT hasn't been and that's the one I use the most hasn't been around that often. So you know, that long.
So you know, we're, it's just the sky's the limit, but being fearful of it's not gonna get us anywhere. Well, the other thing too is it's changing. Like, everything's changing so fast. Totally. So I think the kind of the faster you jump in and just try some of this stuff, as we said in the beginning of this episode Yeah. I think the better. The other thing too is, like, Sarah and I, like, neither one of us are claiming to be experts, guys, by any means.
We're not claiming to be experts, but we are sharing what we're seeing from the recruiting and HR and job seeker standpoint. But if you're very if you're interested in this topic, I've done other episodes on AI and medical affairs with, like, brilliant people like Bruno Larbel and Matt Lewis. Like, those they're these guys are the experts. Right? Mhmm. And, even even more recently, with, with Scott from Acceleration Point, that was a really good episode.
So so just go back and and check out some of the other episodes if you're interested in AI. But, Sarah, for you, what last minute pieces of advice or words of caution might you have for anybody that's kind of, you know, interested in the space? Yeah. I think the first one is that automated messages are never going to make you stand out.
And so that's one thing, whether you're using AI to do it, or you're just sending the same message to every single person, it's just not going to be as fruitful as really individualizing all your outreach. And by automated, I'll just give you a quick example because I probably get, I don't know, 20 of these a week where it says, this is a written response, guys, to my job posting. So it'll say, can you tell me a little bit about the culture, the Carolyn Group?
It's definitely written by AI, and it'll say, I saw your job posting and would like to apply and learn more about it. Well, obviously, I'm posting on behalf of a client, and you can tell that if you look at the job description, and the the end user doesn't really care about the culture at the Carolyn Group, like but it's just it's generating that in the response back. So I just kinda chuckle, but sometimes I don't know that the end user is even sending that.
It it knows what it looks like, but just really be cautious with any kind of automation. Because, again, the person on the, you know, end user is just gonna chuckle, and you're gonna go into spam or the delete box. And then you mentioned this earlier, but I think this is my final thing is that nothing is ever going to replace networking. Nothing. Like, I I I'll say that, and I think we'll say that in 10, 20 years.
Like, nothing is ever gonna replace networking, whether it's virtual networking, in person networking, whatever it is, a robot's not gonna replace in person or virtual person to person connection. I agree with that.
I I mean, I I do feel that we've benefited from, you know, this virtual world, this, you know, AI tools and technology has has really been a great automation has been a great way for us to improve our efficiencies, but there's no substitute for face to face and interpersonal interaction and what the real interperson what the benefit of of real interpersonal interaction.
And I say real because I, again, I wanna caution everybody to not rely too much on AI because the the there is a there is a way that it can it can bite you, and we already talked about it. We have to go back through it. So that's the only thing. But then I thought this was great. And, again, we've been getting a lot of questions on this. I hope that you guys like this. If you do, please share it with your friends. We appreciate all of your support, and we thank you for joining us.
And thank you, Sarah, for for taking care. Thanks, Tom. Bye bye. 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.