How to Get Hired in Medical Device Sales | 30 Years of Advice From a Top Hiring Executive

Yeah, I used to teach interview training through DDI, and that is statistically you're dead on.

It's highly predictive.

Past behavior predicts future behavior.

And if you know exactly what the skill sets and the requirements are for your job and you can interview against that and try to, you know, put people in places in their career and learn about what they did in those situations, you're going to have a higher and better result.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

You've seen a lot in your career in medical device and it's changed a lot.

It's changed a lot since I jumped in in 1998.

Yeah.

What big changes would you say you've seen over your career that people today that just got in or got in fairly recently don't appreciate or they don't understand or would have no idea what you're talking about?

You know, when I'm, like I say, I'm an old guy, and, oh, back in the day, it was so hard to sell.

You know, we walked uphill both ways to the hospital.

Not true.

To me, in the old days, you know, I remember going into an OR with a new product and showing it to a surgeon or a five-box order that day, right? Those days are long gone, you know.

So I think whoever invented MedReps, you know, going to give that guy that but because access is so much harder now in the ORs you know you really have to be in there for the purpose and then you're booted out a lot of times so we used to walk around the OR all day that day's gone so I think that's changed I think the VAC process has definitely gotten hospitals have gotten better at delaying and stopping and thinking and you know That's a strategy, too.

You know, they delay you for so long.

They want to see, do you have it in you to keep pushing, right? Do you have any clinical support? Do you have enough surgeons saying, I got to have this? And if you don't, then they don't do anything.

And that's a strategy.

So I think it's gotten a lot tougher.

You know, it's still a great spot to be in because of the things we see and the people that we talk to and how quality they are.

But it's certainly a challenging market for everyone now.

Yeah, absolutely.

I was just talking to someone before we had this recording about the good old days where, you know, you could invent and take a pacemaker and you could just change one or two things on it every year.

And that justified a big bump in price increase.