Whether by omission, exaggeration or inadvertent, nervous fabrication, the majority of people have lied during an interview. In fact, according to award-winning social psychologist Ron Friedman, at least 81 percent of people lie during their job interviews.

Friedman states there’s a logical reason for this insincerity. He suggests that interviews create a unique situation in which otherwise upstanding applicants are dishonest because they believe lying to be the only route to a job offer. So, rather than trusting in their natural strengths and abilities, candidates try to impress recruiters with what they think they want to hear.

Unfortunately, resorting to this approach, no matter how seemingly harmless, leaves your true qualifying skills and personal traits unidentified. And the truth is, recruiters want to see the real you and determine how you fit no matter how well you think you align with the role.

For this reason, we pulled together three ways to help you confidently highlight your natural strengths during the medical sales job interview:

Understand what lead to your accomplishments

Big or small, medical sales-related or not, your accomplishments reveal important details about your capabilities and personality. Recognizing which innate skills helped you reach various accomplishments improves your ability to know precisely what to share during your job interviews.

Create a list of all your accomplishments throughout the years. This can range from extracurricular activities in college to hitting sales goals in your first entry-level role or even overcoming personal obstacles.

Next to each accomplishment write down what skill set or personality traits you used to reach your goal. Be sure to consider how your values helped set you up for success as well.

Finally, compare both your hard and soft skills to the requirements for the role. Being able to show where your skills, experiences, and values align with the company and the open position will put you at ease with being sincere about your strengths during the interview.

Offer you own situational examples

Hypothetical or situational interview questions are commonly used to see how well candidates think on their feet and assess for various soft skills. However, you can actually turn this tactic around to your advantage.

Offering situational examples enables you to describe a specific experience highlighting your natural strengths regardless of the question you’re asked. Your response could relate to how you handled a challenging situation, what skills you used to close a tough client deal, or how you respectfully offered input when you disagreed with a sales manager’s decision.

Before heading into an interview, think through the details of a few situations you could use to draw a picture of your strengths. Recall exactly what happened so the specifics are clear in your mind beforehand rather than trying to collect your thoughts on the spot.

This strategy helps ensure you’re accurately recounting the experience and not missing any of the important details about how you used your strengths or overcame your weaknesses.  

Look for ways to match your strengths to the company’s needs

Job descriptions don’t spell out every single detail of a role or what the company, as a whole, needs. Dig deeper during your pre-interview research to discover how your strengths align with the company’s big-picture needs.
You should be able to identify a few examples outside of the job details you can match your strengths to, but remember you can use the interview to draw more information. Take advantage of your opportunities to ask questions during the interview.

Prepare a few questions in advance that you know you can expand on regardless of the interviewer’s responses. For example, ask deliberate questions that allow you to share more of your skills and situational examples rather than those that illicit simple yes/no answers.

It’s never anyone’s intention to stretch the truth or shy away from sharing their strengths, but without properly preparing for your medical sales job interview, you could find yourself in a pinch to prove your worth. By ensuring you understand exactly what it is that makes you a valuable asset to the company and the role you are applying to, you can confidently reveal your best self and land your dream medical sales job.