Coming in Second

You did everything right, made it to the final round, and still got the call: number two. In a competitive Pharma and Biotech search, coming in second rarely means you failed. Often it means you are in the right arena, against strong people, with a process that is finally working.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What coming in second really means in a Pharma search
• The 5 things to do to rebound after you come in close but do not get it
• The one question to ask next time so you do not get surprised again
• Why your brain fixates on the offer instead of the progress
• How a "loss" can set up the role you actually want

If you are sitting in the waiting and the second-guessing right now, this one is for you.

Get the Book: Your Worthy Career: A Science-Backed Method to Build a Meaningful Career in Pharma and Biotech here.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

If you're someone who wants to find out just how good your career can get and how much of a difference you can make in the pharmabiotech industry, you are in the right place. Welcome to Your Worthy Career, the podcast for women, building meaningful, high-impact careers in pharma and biotech. I'm Melissa Lawrence, career and leadership coach, organizational psychology expert, and the founder and author of Your Worthy Career. I spent over 12 years inside this industry and talent development across biotech and large pharma, and I've been coaching women in this space exclusively ever since. I bring you research back strategies, an insider perspective on what's actually happening inside industry organizations, and the perspective shifts that get you real results. Here we build careers that are meaningful, aligned with who you actually are, and positioned for the impact you're capable of making. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and welcome to this episode of the podcast. Now, today I'm going to talk about coming in second when you're interviewing. Or this could really apply if you're going for any opportunity, a promotion, a project, and you come close but you don't get it. I actually posted about this experience on LinkedIn recently after we had this very conversation in my right move protocol group, and it really resonated with people. So I wanted to actually elaborate on this on the podcast for you. So if you have gotten that call that you came in close, but you didn't get it, you know the feeling. Heavy, deflated, wondering what the point of doing everything right even is, right? Why try so hard? It can feel impossible to get ahead. So let me tell you about this client. So she had been through a long process at a pharma company. She went through multiple rounds. She walked out of the final round more energized, more confident than she had felt in years. She had done her homework. She asked great questions. She connected with leadership over some industry news that was even hot off the press and broke just recently. She felt like she did everything right and that offer was for sure coming. And then the call came from the hiring manager. Bittersweet news. Your number two. The feedback was glowing across the board, including even from the CEO. The recruiter said it was one of the hardest decisions that the hiring manager had made in a while. And they chose someone who had more specific experience in one area, as she put it, was never even pressure tested in a single conversation she had. Meaning they chose someone based on something that she never had the opportunity to even talk about. She was deflated. And of course she was, right? So on our coaching call, I asked her to remember where she was just a couple months before. Before, she was getting ghosted. She was doubting herself in real time, not sure how to ask the questions that would tell her if a role was even right for her. It's common to live in this gap and focus on what's not working instead of the gain, all of the progress you've made and what is working. Because our brains have a negativity bias, it's easier to focus on the negative. You have to do the harder work to redirect your brain because that is what is actually going to make the progress different for you. It's going to get you different results because you're going to be focusing on different things. You're going to be problem solving at a higher level. So before, she wasn't getting a lot of interviews. And when she did, she was ghosted in those final stages. And now she had navigated a four-round process at a company full of strangers and made it to the final two. She got a direct call with specific glowing feedback. And she had a meeting with a VP at a second company already lined up, where the hiring manager was interested in her specifically because of her background. And she had a warm lead from someone in her network who was building a role with her in mind. She did not get that one offer, but look at that progress. Coming in number two can sound like losing, especially if you're the straight A student type, like I was and many of my clients are. If you put all your eggs in one basket thinking it's really gonna work out. But in pharma and biotech, especially in the job search, being number two can mean that you're actually in the right arena, as Brene Braun would say. You're up against strong people. What you're doing is working, it's very competitive. Getting the job offer opportunity at this stage doesn't come down to just who's the most qualified or who could do the job. It's also about connection, culture fit, team cohesion, relationships. So getting number two doesn't always mean you bombed and you did something wrong. It also doesn't mean that the system is rigged against you. It doesn't mean that the market is just impossible right now. Sometimes it just means that for what they were looking for, someone else was better suited. And in the end, that's a win for you if you choose to look at it that way. Because if you know that you were qualified, if you were authentic to yourself and natural and confident the whole time, well prepared, and you weren't hired, then it probably isn't the best work environment for you. You can stand tall. The offer is not the only metric. It's the easiest one to see. It's the outcome, so it's the one we focus on. But it's not the only evidence that you're making progress and growing. If you look for other evidence, you will find it. It's living in that gap, not the game. Think of it like a cooking competition show. So I don't know if you watch Top Chef. The season just ended. We watch it at home. It's on Bravo, so of course we do. And what they do is they take some of the best chefs from all over the country and they compete every week, and someone gets eliminated every week. And at the end, the last chef standing is Top Chef. And they get a bunch of prizes, like a feature in Food and Wine magazine and money, I think, and the title of being, you know, the best. And every chef is awesome. They have to interview to even get into that room. And as the season progresses, the reasons people are getting eliminated by the judges become more micro, more technical, splitting hairs, they say. Sometimes it's even if they like the certain food, if they enjoyed eating it. It isn't about can they cook as you advance? It becomes more about fit, execution, the team, the progress the chef has made from where they started to where they are now. And of course, when those top three get to the finals, all of them want it. All of them want that title. But at the end, when someone is chosen, all of them are crying and gratitude, so happy that they got as far as they did for the experience they gained, the people they met, how they grew as a chef and a person. So I'm not saying you should cry, joys of tears, if you come in number two, but I'm wondering if you had a similar perspective, if you could take something from that and apply it to your experience navigating the job market, how differently could you feel? Because it's not really helping anyone for you to feel down in the dumps and not good enough. That's actually only perpetuating a cycle of self-sabotage, of maybe overthinking and under-preparing or over-preparing where you don't sound natural in the next interview. It's just creating a loop of negative results, which is why partly I do the work that I do to help you break out of that. So I'm gonna give you a few things to do when you come in second. So, one, do not assume that you did something wrong or that it's rigged. Sometimes people do not know what they want until they see it. You can do everything right and still hear this other person has this one thing. The criteria that eliminate you are often not the criteria you were given. Not everything that you're being assessed by is on the job description. And that's not always a flaw in you. Sometimes it's a gap in their process. Sometimes people just have to see something in a certain way or be introduced to something in a certain way in order to make a decision, which is why part of finding your hidden door that I help people do is actually negotiating the role in the interview process because a lot of times leaders don't know what's possible for what that role could do and the impact it could make. So if you have the right positioning, if you have the right clarity and strategy, you can actually be that person that wins out over the most qualified people according to that job description and actually get the role. Okay. Number two, get ahead of it next time with one question. Ask this question Is there anything important to this role that we have not discussed? Something like that. That single question is gonna pull kind of any hidden priorities into the open before it becomes the reason that you came in. Number two, you'll have the opportunity to address something that might be important but wasn't on the job description. Number three, do an evaluation. The same way you would never close out a tech transfer or a study without looking at what worked and what didn't, and do a lessons learned, do that for your interview. What did you do well? Where did you stumble? What would you change? You know, what do you want to bring to the interview the next time? Number four, give yourself a pity party. Yes, you have to feel your feelings. We get a lot of resentment, we get a lot of like things coming out sideways, we do a lot of numbing with wine and Netflix, we do a lot of things when we're not feeling our feelings. So give yourself the pity party. Then build the bridge to your next step, right? Cry yourself or whatever, build the bridge. Set a timer on that disappointment if you have to. An hour, an afternoon, whatever you need to actually feel it, and then move forward. Okay. Number five, measure the progress, not just the offer. It's easy to live in what you did not get. Do not forget to count what you built, what you learned, what you did along the way that's different, the different feedback that you got, even if you got feedback at all. And now here is the next part of the story. A couple of weeks after that number two call that my client got, she accepted an offer, a director-level role she was genuinely excited about somewhere else entirely. The kind of offer she would not have been ready to land a few months earlier. Coming in second was not the end of her story. It was just the middle. The skills she built in the process that she was able to extract helped her get the role that she wanted. And isn't that the story that you want to think of any great movie or show, just like Top Shot that I talked about, watching someone have to grow and struggle and deal and have close calls with obstacles and have close calls, it's part of that hero's journey. It's what makes the good feel good. It's what makes your accomplishments feel like an accomplishment. If everything was just handed to you because you wanted it, you'd be a different person, probably boring. Part of what makes you great is that you had to overcome things to get where you are now. So you do not control the decision. What you control is your preparation, how you show up, and how you respond to feedback. And whether you are getting interviews or offers or not, that is still feedback. If you're not getting interviews, that is feedback. If you're not getting offers, that is feedback. Even if no one's telling you specifically what to change, that's what I can help you figure out. So do the evaluation, honor the progress, build the bridge. Coming in second is not proof that you are not good enough. Sometimes it's proof that you're finally in the right direction toward where you want to be. Because if you are trying to get a new opportunity, a promotion, a project, a new job, it's because you've outgrown where you are and you are just in the thick of it of getting to that next step. So don't give up. Keep going. Just use a better strategy. Okay. So if you are sitting in that gap right now of the second guessing and the doubt and things aren't working, then that is what I want to invite you to come to explore working together. You can learn more about the right move protocol at yourworthycareer.com slash protocol. You can schedule a consultation with me. We will talk about what's working, what's not working, what you want for your career, even if you don't know what you want, but you know you want something different. We will hash all of that out. I will ask you questions you do not need to prepare, and we will see if I can help you in the right move protocol. So you can have a plan either way inside the protocol or outside of it. So have a beautiful week, and I will talk to you soon.