Medical Sales Representatives At Glaxo Smith Kline Information Technology Essay

Or project contains the detailed analysis of the recruitment phase that is been followed by one of the most recognized industry in pharmaceuticals Glaxo. We are going to discuss the how does Glaxo Smith Kline recruit the individuals in its industry. The legal and the medical requirements that an individual need to have to be recruited. Not only that the academic and personal qualities that are been required by the Medical sales representative is been evaluated. We are then going to see the job profile of medical sales representative and the phase to which the individual goes in the recruitment phase.

The research done by us is quantitative and those it contains secondary data. Secondary data is the data that is been used by someone else as his primary data. We have collected data from various books and some sources from internet and from Glaxo website to get the in-depth evidence of the steps followed by them in recruiting Medical sales representative in their esteemed organization.

Introduction:

Glaxo Smith Kline is one of the world’s largest and most successful pharmaceutical companies with world renowned medicinal brands such as; Panadol, Beechams & Ventolin, as well as FMCG brands such as; Lucozade, Tums and Ribena in its Portfolio. It operates in two types of business segments first is the pharmaceuticals (prescription pharmaceuticals and vaccines) and second consumer healthcare and nutrition. Since its incorporation way back in 1924 by H.J Foster & Co it has been world leader in producing pharmaceutical products to clients all over the world. GSK plc and its subsidiary and associated undertakings constitute a major global healthcare group engaged in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of pharmaceutical and major global healthcare businesses consumer health-related products.

It asserts the associations that people have had with the Glaxo brand e.g. trust, health, caring, family values, continuity and commitment to future. The most important concern of any pharmaceutical company is that its employee’s is able to perform their duties with great skill, effort, responsibility and maintain level of condition to work in. Hence employee characteristics are required at Glaxo for competent performance of job to achieve company’s goal and objectives. As a medical sales representative at Glaxo the specification needs to be maintained. A medical sales representative is responsible for the sales and promotions of the company. His duty is to be responsible for developing and maintaining customer relations and sales in that area. A medical sales representative needs to directly report his/her supervisor or immediate manager if not present.

Literature Review:

Recruitment steps Followed by Glaxo in order to successfully recruit a candidate for medical sales representative:

Job Summary: As a Medical Sales Representative individuals are to be responsible for the sales and promotion of the companies leading product portfolio to GPs in various suburbs in UK. You will also be responsible for developing and maintaining customer relations and sales in that area.

Reporting Relationship: Medical Sales Representative job is to directly report to his/her supervisor or immediate manager, if supervisor is not present.

Duties and Essential job Functions: Some of the duties and responsibilities of a medical sales representative at Glaxo are [1] :

To build strong relationship with clients.

Guaranteed repeat business.

Looking for new clients.

Explaining technical and other relevant information regarding products to clients.

Explaining contract specification to business clients.

Supplying of samples of various products to clients.

Accountability: A medical sales representative is to be accountable for number of responsibilities and should always be under the restrictions of corporate governance and the rules and policies that guide to perform the tasks under clear ethics. A medical representative should act as a guide and share a complete knowledge of the overall activity as a part of his job.

Qualifications

Successful completion of either: Bachelor or Masters of Pharmacy.

The applicant must be registered, or eligible for registration with the Pharmacy Board of Victoria.

Any sales related job experience or knowledge of Degree qualified in a marketing related field would be an added advantage

Required

A minimum of 2- 3 year experience with a pharmaceutical medical representative position.

Exceptional analytical skills and the ability to provide results and recommendations

Previous experience in direct marketing, online marketing and implementing marketing campaigns

Work experience and exposure within the travel industry

Have knowledge and experience in contract drafting.

Ability to demonstrate strong customer focus and business acumen

Preferred

Complete knowledge about the medical field industry.

Good analytical and decision making capabilities.

Good written and communications skills i.e. direct or telecommunications.

Must have an intermediate computer skills, especially Ms Office, Ms excel and Ms Outlook.

Must be willing to be a part of a team and helping the company to achieve its overall goals and objectives.

Individual should have keen interest in medical sales industry and should be self motivated and enthusiast about his job

Security Clearance:

The position that I been held by medical sales representative in Glaxo has to be dealt carefully with sensitive information sometimes. Hence the positions in human resource management are security accessed positions and need to pass security clearance before they are offered an position. This security assessment by human resource department is been conducted with commonwealth protective security manual. This security check consists of background information and individuals need to provide their detailed personal information. This includes information like residence history, criminal charges, financial circumstances and details of employment. The individuals also need to provide information about their spouse, defacto or partner. They also require at least three references so that human resource management can contact directly. The referees of individuals are asked probing question about their suitability for employment as a medical sales representative.

Medical Examination: At Glaxo Smith Kline an individual offered job for medical sales representative has to pass an AMSA Certificate of Medical Fitness. In this test they will examine the health of the individual with his mobility and check his eyesight as well as hearing.

Recruitment Process: At Glaxo Smith Kline recruitment means to identify the key applicants and then attracting them to apply for the job. Once the pool is been filled with good amount of qualified job applicants then they are been processed for the 5 main interrelated stages that Glaxo Smith line takes in order to recruit a successful job applicant.

Planning phase:

Strategy development phase:

Searching phase:

Screening phase:

Evaluation and control phase:

The recruitment at Glaxo is the one that identifies a large number of qualified applicants who can survive their screening process to be accepted for the position of Medical Sales representative. Many times the recruitment program that is been generated does fail this is because of under/over selling of the organization and Glaxo Smith Kline in order to save themselves from this mistake approach to understand first the type of the position been offered in our case it is Medical Sales Representative. Only after the individual responsible for recruiting individuals knows in-depth the role that is been offered by Glaxo Smith Kline for Medical Sales representative then can he look for individuals with required knowledge and interest.

Commencing Recruitment Action

To attract the pool of talent from the existing market, they do follow a following recruitment strategy:

Advertisements – One of the most basic ways to attract a huge number of jobs seeking people is advertisements. It is most popular because of the reach of it to the job seeking peoples. It can be done in many ways but Glaxo Smith Kline does it mainly through newspapers and contracting with agencies on commission basis.

Campus Recruitment – It searches individuals from colleges, universities, research’s.

Consultants – ABC consultants, Head Hunters, Human Resources Consultants and the other agencies in the profession are retained by organization for recruiting and selecting managerial and executive personnel. Consultants are useful as they have nation-wide contacts and lend professionalism to the hiring process.

Through Internet Sites – The recruitment is been done through internet sites provide as a wide source of applicants not only domestically but also internationally.

Medical Representative Selection Procedure: In Glaxo for the post of Medical Representatives the company is always filled with thousands of application forms. So they don’t actually advertise for this particular post.

They choose from the applicants [2] only, on the following criteria [3] .

1. Screening: Screening is done to see if the applicant meets the required criteria’s such as

Science Graduate

Age Profile

Regional Language

Interest for Selling

Readiness to be transferred all over the country

2. Short Listing: This is where the applicants are short-listed. All the applicants are called to some regional centers for written tests. The company reimburses the cost of traveling. The written test normally consists of general knowledge questions, questions to test the applicant’s aptitude for testing etc.

3. Preliminary Interview: The purpose of which is elimination of misfits for reason, which did not appear in the application forms, through interview often called ‘courtesy interviews’, is considered as good public relation exercise. The preliminary interview is taken by the REGIONAL BUISNESS MANAGER. In this interview the applicant is generally tested for things like:

Communication Skills

Personality

Motivation

Whether his profile is fit for the company

Integrity

Whether is in the need of the job

4. Reference and Background Check: The reference check policy of our organization includes the reference and background check of any applicant before group discussion and final interview in order to gain any additional information regarding the applicant. Glaxo consider only previous employer or any work related references and strictly does not consider any relative, friend or any kind or personal reference.

5. Group Discussion: Helps in evaluating candidate’s ability to lead discussion, communication skills. This is generally done with the help of various case studies and scenarios given to group of candidates.

6. Final Interview: This interview is taken by the STRATEGIC BUSINESS UNIT and is more technical in nature. If the applicant gets through all the above-mentioned stages he is selected by the company and has to undergo a forty-five day training program.

These interviews are conducted basically for 3 objectives.

Helps obtain additional information from the applicant.

Helps build the organization image among the applicants.

To get a true picture of the candidate.

7. Evaluation of Interview Conducted: The broad test of the selection process is the quality of personnel hired. The performance of the selected candidates should be compared with the set standards and should check for deviations if any and reason for the deviation. Finally finding a solution to rectify that deviation. This evaluation can also be done through an audit that consists of questions the answers to which will decide the success of the selection process.

8. Physical Examination

The candidate is required to undergo a physical fitness test. A job offer is often contingent upon the results of the candidate being fit after the physical examination. The physical examination/test is done for following purposes:

To detect if individual is carrying any infectious disease.

Determines whether the applicant is fit to perform work.

Determines if there are certain physical capabilities, which differentiate successful and less successful employees.

Medical check-up protects the applicant from undertaking work that would be hazardous to his health.

Interview Questions:

Some of the interview questions are:

Tell me about yourself

How long has it been since you worked in this particular field?

What are your strengths?

Tell me about a time in which you had to handle an irate physician, co-worker, or patient. How did you handle it and what were the results.

What are your most important career accomplishments?

Describe a difficult decision you’ve made and the process you went through to reach that decision.

Why should I hire you?

Letter to Successful Candidate:

Glaxo Smith Kline

Hi Candidate,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your expression of interest in Glaxo Smith Kline.  Depending on the popularity of the opening advertised we can receive significant volumes of applications on a daily basis. This may hinder our ability to respond to you immediately, therefore it may take several days to give your application careful consideration.

The managing director has had an opportunity to review your Résumé and has selected you for the first round of appointments. He will be conducting a series of appointments in order to further assess your suitability. Appointments will last for approximately 30 minutes.

Thursday 10th may from 10am – 12pm

Friday 11th May from 9am – 10am

Could you please email me on [email protected] or call 03 9721 6000 to arrange an appointment. If the above times are not suitable please don’t hesitate to call and arrange an alternative time.

With Kind Regards,

Steven Gerard

Administrator

Methodology:

The research done is basically exploratory and hence how recruitment phase is been conducted by GlaxoSmithKline is been critically evaluated by using secondary data. The secondary data is been collected through Glaxo Smith Kline website and also reference is been taken from few books to understand the legal and physical requirement needed for delivering pharmaceutical service at Glaxo Smith Kline. The methods used to get data is been done from getting information from Glaxo Smith Kline’s website and also from some academic books.

Conclusion:

After the successful study of the steps that pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline goes through in recruiting a single individual for Medical Sales Representative job I came to know that huge organization’s are more successful because they have detailed strategies for how to even select a single individual for a job designation like Medical Sales Representative. This project has helped me in understanding what the business world is all about and most importantly the human resource that is involved in the business entity. It has given me a great knowledge about the recruitment process right from job description. I have also learnt and understood the different ways jobs are advertised, its procedures, letters of employment and the importance of conducting interviews for recruiting individuals. So overall this assignment has improved my overall skills in the field of Recruitment phase followed by Glaxo Smith Kline and this knowledge that I have gained would be definitely useful in my future as well.