Entretien anglais

Question 1

Could you introduce yourself

Answer 1

• Amaury, 26 years old
• Pharmacist, just graduated from ESCP
• Passionate about medical innovation
• My internships during my studies: Carmat (marketing, training), Bayer Pharmaceuticals (marketing sales and digital), and Servier (external innovation)
• Today, I would like to move towards strategy consulting and that’s why I’m here

Question 2

Why strategy consulting?

Answer 2

I had the opportunity to work in different companies during my studies, for pharmaceutical companies and a medtech, in different fields and with different missions. In all these fields I had the chance to work on exciting projects. Consulting would offer me the luxury of not having to choose between startup or biotech or between pharma, medtech or diagnostics, marketing, strategy, market access or digital.
So, for the diversity of the missions and for all the fields in which I would like to be involved, I’ve realized that consulting is the best way for me to find what I am looking for in the health industry and that’s why I applied to BIONEST.

Question 3

What do you expect to do when you come to Bionest?

Answer 3

• I’m looking for a position that is exclusively healthcare oriented
• I’m very curious and I want to learn, I would like to be involved in various projects in the healthcare like pricing or market access as well as go to market strategy or portfolio strategy and others. This is what I would like to find here if I have the chance to join Bionest
• Clients in different fields, be it pharma, diagnostics, medtech or others, and in different therapeutic areas
• In a few words, various missions with clients in different fields, always in the health field
• I think Bionest ticks all the boxes of what I would like to do, and that’s why I applied here, because I’m confident that here I could blossom (m’épanouir).

Question 4

What do you know about Bionest?

Answer 4

• Bionest Partners is an American strategy consulting firm founded 20 years ago specializing in healthcare, also Biotech, Medical Device and Diagnostics and that supports its clients in different areas of expertise:
  o Commercialization et Go to market strategies
  o Pricing and market access
  o Corporate development strategy, including franchise and portfolio strategy
  o Diagnostics and personalized medicine development strategy

Question 5

Why Bionest?

Answer 5

• I didn’t know about consulting before I entered ESCP. And it was by chance that I attended in a talk one evening, after the classes of one of your colleagues, Marc-Antoine. So let’s say I discovered the existence of Bionest at the same time as the existence of strategy consulting. When I thought I was going to join a strategy consulting firm, the first one I thought of was Bionest.
• Life sciences oriented, types of missions, clients

Question 6

If you were me, why would I hire you?

Answer 6

• With the multitude of different projects and clients, a consultant must be able to adapt, and I think I am adaptable
  o I have lived and worked in 3 countries outside of France
  o I’ve had to adapt quickly to different jobs, for example in a hospital, and I would even say that I love to challenge myself, by going to an au pair family when I had never taken care of children before. I am not afraid of new challenges.
• Finally, a consultant must have a team spirit.
  Since the beginning of my pharmacy studies, and in all my professional experiences, I have worked in a team: when I worked in a pharmacy, but also when I was a volunteer in the Red Cross, in large and small teams. Even outside of work and studies, in Rouen, and then in Brussels, I lived in shared accommodation. I think I have developed both a great team spirit, but also a great ease of integration.

Question 7

How would you explain strategy consulting to people who know nothing about it?

Answer 7

Companies are often confronted with problems that have no formalized solutions, and that they cannot solve themselves (lack of time, lack of personnel, lack of skills). They can then call upon consulting companies that will accompany in the resolution of the problem

Question 8

What are the qualities of a consultant? Which ones do you master the least?

Answer 8

Adaptability, analysis, teamwork, high standards because the job is demanding
a junior cannot have the analysis skills of an experimented consultant

Question 9

Why you and not someone else?
If I had to remember only one thing about you ?
What my friends would say about me?

Answer 9

Team spirit

Question 10

My qualities

Answer 10

• I am adaptable and I am not afraid of new challenges (I think it goes together):
  o I’ve lived and worked in 3 countries outside of France
  o I’ve had to adapt several times to different jobs, countries, and I would even say that I love to challenge myself, by going to an au pair family when I had never taken care of children before.
• Persistent
  o I never give up (running), tenacious in the face of difficulty,
  o If I have to work more on a project at night I’ll do what I have to do, rather than sleep and make a mean work.
• My team spirit
  Since the beginning of my pharmacy studies, and in all my professional experiences, I have worked in a team: when I worked in a pharmacy, but also when I was a volunteer at the Red Cross, in large or small teams. Even outside of work and studies, in Rouen, and then in Brussels, I lived in shared accommodation. I think I have developed a great team spirit, but also a great ease of integration.

Question 11

My shortcomings

Answer 11

• I wasn’t the most organized in the world in managing my projects, but I have improved a lot.
• I sometimes have trouble knowing what I can handle in terms of quantity of work and what I can’t handle. Sometimes I’ve asked to be involved in a large number of projects at the same time, without realizing that I was doing too much. I think I need to work on that
• Maybe I need more confidence in myself

Question 12

What do you value in the team?

Answer 12

Trust, good atmosphere, benevolence

Question 13

What do you expect from your manager?

Answer 13

Kindness and trust

Question 14

Have you ever worked in a team?

Answer 14

Pharmacy, Industry, ESCP (VLM)

Question 15

Have you ever led a project ?

Answer 15

OncoHUB

Question 16

Have you ever failed?

Answer 16

Mexico City

Question 17

Have you ever learned anything?

Answer 17

At ESCP, when working in a group, goodwill and trust will make a group project go well or not

Question 18

Have you ever had to get hard-to-get information?

Answer 18

• Working with Mexbrain, who had submitted problems to be solved regarding the possible orientation of clinical trials on one disease or another.
• Contact with KOLs throughout France

Question 19

What would your employer say about you? Qualities and defects according to your employer

Answer 19

That I get things done when I’m given assignments, even if I have to stay up all night. I never turn in a job half done

Question 20

Company I wouldn’t like to work for and type of assignment I would not like to have

Answer 20

Consumer health subsidiary

Question 21

Have you never worked in market access?

Answer 21

It’s a field that I’m very interested in, but of all the fields I’m interested in, I had to make a choice, so I haven’t been able to work in market access yet, but I’m extremely interested and I have a great desire to learn and become good in this field. So even if I have to do my homework before I start here, I will be ready to do what it takes.

Question 22

Where did you apply?

Answer 22

BIONEST is my first choice, so I applied here first, but I have more interviews next week. BIONEST first so I have an answer, positive/negative first

Question 23

Servier internship

Why didn’t I continue at Servier?

Answer 23

• Participation in research and evaluation of biotechs in the context of acquisition
• projects in collaboration with the Business Development Department
• Participation in in- and out-licensing projects
• Creation of regional mapping of biotechs in the context of intelligence missions

Question 24

Internship at Bayer

Question 25

Carmat internship

Question 26

Running

Able to reconcile sport and consulting?

Answer 26

• I run about 50 km / week, which represents about 4 sessions of 1 hour / week.
• I prepare races of 10000m
• I really like to surpass myself and the rigor that it takes to improve

I know that I will have no problem managing strategy consulting and sport. Besides, I have never been in better shape than since I started running so much. For my fitness and performance at work I think it would be in my best interest to keep running 4 or more times a week.

Question 27

What is your professional project?

Answer 27

No specific professional project

Question 28

Name a good and a bad company in the pharmaceutical industry

Answer 28

• Bayer : financial health
• GSK : a lot of consumer health
• Pfizer, because a lot of external innovation (you could see it when I was working at Servier, all the biotechs have a partnership or have done licensing with Pfizer, it’s impressive)

Question 29

The health sector in the future?

Answer 29

• An increasingly important part allocated to external innovation
• Funds allocated to oncology are already important, but this will continue
• due to the arrival of new types of drugs (mRNA vaccines, dsRNA, ASO, gene therapy), renewed interest from biotechs in trying to find treatments for CNS diseases (AD, PD, HD, ALS). this is what we saw at Servier when I was part of the external innovation team, more and more biotechs are raising funds to start preclinical trials: phase I
• less and less investment by big pharma in the consumer health sector. Moreover, we can see it today, GSK is trying to sell its consumer health department, J&J has split its company in 2, I remember that when he took office Paul Hudson, the CEO of Sanofi, also mentioned the idea of selling his consumer health department

Question 30

Strategy consulting in the future?
I admit that I am new to this field, so it is very difficult for me to give you a relevant answer. Extreme innovation is becoming more and more important in healthcare R&D. I think it will continue to grow in the future. I think it will continue to grow in the future. So there are more and more partnerships, codev or licensing, and therefore more and more money going from big pharma to biotechs, allowing more development of drug candidates. A firm like Bionest that works with biotechs and on their early projects could therefore find an advantage in this

Question 31

Market access in the future? (reimbursement, drug prices, increasingly strict pricing? what will happen in the USA?)

Answer 31

More and more market access on gene therapy

Question 32

Do you have any questions?

Answer 32

• How many people at BIONEST in Paris?
• Do consultants have the possibility to work from home?
• Do consultants have to travel abroad for some projects?
• If I am to pursue in the next rounds, how will it work? I understand there will be a powerpoint presentation to make?
• No more questions, but many thanks for this interview, I’m still motivated to join Bionest, and I hope I’ll have the opportunity to prove my worth here.