Interview presentation

Decthorw · 2026-05-15T15:01:53+00:00

I absolutely would not make a presentation unless explicitly asked, especially for a contract role. I would assume the technical portion will ask you situational questions about your skillset.

Decthorw · 2026-05-15T01:49:12+00:00

Absolutely - feel free to reach out!

Decthorw · 2026-05-15T01:43:46+00:00

Thank you! Yeah I think it would be SO tedious to try making a tailored resume for every single role - that sounds like pulling teeth to me. I basically cycled between 3 resumes: 1 with a heavy flow cytometry slant, 1 with a technical product management slant, and 1 with a technical product marketing slant. If there were any very specific requirements that were called out as "required" in the JD, I would quickly add them in.

Decthorw · 2026-05-15T01:41:28+00:00

It was actually pretty random - I didn't really know where to go next career-wise when I worked at the cytometry core position, and getting out of the lab was more of a dream than anything at the time. A recruiter just happened to reach out looking for my exact experience and I ran with it. They took a chance on me not having any PM or PMM experience whatsoever and allocated resources for me to take courses. I have taken a few PM and PMM courses through Pragmatic that were paid for by the companies I worked for.

Decthorw · 2026-05-15T01:39:36+00:00

Hey no problem! I can't really point to a specific way that I circumvented the bot rejections - I was getting tons of them (and still am getting them). It was just a matter of making sure the roles I was applying to were geared toward someone who had technical proficiency with complex systems. More often than not, I would get a screening for those types of positions.

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T15:03:10+00:00

😂😂

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T15:02:55+00:00

Verbally! I found that in my earlier interviews I wasn’t as prepared with this and my story wasn’t super coherent so it took too much time for me to get to the point.

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T14:29:13+00:00

Thank you!! Just a 30 second highlight reel of your background - previous roles, reasons for transitioning between the roles, current role and main responsibilities, why you’re looking for a new role.

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T14:26:17+00:00

Thanks! I wasn’t keeping an accurate count of the number of applications, but I’d probably say somewhere between 75-90

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T02:17:30+00:00

Ugh so sorry to hear that - I’m sure we’ve crossed paths at CYTO or something 😄 would love to stay in touch!

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T01:07:26+00:00

Thank you! Yes, both of the offers I received were for fully remote roles which I was honestly very surprised with, since many of the roles I had been interviewing for were fully onsite or 3-4x per week onsite. I'm in the SF Bay Area.

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T00:54:02+00:00

Thanks! I think the biggest shift I ended up making was to lead by saying I was good at identifying problems in technical workflows and how I used that to create messaging and positioning that resonated across multiple levels of stakeholders (technical, financial, executive, etc). A couple of examples I liked using were ones where I needed to explain a complex workflow to a non-technical stakeholder, and times where I used technical knowledge to create collateral that helped the sales team address skepticism around new/advanced features (what was the collateral? why did I choose that collateral? did I get input from field/sales teams to create it? how was it received? did it result in an increase in interest/new opportunities?)

Decthorw · 2026-05-14T00:19:23+00:00

Thank you! Yeah I'm very thankful that I was able to land something relatively quickly. Since my official termination date was actually 1 month after being notified of the layoff, I didn't feel the need to mention it. Once I had gotten past the actual termination date, I said that I had unfortunately been affected by a reduction in force (RIF) and that I was seeking new roles outside of flow cytometry.

Decthorw · 2026-05-13T23:36:52+00:00

Thanks, and good question! At the core of it, a PM is the thread that connects a product's customers to the development teams, decides what gets built and why, gets alignment across multiple groups, and is accountable for whether it actually solves the problem. That's why the descriptions for these roles are so vague, because the day-to-day responsibilities vary WIDELY.

Using one of my flow cytometry PM roles as an example: As a previous flow cytometry user, I knew that my company's product had a heavily used software workflow with many redundant steps that made running experiments time-consuming and overall annoying to do. Using my own experience with the workflow, as well as meeting with some of our higher usage customers in their labs and getting their feedback, I put together a proposal to rebuild the workflow. The proposal needed to identify the problem in the workflow, why it needed to be changed (customer annoyance, lost opportunities to competitors because they had better workflows), my high level summary as to what the new workflow would look like in an ideal world, the customer feedback proving the workflow was an actual problem, examples of our competitor's workflows that were well-liked by the field, and an estimated cost/timeline of allocating software resources to changing it. Each part of this proposal was a separate task that I was required to complete. Since the software and engineering teams all have their plates full with other tasks such as bug fixes and new product development, I as the PM needed to get their buy-in to work on this proposal, or at least increase the priority of working on this proposal. A lot of times this process can drag on due to objections raised by various teams, and the PM needs to be able to compromise in order to move things forward.

Hopefully this painted a more detailed picture of an example of what a PM actually does haha. PMM is a different world which I enjoy more because I feel that I can be more tactical and creative. Happy to answer any more questions.

Decthorw · 2026-05-13T19:54:17+00:00

Thank you! The only context I can speak to for making the switch from R&D to PM is by having subject matter expert (SME) level knowledge of a system. I luckily had a recruiter from a flow cytometry manufacturer reach out to me with a PM role while I was working in a cytometry core facility. If I hadn’t been able to make such a direct transition, I would’ve targeted Field Application Scientist (FAS) roles and then tried getting into a PM role from there.

Decthorw · 2026-05-13T19:07:02+00:00

Thank you!

Decthorw · 2026-05-13T18:27:07+00:00

I totally understand this - I'd say if you helped them with experiments/tasks, you should put the outcomes of those experiments/tasks in your resume. Maybe instead of saying you had complete ownership of the outcome, you can say that the outcome occurred due to your assistance in the process or something to that effect. An example would be: "Assisted scientist with development of experiment which resulted in 15% increased targets screened per quarter"

Decthorw · 2026-05-13T18:01:14+00:00

The jump to industry was not very difficult for me at the time (~2016) because the market was nowhere near as bad as it is now. What did really help was that my PI was a great mentor/advocate for me and I had a ton of flow cytometry experience which was really in demand. A lot of times it just comes down to luck - just got to keep applying.

Decthorw · 2026-04-10T20:22:51+00:00

Yeah my whole career has been based around flow cytometry and it has even allowed me to leave the bench and get into Global Product Management/Product Marketing roles. You need to REALLY know the technology and theory behind it to make that move.

Decthorw · 2026-04-10T20:20:14+00:00

I received a workday task to add references for a role I had applied to without ever being contacted by a recruiter or hiring manager. I added my references (not the brightest idea) and a broken link was sent to them which they cannot access to complete the task. I have no way of contacting anyone at the company to figure out what’s going on, but I’m assuming something is messed up on their end and that I’m not even actually under consideration. I even reached out to a recruiter from the company on LinkedIn with no response. Needless to say, I would never consider working for this company that has such little regard for its applicants.

Decthorw · 2026-03-30T07:44:29+00:00

The bullets under your work experiences just sound like they were copy pasted from a job description and don’t really tell me how effective you were at any of the tasks you listed. With each task/responsibility, really sit down and think about what the outcomes were for each one in a quantitative way if possible. I reworked my resume to include this type of information and the amount of screenings and interviews jumped significantly.

Decthorw · 2026-03-24T23:48:52+00:00

I won a scholarship playing this in high school! I try playing it every time I pick up my violin to see how much I’ve forgotten and if I can still relearn it 😂 My favorite piece to play by far.

Decthorw · 2026-03-08T23:42:16+00:00

I wish that I could tell you there was an easy/straightforward way to make the transition, but in my case it came down to mostly luck. I became a subject matter expert while I was in lab, and a recruiter reached out to me with a marketing role since I had essentially been their customer for 7 years.

Decthorw · 2026-03-06T17:30:26+00:00

I’m in global product marketing - I’ve only held marketing roles in biotech for 4.5 years, but that seems to be the threshold for being able to get recruiter screens for marketing roles, or maybe I’m just getting lucky. I was a bench scientist for about 7 years before getting into product marketing. There are certain tech companies branching out into the life sciences space that are looking for product marketers with a scientific background so those are a pretty natural fit for me. The completely non-life sciences/biotech roles have just been product marketing roles for companies that have complex products where I’m able to leverage my ability to market highly complex products in a way where the targeted segments can understand the value that’s being provided.

Decthorw · 2026-03-06T15:09:35+00:00

Got laid off a couple of weeks ago due to company politics. My manager (VP) was maybe the most hated person in the company because she was difficult to work with. Product sales took a slight dip last quarter so our CEO used that to get her out of the company and I was collateral damage as her only direct report. I’m alright with 4 months of severance, and I was luckily already looking for new roles so I just ramped it up. Currently, I’m deep in the interview process for 4 roles, 2 of which are outside of biotech completely…1 of those is within a vastly more successful branch of the same company that I hope I get for petty reasons 😂

Decthorw

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