What roles are available?

Sales and marketing offers lots of opportunities for both graduates and experienced professionals at all levels. Typical jobs include customer account managers, sales specialists, marketing executives, portfolio managers, commercial affairs specialists and market analysts. We need people at a local market and global level, such as the centres of excellence that develop winning commercial strategies for the key therapeutic areas and categories.

What’s it really like to work in sales and marketing?

Sales and marketing is an exciting, evolving arena. We’re constantly looking to drive business improvement, deliver greater value to patients and consumers, and accelerate our growth. The work can also be extremely diverse. Many of our commercial activities involve interaction with governments, regulatory and health authorities.

Our portfolio includes both established brands and newer, innovative medicines. We’re proud of our products and sell them with truth and integrity. So we give our customer-facing professionals in-depth science training to present our medicines and consumer healthcare products properly. We reward them for the quality of their interactions with the healthcare industry and retail customers, rather than on just achieving individual sales targets. By putting the interests of patients and consumers first, we make sales and marketing an extremely rewarding career option.

Do you have the right qualities?

We believe in clear accountability, empowering our people to deliver our strategies, and creating a pipeline of future managers and leaders. So we need passionate people who can think broadly and display our values and behaviours. You should be commercially savvy, ideally with a medical/science interest and an excellent ability to build relationships. A focus on performance and the ability to react to market change are also important. At a senior level, we need people who can create a vision for positive change and inspire others.