Collegium Pharmaceutical Interview Questions
& Process

It was a pretty standard interview process. The team was really nice and I got updates pretty fast. It started with a TA screen, then a chat with the hiring manager, and finished with an onsite with the team.

I used a contract recruiter who wasn't very experienced. She offered dates that were company holidays, so I picked some other dates and it worked out. After the interview, she ghosted me even though she said I was moving on. It felt unprofessional and I didn't have much faith in her ability to handle the HR side of things.

I started with a Rx Pros and it was a mess. The recruiter called me a few different times, mistaking me for other candidates. I went directly to their site and applied. After 6 interviews I ended up NOT getting the job as they had a need for someone with pain experience. HR ended up having a call with me which I thought was very classy and confirmed my want to be part of the company as I’ve heard nothing but great things about the culture. HR even shared their employee satisfaction surveys are in 90% response rate. If they called me back for another opportunity I’d go! Hope this helps!!

I went through a four-tiered process in my interviews with Collegium Pharmaceuticals, all of which took place on separate days: (1.) a phone interview with the laboratory group manager, (2.) one-on-one interviews with three of the group members, (3.) a one-on-one interview with the group manager, and (4.) one-on-one interviews with the company's VP of Technical Operations and Technical Director. My initial perception of the company was mixed. My interviews with the group manager (who was my point person for scheduling everything) and the group members were casual, but informative, and they were friendly, articulate, and motivated by their work-- indeed, they seemed like fantastic people to surround myself with for 40 hours of a week. However, their building was very much in a state of disarray. It housed two companies, both of which were expanding rapidly, and there was a dire lack of space. Collegium was in the process of having a new facility built for itself, but even so, there seemed to be a significant organization problem. Labs were railroaded between offices, the hallways were twisted and labyrinthine, and there was no apparent demarcation between the two companies. My interviews with the group members took place in a dimly-lit break room while employees of the other company were eating lunch. I found it to be unprofessional, but I clicked so well with everyone I met that I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. My interviews with the VP of Technical Operations and Technical Director took a much more professional tone in much more furnished offices, making it seem to me at the time that what I thought were signs of a company with fundamental logistical issues were really just signs of a promising, fast-growing company expanding beyond its nascent days. The questions were challenging and rigorous-- and I mean that positively-- and by the end I felt like I had found a perfect fit. On the way out of my last interview the group manager was very excited when I told her that my interviews with her superiors went well and she told me that they just had to sort through some paperwork regarding the position and that I was to expect to hear back in about a week. I, of course, wasn't assuming anything, but I felt very good about my prospects. I heard back in a few days that she was still working on getting in touch with my references and needed a little more time. Another week went by and I heard nothing back, so I followed up with another email. I received an email back informing me that they were still conducting interviews-- two weeks after they said they'd be making a final decision-- and that she would get back to me about a week afterwards at a specific date which she set. That date passed and, after waiting several days, I called and left her a message. I received no reply to that message and called and left another message, but again, there was no reply. After sending two more emails, and nearly a month after my last interview, I finally received a coldly-worded email from her me informing me that the job status had not changed and that no offers had been made. It became apparent to me that if I hadn't received an offer by then, I wasn't getting one at all. In a hypercommunicative world where sending a résumé is a simple point-and-click affair, I don't expect to hear a definitive answer from every employer I interview with. However, at the level of familiarity that I reached with Collegium and the palpable enthusiasm with which they treated me, there's a reasonable expectation that I should be told if and when I'm out of the running, and there was a sharp disconnect between our amicable in-person meetings and the detached tone of our communications thereafter. Whether the cause of my precipitous drop from top-shelf candidate to cellar-dwelling also-ran is the result of poor logistical planning by a company with evident administrative confusion, a flaw they found in my candidacy late in the game, or both, I found my post-interview treatment to be highly disrespectful, rude, and indicative of a company that improperly values its employees. I would recommend against interviewing for a job at Collegium Pharmaceuticals in any capacity.