I was referred by an current Novartis employee who I knew from my prior work experience. The referral was quickly taken up and I received a call from the hiring manager wanting to know my interest and timeline to join. This was quickly followed by Recruiting team getting involved. I was asked to come in for a face to face with the hiring manager. It was over the course of the day that I learned that I would be meeting with more than 1 person at Novartis. This worked well for me as I had taken a day off hence could accommodate the inetrview schedules. Overall the interview day was a very disorganized process where in I met the Hiring Manager (Director level person), The hiring manager's boss (VP level) and HR. I was told by my referrer that this is an immediate requirement and the position was one of high visibility (my read: lots of immediate work, no reporting structure, always in a fire-fighting mode and multiple stakeholders to appease!). After the interview I also realized that the position was going to involve travel within US - the hiring manager told me 20% travel, the VP told me 50-60% travel and the HR person had no clue to the travel requirements (in HR's defense he had recently transitioned into his current role and I was the first candidate he was meeting/interviewing for the position in question!). Higher travel % was a no-no from my personal situation stand point which I communicated to all people I spoke with. The hiring manager was convinced of my candidature and wanted me to start immediately and my salary expectations were inline with his budgets. The VP asked me to send across additional collateral via email to evidence my softer capabilities (documents, presentations). The VP did ask me certain business relevant questions which required a case-study like discussion for 5-10mins pertaining to the Pharma domain. The HR wanted to know all about my past jobs and international/global work experience. I gathered feedback at a later point that I was being considered for additional openings as well within Novartis but was not told additional details thereof. All-in-all I got an impression of the team being very ad-hoc and unstructured in hiring for an immediate requirement position. Cant say if this is reflective of the team I met, or can be safely extrapolated to the whole division/business unit.