Pharmaceutical sales are an
immensely popular industry because of the
excellent earning potential and the fact that sales reps often have the
opportunity to create their own schedule rather than being tied down
nine-to-five in an office. There is also a lot of growth in the field, from
sales representative to district manager to regional or territory manager and
finally to corporate roles.
With that in mind, it is no
surprise that hundreds, even thousands, of resumes are received each month by
pharmaceutical recruiters and the HR offices of pharmaceutical companies.
So how is someone supposed to
stand out?
Well, the first thing is
experience. If you have a strong background in sales, especially pharmaceutical
sales or medical sales, you’ve got an edge — maybe. Like everything else, there
isn’t one hard rule on the ideal pharmaceutical sales candidate. For example,
some companies prefer candidates without any industry experience — at least for
those more entry-level positions — because they prefer new hires go through the
company’s training program to learn their way.
But what about those job
seekers who don t come from one of the top two backgrounds? In those cases, it ιs essential to highlight the pertinent, transferable skills you do have in
such a way so that you attract the attention of hiring professionals. Let s
look at how you can do this.
1. What’s on The Pharmaceuticals’ Wish List?
This step involves identifying
what skills and backgrounds companies look for in potential pharmaceutical
sales reps and determining which ones you have, so that you can highlight them
in your resume. Examples might be previous sales experience, account
management, event management, communications, psychology, and customer service.
If you are a recent college graduate, finding your transferable skills might be
harder, so look beyond the classroom. Were you involved in fundraising
activities? Work a retail job in the summer? Complete advanced projects for a
particular class?
You might be wondering how
some of these things are related to sales, but if you think carefully, you will
see that transferable skills are not always obvious but they are important. For
instance, a background in psychology prepares a person for using subtle phrases
and strategies to mold their opinion on something, such as a product, or to
spot non-verbal clues to how a person is feeling about a product. Event
management can be important because many pharmaceutical sales roles involve
arranging meetings, lectures, and presentations with medical staff. Fund
raising is a type of sales that is even harder to do than most – you are trying
to get people to give you money and get nothing in return!
2. Turning Your Experience into Keywords.
Now that you’ve identified
your skills, it is time to craft the proper phrasing in the resume. It is
essential that you incorporate industry-specific keywords when you describe
your experience and skills. What are some important keywords for pharmaceutical
sales? Sales and Marketing, Account Management, Territory Management, Revenue
Growth, Relationship Management, Customer Service, and Presentations, just to
name a few. You can find plenty of the most common ones just by reading a
handful of pharmaceutical sales rep job descriptions. But building keywords
into your resume goes beyond the obvious. Sales is all about personality, so
think about the attributes a good sales person has. They are aggressive without
being obnoxious, they see ‘nos’ as opportunities, they are experts at the
products they sell, and they are personable and friendly. While you don t want
to focus too much on personality in a resume, you can usually sneak in some
soft skills:
Aggressive but friendly Sales
Professional with consistent history of penetrating and acquiring accounts.
Even if you don t have
pharmaceutical or medical sales experience, that is a sentence that will appeal
to just about any hiring manager when they see it at the top of your resume.
3. Branding Statements Taglines.
A one or two-line branding
statement will do wonders for your resume, and can help set you apart from
other candidates. A good branding statement can be crafted by taking your
15-second elevator pitch (you do have one for your interview, don t you?) and reworking
it so that it gives someone a great idea of who you are. Remember our sample
keyword sentence from earlier?
Aggressive but friendly Sales
Professional with consistent history of penetrating and acquiring accounts.
That s an excellent branding
statement for a sales professional.
Following the branding
statement, it s always a good idea to have a tag line. This is a related
sentence or group of words that demonstrates the value you have to offer. Look
at this example:
Award-winning Sales
Representative – Top 5% Producer and consistent President s Club Winner
The branding statement and tag
line also serve as excellent segues into your career summary.
4. Include the Right Information.
This article isn t about the
specifics of resume format. If you are looking to shape a resume for the
pharmaceutical sector, you should already have a good idea of the different
parts of a resume – summary, experience, education, training, etc. What we want
to do now is remind you to include special information that you might have
normally left off your resume. Do you have any previous experience in the
healthcare field? Maybe you took some medical coding courses-add them to your
training section. Perhaps in high school or college you volunteered at a
hospital – put it in community service. In college, did you take some biology
classes? Mention those in your education section. Anything you can add that is
relevant to the pharmaceutical industry is going to help you. The same goes for
individuals who might be coming from a healthcare background but don t have any
sales experience. Did you take business courses in college or some sales
training seminars earlier in your career? When appropriate, add them into the
resume!
Another thing is to make sure
you don t take anything for granted. Too often I see people put this in their
education section:
Biology, College Name
To a reader, that means
nothing. Did you take one biology course? Do you have an Associate s Degree? A
Bachelor s? The resume isn t the place for hiding information or being vague.
Here is how the education section should look:
Bachelor s of Science in
Biology, School XYZ
Course work in Biology, School
XYZ, including Anatomy, Advanced Biology, and Biochemistry.
Most pharmaceutical companies
want their candidates to hold at least a Bachelor s; maybe others are not as
strict. However, all of them value education and training, so be sure not to
leave something off the resume that could help you.
5. Tell Your Story Correctly.
Pharmaceutical companies and
recruiters prefer to see not only what you have done, but how you achieved it.
Some people make the mistake of only including half the information in their
job descriptions; either they omit their achievements or they fail to show how
they achieved their results. When you re writing your resume, be sure to use a
Situation/Action/Result style to tell each story. This means describing the
problem, showing the action you took, and listing the result.
In order to achieve sales growth
for new product, developed multiple sales strategies that led to 18% market
penetration six weeks ahead of projected timeline.
The situation was to grow the
product, the action was to develop sales strategies, and the result was 18%
market penetration. Pharmaceutical companies are very results-driven, so
including as many quantifiable results as you can on the resume will be a big
help in terms of getting you more interviews.
6. Review Your Resume.
This is critical. After the
resume is written, do not send it out to anyone until you and at least two
other people (preferably someone with superior grammar and spelling skills) has
looked it over. Remember, you are up against a lot of competition. Even a
couple of typos, grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, or punctuation mistakes
can mean the difference between getting an interview or having your resume end
up in the trash.
Also important is providing
complete contact information (omitting your email address or phone number is a
major red flag in HR offices).
With these tips in mind,
rebuilding your resume for pharmaceutical sales positions will not only be
possible, but also effective.
