Today’s anecdote about the power of a professional resume entails a client of mine who wanted to land a job in the pharmaceutical industry.
In his mid 30s, married, and with children, my client had built a successful and respectable career in ad sales for a major corporation specializing in the design, publishing, and snail mailing of a handful of coupons in a familiar blue envelope. While he enjoyed his career in relationship-building, his long-term goal was to position himself with a major pharmaceutical company. After an extensive interview with him, I designed a resume specific for his industry of choice – using a layout and wording that would most assuredly attract decision-makers at international pharmaceutical firms.
“Attracting” potential employers was an understatement.
When my client first started getting responses from his new resume, he was both excited and nervous. He knew he was a sharp, polished, and seasoned sales professional, but he had no experience in the very-competitive pharmaceutical sales field. Further, his educational background was not in the sciences and he was afraid that might hinder his ability to land even an interview.
Once his phone starting ringing from potential employers, that fear was erased.
After each interview, he came back to my office and had me write a customized thank-you note to the person(s) interviewing him. He would share with me what happened during the particular interview and how he felt about it. Because I knew he didn’t hate his current job and was not desperate, each time I would offer him more recommendations, advice, or ideas to make sure he did not take the first job offered to him if that was not what he really wanted. I suggested he inquire about the sales territory he would be responsible for (was he willing to leave his wife and children to drive out of state three times a week?) and ask about the product he would be responsible for promoting (was it new on the market and had to be launched, or was it a well-known product already widely-accepted by medical professionals and the public?).
Within the first 7 interviews, he was offered 3 jobs. For various reasons, he refused of all them. He knew when and if he was ready to leave the company he had been with for years – it was going to be for a position with a company where he was willing to stay for the long haul. He would rather stay where he was then risk taking the first job offered to him that had a demanding, out-of-town territory, a new product, and additional responsibilities that would keep him away from his home and family longer than he wanted.
After each interview, he became more confident, more savvy with the industry jargon, and more willing to ask key questions of the interviewer. He turned the interviews around in a subtle, professional, and sincere way to see if the potential employers were a right fit for him vs. if he was the ideal candidate to meet their needs.
Interview after interview, job offer after job offer, my client finally made the decision to accept a position 6 months after he first began his job search. He was hired by a leading pharmaceutical company that offered him a sales territory within just a radius of 40 miles from his home.
Just 8 months later, he had the opportunity to apply for a promotion to a management position with the same pharmaceutical company. I updated his resume – highlighting all the physician-speaker dinner meetings he coordinated, all the initiatives he took on his own to help his then-manager, and his willingness to go the extra mile to serve as a mentor and resource for the less seasoned sales professionals.
He got the promotion.
In addition to managing his own portfolio of accounts, he is now overseeing, empowering, and leading a team of other pharmaceutical reps.
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most popular and challenging industries to secure a position. For many people, the benefits of a job in this field clearly outweigh the responsibilities. Most of my clients in this industry came to me from other fields and, with the proper layout, design, and wording of a new resume, were able to land interviews and jobs in this highly-competitive field.
Next time you are at your doctor’s office and see that sharp rep neatly sporting all black and pulling a case of pharmaceutical samples and literature, remember my client who was initially afraid he wouldn’t even be given the opportunity to meet with anyone for an interview in the industry and who now earns a salary in the six digits and runs a whole territory.
