For those of you wanting to break into pharmaceutical sales, here’s an example of a pharmaceutical sales resume for someone transitioning from another field, nursing, into pharmaceutical sales.
This sample resume has a functional format rather than a chronological format. A functional style resume is often used in situations where someone wants to highlight transferable skills and experience.
Would you like to break into pharmaceutical sales? Here’s some information to help you understand what pharmaceutical sales companies are looking for and how to best market yourself.
Basic Requirements for Pharmaceutical Sales
To break into pharmaceutical sales, you need a bachelor’s degree in any field, a clean driving record, and a record of successful outside sales experience. Another factor a pharmaceutical company looks for is a work history free from frequent job changes. You also need the desire and ability to learn about pharmaceutical products.
How Pharmaceutical Sales Differs from Other Sales Positions
Pharmaceutical sales differs from most other sales jobs in that there is no order to close or contract to sign. With pharmaceutical sales, the rep serves as an expert for physicians promoting products through education and awareness. It is an indirect sales role with the goal of increasing the level of prescriptions written in the rep’s sales territory.
How to Best Market Yourself
Use your resume and cover letter to highlight your experience learning about complex topics. Also use your resume and cover letter to convey your experience educating and training clients. To pursue a position in pharmaceutical sales, use the same avenues as you would with any other field: networking, the Internet, executive recruiters, and direct employer contact.
The Pharmaceutical Sales Hiring Process
The pharmaceutical sales hiring process is a very unique one. To assist you, you might want to consider purchasing an e-book that covers the specifics the hiring process used for pharmaceutical sales jobs. You can find these books by doing a search on Google. Here is one e-book written by a pharmaceutical sales recruiter:
Secrets of Breaking into Pharmaceutical Sales
To Learn More about the Industry
Go to http://www.contractpharma.com/top_comp.php to learn more about the top pharmaceutical companies and consider subscribing to this site’s trade magazine to gain further industry knowledge. Or join an industry association.
Learn more about getting a pharmaceutical sales job
Contact Pharmaceutical Sales Recruiters
To get a job in pharmaceutical sales, try working with these pharmaceutical sales recruiters:
 To learn more about pharmaceutical sales, click here |
Are you unsure how to respond when asked about your salary requirements during an interview? Are you wondering how to get what you’re worth during salary negotiations?
Do you know if you are being paid what you worth for your current job? Would you like to learn how your salary compares to that of others in your position before your interview or performance review?
Here is a free resource you can use to gather useful salary information:
Personalized Salary Wizard Report
The Salary Wizard Report will provide you with salary information based on your desired job title and geographic area. To create your free Salary Wizard Report, go to:
http://www.questcareer.com/salary.htm
First, click on Back to Home link on the top of the page. Next, complete the Salary Wizard on the left-hand side of the page. Enter your desired job title and geographic location, then click the “search” button.
Once you are taken to the results page, click on the View Basic Range link for the job title that most closely matches your desired position.
As an example, the Salary Wizard gives a median salary for a Product/Brand Manager in zip code 55436 of $86,814 with the 25% percentile being a salary of $73,761 and the 75% percentile being $98,750. The median compensation including bonuses is $93,341.
Here’s a great resource to help college students find an internship and new college graduates land their first job after graduation:
CollegeRecruiter.com features 250,000 active job postings from all industries. The site is primarily targeted to students and recent graduates with zero to three years of experience.
CollegeRecruiter.com provides industry-specific career channels with positions and career information related to each specific channel. Select a career channel to research industry information and search jobs.
Are you looking for a marketing position in the U.S.? Be sure to subscribe to MarketingSherpa’sCareer Climber newsletter, a weekly electronic newsletter that typically features 30-60 postings for marketing positions throughout the U.S. The newsletter is a particularly good resource for Internet marketing positions.
Here is a sample of the positions listed in its last newsletter:
Citrix, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Web Marketing Manager
MarketResearch.com, Rockville, MD
Marketing Web Site Manager
JDSU, Milpitas, CA
Direct Marketing Manager
Jobseekers can also post their availability through the newsletter at no charge.
Employers can list their job openings at no charge.
Are you looking for a great resource for finding job opportunities? If so, try Indeed, a search engine for jobs. Indeed includes job listings from major job sites like Monster and CareerBuilder as well as newspapers, associations and company career pages in one search, giving job seekers free access to millions of employment opportunities from thousands of websites. You can save your searches and have jobs delivered to you by e-mail.
Are you an employer looking for a free resource for posting your job opportunities? Employers can include job listings in the Indeed search engine without a fee. If you have a job site, click here to have your jobs added to Indeed.
Thad Peterson, a Monster staff writer, recently wrote an article featuring 100 Potential Interview Questions that would be a good resource for you to review prior to interviewing with an employer.
Here are questions that I found to be of particular importance to be prepared for:
Here’s a question from the article that I feel is worth thinking about for your own career and personal development whether or not you are currently conducting a job search:
If I were to give you the salary you requested but let you write your own job description, what would it say?
I’ve wanted to start a blog for some time now, but never got around to it. I was intimidated by how complicated I thought it would be. This weekend, I decided to do some research on starting a blog. I discovered I could use a free application, WordPress, that would allow me to host the blog on my website domain and manage the blog through the application.
I was able to successfully upload the software to my server. I’m definitely still in the learning phase of blogging, but I’ve found a great free tutorial that is guiding me through the process.
Everything I’ve read says that I should pick a niche to focus my blog on, but I’ve had trouble narrowing my focus. At this point, the blog will be about Career and Personal Development. I have an online business that provides outplacement and resume writing services which is why I’m interested in discussing career and personal development issues.
Since I run an Internet business, I want to include information important Internet Entrepreneurs as well. I see the Internet as a vehicle that will enable more and more employees to leave the corporate world to become small business owners.
I’m sure this blog will evolve over time just as my business has. I don’t even offer the service I initially started my business around. My two main sources of income for my business now weren’t offered when I initially launched my website. I think the best thing I can do with my blog is to begin and see where it takes me. Life’s a journey.