Pharmaceutical Sales and Resume Services

Monday, October 15, 2007

Pharmaceutical Sales and Resume Services by Clint Cora

Resume Services : Who would be the best person to target if you are looking for a pharmaceutical sales job? A recruiter? Somebody from human resources? Actually, neither. The best target will always be the person who will make final hiring decisions for pharmaceutical sales positions which is the district sales manager. I know this for a fact since I was a sales manager and most of the pharmaceutical sales representatives I hired for my district were ones who sent their resumes directly to me rather than go through a recruiter or human resources.

Lately, there have been numerous resume services to distribute resumes to all sorts of recruiters, human resources people and other targets that are distant from the sales managers. These distribution services try to convince their customers that having their resumes blasted all over the place is a step in the right direction.

The real question is whether the candidates are really better off using such resume distribution services. Let's put it this way, the resume distribution services are available to anyone who is willing to pay. Customers using these services will be just like all others who pay to get their resumes fired out there and there will be lots of people in the same boat. It's an easy way to get resumes out and as a result, everyone will be doing the same thing.

Rather than separating oneself from the rest of the crowd as one should be doing in an effective job hunt, one will just be caught in the masses of others who are also getting their resumes distributed in the same way. The recipients of these resumes, who are usually not the sales managers, will still get flooded with piles and piles of resumes whether the candidates are really qualified or not. We all know that personal referrals to sales managers and face to face meetings with them will always get candidates way ahead of the pack as with the case of some of my former sales reps. Will resume distribution services be able to offer this route for their customers in order to make them really stand out in front of the crowd? Of course not.

So in my opinion, resume distribution services do not really put candidates looking for pharmaceutical sales positions much further ahead. Sure it's easy to just pay to have your resume sent out but are they being put in front of the best people who are capable of making the final hiring decisions? Again, no. Are such services able to put your resume ahead in front of all their other customers? Definitely not!

Getting a resume and one's face in front of the best targets in a pharmaceutical sales job hunting campaign takes a lot of work and can't be simply bought like resume distribution services would have you believe. One must get out there in front of the right industry people to make the best unforgettable personal impressions in order to land pharmaceutical sales jobs. It is a lot of ground work but then again, that's what professional pharmaceutical sales representatives do anyway.