Medical Sales Resume Format
It’s a tough job market right now! It’s a tough Medical Sales job market right now, too! Everyone out there is making suggestions on the best way to do this, and the best way to do that. I will share my opinion and experience with the best resume format for the Medical Sales industry.
First, I’m going to share a few things not to do or that you should remove from your resume to quickly improve it.
· DO NOT use Canva or a Word template that is visually complex with columns, graphics, colors, and a unique layout. These types of templates, while pretty, are outside the norm and not easily scannable by recruiters, hiring managers, and ATS software systems (ATS will have difficulty parsing your information potentially leaving you to do double work on application sites like Workday). A common statistic is that a hiring manager/recruiter spends 6-8 seconds looking at a resume—that’s it. You have to make it easy for them to determine you are a good fit for the position in that extremely short timeframe.
Remove the year you graduated from college. Whether you are a recent grad or tenured in your field, this needs to come off the resume. Leaving it on opens up an opportunity for bias. You can be “unintentionally” viewed as inexperienced or the opposite “over qualified”.
Remove irrelevant work history. If there aren’t any directly relevant transferrable skills to the position you are applying for, they should be removed.
Remove the objective section. Replace with a Summary statement. A summary should be a high-level overview of your key skills and experiences as it relates to the job you are applying for. This will be the first, most visible, area on your resume so It should be attention-grabbing and impactful. This is a great place to use skills from the job description to describe your experience. Keep it to 3 to 4 sentences, I’m starting to see bullets used in this section too. Your preference.
Remove your home address (City and State are enough). Nobody needs to know your home address. If you are applying on their website, they will likely ask for it there.
Do not include photos or personal information. A resume is not the appropriate document to include this type of information. You can include a headshot on your LinkedIn profile. Having these items on a professional resume is distracting and could result in unintentional bias.
Remove the quote “references upon request”. This is outdated. If references are needed they will ask for them. Also, your references may change based on the job you are applying to.
Remove hobbies and interests. No need to include this information in a professional document.
My suggestion for the best resume format is a clean/simple format that is easy to read and interpret your value as it relates to the position you are applying for. Scroll to the end to see an image of my suggested resume format. Below are my recommended sections to include and the order to include them:
· Header: name, phone, email, city/state, LinkedIn URL. The order and format aren’t that important but be mindful of taking up too much space. It has to be clear how to contact you but should not distract from the sections that follow.
· Summary Statement: 3-4 sentences or bullets that are a high-level glimpse of your career accomplishments. Create in a way that these skills can be linked to skills in a job description.
· Skills Section: Keep this area clean, use bullets, and maximize this area by highlighting your skills to those in the job description. These are skills not sentences. Think business planning, team-building, product launch, cross-functional collaboration, account management, Pharmaceutical Sales experience…….You will pull these directly from the job description and mirror them to your skills and background.
· Work experience: This should have 1 to 2 sentences describing your responsibilities. You can include the revenue of your territory or company, Sold xyz to physicians while managing a $4M territory. Next, you will include, in bullets, your important achievements while you were/are in the position. Always quantify your accomplishments. For bonus points, give a brief explanation of how you achieved by using a skill from their job description. Use 3 to 5 bullets and the more recent work experience should have more bullets than your oldest work experience. Bullets should be no longer than 2 lines.
· Education section: As mentioned before do not include dates. The only exception to this rule is if you are a recent graduate with limited work experience. If this is the case education can go before your work experience and you can include dates.
Let’s talk customization of your resume. This is necessary. Every job has different requirements and skills that they are looking for. What isn’t necessary is creating a new resume for every job. The guts of your resume will not change but the achievements or skill examples you choose to share will almost always change. However, this doesn’t have to be an arduous task. A well-crafted and formatted resume will allow you to easily make changes so it is completely customized to the position you are interested in. Doing these things will make it easier to determine fit for the recruiter/hiring manager. It will also help you to rank higher in the ATS system when applying on a company's job site.
If you would like to schedule a resume review visit www.epcareercoach.com/services
If you would like a copy of my template to start building out your resume, send me an email request at elisa@epcareercoach.com
EPCCM Resume Template 2024
EPCCM Resume Template 2024
Thank you for taking the time to read this month’s blog post!
Elisa Perkins
Elisa Perkins Career Coaching and Mentoring
