IT’S tempting to think of a résumé as a low-maintenance aspect of your job search. Just list where you worked, what you did and where you went to school, attach that to each application and press the button.

In fact, though, you have considerable flexibility in how you structure your résumé. The decisions you make about what it says and how it looks can affect whether you get the job you really want, or get a job at all.

A résumé is a marketing document that “can serve as a magnet to draw job opportunities to you,” said Susan Ireland, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Résumé.” That’s largely because more résumés are now on job boards and social media sites, and are included on company databases, she said.

Often, people place too much emphasis on the parts of past jobs that they hated — and get new jobs they end up hating, too, she said. “Your résumé is about your future,” she said, “it’s not about your past,” so stress experiences that are most relevant to the position you aspire to hold.

Let’s say you were in a data-entry position but want to move into project coordination. Give your true job title, she said, but you can highlight the parts of your job that involved projects.

You aren’t obliged to list every single job you have ever held. If a job is 15 or more years in the past, stop and consider how much it’s worth mentioning, or how much space to give it, said Wendy S. Enelow, a résumé writer for executives and co-author of “No-Nonsense Résumés.”

“Your résumé is not an autobiographical essay of your entire life,” she said. If the sales job you had 20 years ago does not relate to where you are headed, leave it out or summarize it very briefly, she said.

In listing your most relevant experience, quantify your achievements whenever possible, Ms. Enelow said. For example, you could write “automated internal record-keeping processes, resulting in a 27 percent reduction in annual operating costs,” she said.

People with gaps in their recent work history often balk at a résumé that lists their latest jobs first, thinking that a “functional” type, stressing skills rather than dates, will work in their favor. But in most cases, job seekers should go the reverse-chronological route.

Most hiring managers become suspicious when they see a résumé without prominent dates, Ms. Ireland said. Try to list things like your community service, your volunteer work or other activities to fill in gaps in your recent work history, she said.

Many companies use software to weed out unqualified applicants. Pay attention to key words, repeating some defining terms from the job description. For example, if you are applying to be a solar energy engineer, you could include the words “solar,” “installation” and “photovoltaic (PV),” Ms. Ireland said.

Be concise in the job-objective or summary part of the résumé, which comes after your name and contact information. If you are seeking a position similar to one you have held, simply state your professional title, Ms. Ireland said (for example, user interface architect). Otherwise, indicate the job you want next or emphasize the skills that the job involves.

Tweak your résumé when necessary. Be sensitive to wording differences among industries. For example, banks have customers, while libraries have patrons and hospitals have patients, Ms. Ireland said.

Generally, unless you are a very recent graduate, list education after work experience. The older you are, the less necessary it is to list the year you graduated, Ms. Enelow said.

Make sure your résumé is easy to read, both on the screen and on paper. Even though most résumés are sent via e-mail, many H.R. people still print out the attachments, Ms. Ireland said.

Résumés are shorter than they were even five years ago, Ms. Enelow said, perhaps as a result of social-media behavior like 140-character tweeting. Keep them “tight, lean and clean,” she said. Ms. Ireland warns against the “big cement block” effect, meaning the use of dense paragraphs. A paragraph should be no longer than three lines, she said.

Make good use of white space, point size, boldface and bullets. But if you start seeing a laundry list of bullets, group them into clusters under skills headings so they are more readable, Ms. Enelow said.

And if you are a mid- or late-career professional, don’t feel that you must keep your résumé to one page.

Many companies have older versions of Microsoft Word, so make sure that your résumé attachment is compatible with them, Ms. Ireland said. It’s also wise to have printed versions ready, to hand out at interviews.

Finally, have someone review your work. If you need a complete makeover, the services of professional résumé writers may cost from $100 up to thousands of dollars, Ms. Enelow said.

But even an extra set of eyes from a friend, family member or career center employee can be enough to set a wayward résumé on the right course.

By PHYLLIS KORKKI

Hide Sites

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

There’s been no shortage of warnings about the career dangers of posting racy content on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yet many job hunters still don’t heed that advice, and others don’t realize they’re doing just as much damage by doing things like bending the truth or spamming their résumés. Recruiters say such faux-pas can result in immediate and lasting career damage.

“You’re going to be remembered—and not in a positive way,” says Colleen McCreary, chief people officer for Zynga Game Network Inc., a San Francisco developer of social games including FarmVille. “Recruiters move around a lot from company to company, and that can carry on with them for a long period of time.”

Ms. McCreary says candidates consistently damage their reputations by sending cover letters that disingenuously claim a specific position at the company is their dream job. With a check of Zynga’s applicant-tracking system, she can see that those people submitted the same letter for several other openings, too. “They’ve now lost all their integrity,” she says. As an alternative, she recommends that job hunters write about the two or three positions they’re most qualified for in a single letter.

Job hunters also regularly flub by submitting their résumés to multiple recruiters and hiring managers at a single firm. “What they’re doing is a huge turn off because it sucks up a lot of time for people,” says Ms. McCreary.

Likewise, job hunters repeatedly derail their chances by applying for positions for which they don’t even meet the basic requirements. “There are a few people out there who seem to see it fit to apply to every job we ever post,” says Dan Goldsmith, a managing partner at AC Lion, an executive-search firm in New York. “Those people just go right in the trash folder.”

There are also job hunters who repeatedly send the same recruiters their résumés year after year, which can give the impression that they’re desperate or a job hopper, adds Mr. Goldsmith.

Liars make up another category of memorable job hunters. “People will say they graduated from [a] school and you find out from looking online that… they just took a course,” says Ms. McCreary.

Executive recruiter Russ Riendeau says he checks candidates’ résumés against their LinkedIn profiles and often discovers discrepancies. “It’s helping me assess whether candidate is indeed who they say they are,” says Mr. Riendeau, a partner at East Wing Group, a search firm in Barrington, Ill. Résumés should tell a candidate’s full story, he says.

Meanwhile, many job hunters are also continuing to overlook the dangers of posting provocative photos and other dubious content on social-media sites. Case in point: Recruiter Lori Fenstermaker says she lost interest in a recent candidate for a legal-assistant job after finding her raunchy MySpace profile. “She represented herself in a way that would not align with the company’s philosophy and ethics,” says Ms. Fenstermaker, founder of Automatic LLC, a search firm in Grand Rapids, Mich. “Anything someone publishes online could knock a person out of the running per se.”

There are also some job hunters who are unwittingly going out of their way to spoil their prospects. Last year, a candidate for a senior client-services position invited Mr. Goldsmith to be part of his Facebook network. After accepting, the recruiter found a semi-nude photo of the candidate, prompting Mr. Goldsmith to withdraw this person from consideration. “It was so horribly inappropriate,” the recruiter recalls. “To flaunt that with such a lack of sensitivity to professional decorum is very disquieting.”

Hide Sites

I love urban legends.  Remember the one about the couple who travels to the foreign country for their honeymoon?  They buy what they think is a pet dog only to find out that they’ve purchased a small rat.  I loved that one as a kid. 

Here’s an urban legend that I’ve enjoyed as an adult recruiter.  It goes like this…

“When writing a resume, more is more.  A resume must be two pages if it’s going to worthwhile.  After all, one has to include a much as possible about a person’s career in order to be considered for a job listing.”   

Most of the resumes that arrive at our company and are later re-developed by our coaching and resume writing division need to go on drastic diets.  We put them on the scales because of what medical and pharmaceutical managers demand from resumes. 

The 3 most important things I have learned about resumes in my 20 years of recruiting:

1.   Stop writing long sections at the top like “Summary of Qualifications” or “Personal History” or “Skill Sets”.  Start with a simple and clear objective targeting the specific industry you are trying to break in to.

2.   Stop writing long, detailed job descriptions.  Instead, bullet point out your top accomplishments.  Hiring managers want to know results more than they want to know what you’ve done.  Talk about - no flaunt - your sales numbers.

3.  Keep it to one page unless you’re the president of a major corporation or a large country.   

Does your resume need to go on a diet?   

Hide Sites

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                            

NEW YORK CITY – July 22, 2009 – The Tom Ruff Company, one of the country’s top firms specializing in recruiting medical device and pharmaceutical sales and sales management personnel, has launched an Employment Coaching and Resume Writing division. 

The new division, headed by 15-year executive recruiting veteran Paul Cox, will allow the Tom Ruff Company to focus on delivering detail-oriented, highly personalized employment coaching to candidates throughout the country. While the Tom Ruff Company will continue to meet the needs of its healthcare clients, the new division will assist job-seekers in all industries. 

“Over the past several months our company has been deluged with calls and emails from people who are struggling to find a job.  The first thing we challenge them to do is to rethink almost everything they’ve ever learned about the traditional job search.  There is nothing traditional about today’s job market,” said President and CEO Tom Ruff.

A preferred recruiter for more than 100 of the largest medical device and pharmaceutical companies in the country, the Tom Ruff Company is broadening its practice to work with job-seekers regardless of their industry with its one-on-one coaching program, while still offering the same highly personalized service and attention to detail that the company is known within the healthcare sector. 

“Though we have always specialized in medical and pharmaceutical sales, we realize that job-seekers in all sectors need coaching, and that many of the same skills apply,” said Ruff.  “That’s why we’re excited about being able to help candidates across all industries by sharing the wisdom we’ve earned in 20 years of placing over 3,200 candidates in careers with companies like Johnson and Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, Medtronic and Boston Scientific.” 

Paul Cox will lead the new division and can be contacted at 310-802-8165 or via e-mail at paul@tomruff.com. To learn more, visit www.tomruff.com. 

#####

Hide Sites

We receive approximately 1000 resumes a week. Unfortunately, we are not able to reply to every resume that is e-mailed to our firm. Some tips for getting a recruiter (or company) to reply to your e-mail:

1) Use a descriptive subject line:

List the position you are looking for along with the ideal city & state. Most recruiters cover multiple territories so the more descriptive you can be in the subject, the better.

2) Personalize each e-mail:

Dear Tom is much more effective than ‘Dear Sirs’ or ‘To Whom It May Concern.’

3) Don’t send e-mail blasts to multiple recruiters:

One of our biggest pet peeves is when we receive an e-mail blast listing all the recruiters names that you are e-mailing. We delete these blasts immediately. Take the time to send your resume to each recruiter individually.

4) Don’t send blind copy e-mails to a recruiter:

They are almost as bad. Again, take the time to personalize each e-mail.

5) No cover letters:

We do not have time to read 1000 cover letters a week. Lose the cover letter unless the recruiter specifically asks for one.

6) Short & sweet is the name of the game:

In the body of the e-mail, be very specific about what you are looking for and no fluff or heavy text. Good recruiters tend to have very short attention spans so be specific or better yet, use bullets as descriptors.

7) Copy your resume in the body of e-mail:

Ten years ago, we preferred to receive resumes as attachments but with the large quantity of e-mails we receive on a daily basis, it’s best to include the resume in the body of the e-mail in addition to an attached Word copy.

8)  Make sure your e-mail has a good “look” to it:

Backgrounds, typographic embellishments and blocks of copy with type that is too large or too small can be visual potholes.  Make sure it’s easy on the eye.

9)  Shorten your e-mail:

Once you’ve crafted your e-mail, go back, check for and delete redundancies or any unnecessary text. The last thing a busy person wants to do is read the next War & Peace on a Blackberry or iPhone.

10) Sleep on it:

For important e-mails; compose, wait a day, review, edit and then send. What sounded so brilliant in the moment, often looks like rubbish the next day. 

Hide Sites

I receive at least 15-20 e-mails or calls a week with people asking for advice or feedback on the best resume format to use for medical and pharmaceutical sales interviews.  I wrote a post last October that explains in greater detail the best format to use, but for a visual, I’ll share the actual sample resume that we recommend all of our candidates use for medical and pharmaceutical sales interviews.  Short and sweet is still the name of the game with bullet points highlighting all of your successes. No fluff.

§ Responsible for obtaining one of the largest accounts nationwide - The County of Los Angeles

§ Sales Representative of the Month Award

§ Bachelor of Arts, Communications
§ Graduated Summa Cum Laude

For more interview tips and advice you can visit the Tom Ruff Company website.

Hide Sites

It’s no surprise that in 2007, CNN/Money.com selected pharmaceutical sales as one of the Top 20 Best Jobs in America. Salary.com lists the median salary, including benefits, for a pharmaceutical sales representative at $95,660. Plus, you’ll have the chance to work out of your home office, and in some cases, to work flexible hours.

Breaking into pharmaceutical sales is no easy feat, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. A few years ago I got a call from a young woman who wanted us to find her a job in pharmaceutical sales. She was a recent college graduate with no sales experience, but, by the time I put down the receiver I knew that she would succeed. Why? Four things:

• -An extraordinary drive
• -An unshakable self-confidence
• -A willingness to listen to everything I told her
• -A resolve to take action

For three months she walked into doctors offices and requested the business cards of reps that left them behind. She also went to hospitals and talked to reps working their daily beats. She impressed one sales rep so much that he told his manager about this young woman with incredible drive. The company called her in for an interview and subsequently offered her a job. When everyone told her it couldn’t be done, she proved them wrong.  I recently wrote a book How to Break into Pharmaceutical Sales: A Headhunter’s Strategy that I hope will give job-seekers an upper-hand over the competition. Here’s a crash course on how to get a job as a pharmaceutical sales rep:

• Step One: Set a goal for finding a position in pharmaceutical sales and write it down. Just the act of writing down your goals generates alchemy that will help you in the job hunt.

• Step Two: Write your resume and compile your brag book. Recruiters and pharmaceutical companies spend only seconds (literally) looking at resumes, so it’s your job to be short and sweet. I have done interviews with hundreds of district managers who all agree that there is just one basic format that works best for landing a pharmaceutical sales job. Go here and copy the format exactly. The brag book is generally a three-ring binder filled with documents like diplomas, letters, stack rankings and emails that support the information in your resume.

• Step Three: Research. People either succeed or fail based on the amount of research and preparation done before the actual interview. Start with the internet. Go on a “ride-along” with a pharmaceutical sales representative. Call the customer service department and ask general questions about the company.

• Step Four: Network. This is a must for anyone looking to break in. In order to get those key interviews, you’ve got to muster a little creativity and fearlessness.

• Step Five: The Phone Interview. Treat the phone interview like a regular interview because it is. Stand up and walk around when you are talking on the phone. Wear a suit. Ask the same questions you would ask in an in-person interview and don’t forget to smile!

• Step Six: The In-Person Interview. One of my friends and a former district manager for Johnson & Johnson tells me he decides within the first two or three minutes whether or not to hire a candidate. Every second counts. Be prepared for the most obvious and usually first question: “Why do you want to get into pharmaceutical sales?” For more examples of frequently used interview questions, check out our company website.
• Step Seven: Close the Interview. All of the research and preparation you have done up to this point is null and void if you ignore or gloss over ‘the close.’ You simply MUST close. Not closing the interviewer is like presenting flowers to your spouse and forgetting to say ‘Happy Anniversary.’

• Step Eight: Creative Follow-up. Leave a handwritten note thanking your interviewer with the receptionist before getting into your car. After you get home, send the interviewer an email. Leave a voicemail if you feel it’s appropriate–but make it brief and don’t ask for or expect a return phone call.

All of the above steps are outlined in more detail in my new book , and a complete list of interview questions and a sample resume are available at www.tomruff.com.

Good luck with your job search. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite calls to action:

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

-Goethe

Hide Sites

Short and sweet is the name of the résumé game. District managers, who make the key hiring decisions in most pharmaceutical companies, don’t want long essays. They simply don’t have the time for them. We’ve found that the main thing that “pops” on a résumé is a bullet-point format loaded with great numbers. For example: “130% of quota, ranked #1 out of 75 sales representatives for 2004, 180% growth in territory,” etc. A brief industry objective focused on pharmaceutical sales, company name, title, dates, results and education at the bottom, combined with relevant extra curriculars, rounds out your presentation.

If you played collegiate athletics, or served in the military, make sure to add this to the bottom of your résumé.  Over and over again, district managers will ask us whether or not a prospect played athletics in college. This can be a deciding factor, especially if you lack optimal educational or work experience. We always instruct our candidates to add their athletic experience, even if they’ve been out of college for five to ten years. Often, they are surprised to think this could be relevant, but it is. The reason is this: playing college athletics requires the ability to work on a team and the ability to motivate yourself to excel. Military experience demonstrates the same qualities. A candidate’s background with any branch of the military or national guard will be highly prized by pharmaceutical companies, especially particular ones, like Pfizer.

One piece of advice: be careful if you use a résumé-writing service. Often our candidates turn up with résumés that cost them anywhere from $100 to $300. Usually the résumés have been rendered in academic formats that are word-heavy and, frankly, just wrong for our industry. Candidates feel awful — and ripped off — when we tell them to redo them. We tell our candidates just to use ours. That’s right, steal our formats. If you’re uncomfortable with computers and prefer to use a résumé service, hand them our formats to use. We’ve been in business a long time now and, through lots of trial and error, we know what works.

For even more information on crafting a resume that gets noticed check out my book How to Break Into Pharmaceutical Sales: A Headhunter’s Strategy.

Hide Sites