How To Break In To Medical Device Sales: Part 3

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I am sure you have heard the old proverb, “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. In most situations in life, that is good advice. But, unfortunately, that is exactly what happens when sales recruiters and hiring managers look at your resume. You have exactly 15 seconds to motivate that recruiter enough to throw your name into the “phone screen” pile and keep it out of the “rejection” pile. That sounds unfair, right? It certainly is, but when a sales recruiter is sorting through dozens (or even hundreds) of resumes for a single job posting, she needs to be efficient. In this newsletter, I will let you in on the top things recruiters and hiring managers look for in a resume that can make or break your opportunity to move forward to the interview process. This is not a “step-by-step resume building” newsletter, but rather some sound advice from a hiring manager’s perspective who has looked at thousands of resumes over the last 10 years, and interviewed hundreds of candidates. While this newsletter is brief, I also conduct personalized one-on-one virtual coaching where I can help you build your own resume.

Professional Summary/Objective Statement:

One quick note on professional summaries and objective statements before beginning. A Professional Summary is a quick recap of your career and experience and should especially be used on your resume if you already have experience in the medical device space or in B2B sales. An Objective Statement is the desired job you are looking to obtain and should be used to convey your future goal. You can choose to use either statement, or a combination of both on your own resume. More on that below.

The Professional Summary/Objective Statement often gets overlooked by most job applicants, even though these are the first words on the page below your name and contact information. Think of this as your first impression/elevator pitch to anyone reading your resume. Often times, people make this a general statement, such as “Motivated B2B sales professional with a proven track record of success looking for an opportunity in medical device sales”. Boring, lazy, and generic. Writing a statement like that will not differentiate you from other candidates. Instead, I advise my clients to tailor their professional summary/objective statement to the specific company they are applying to and the specific skillsets that will help them stand out. Does this take extra time and initiative on your part? Yes. But, will it help you stand out among the hundreds of other applicants submitting resumes? Also yes.

For example, if you are applying to a medical device company that manufactures and sells cardiac stents, tailor your statement to that niche. If you have experience in that space already, emphasize the Professional Summary over the Objective Statement. Front load your clinical expertise and experience with something like, “Clinical Specialist with 7+ years of experience selling to high-volume Cath Labs, specializing in…”. If you do not have experience in that space or in medical device sales, you are going to want to instead highlight your skills that are relevant to that job, but focus more heavily on your Objective Statement. This can look something like, “Performance-driven Sales Professional with a record of exceeding quota 15% YoY. Seeking to leverage high-level negotiation and territory management skills to drive market adoption for [company name]’s cardiac stent portfolio”. Simple, professional, and tailored towards that company’s mission.

Experience, Performance, and Skillsets

Below your Professional Summary/Objective Summary statement, you have your job experience, where you highlight your career achievements and professional skillsets. This is the meat and potatoes of your resume, and the space where hiring managers and sales recruiters spend the majority of their time.

It is critically important that you scatter a healthy amount of keywords throughout this part of your resume, especially if you are applying to companies through job boards or the company website. Many companies now use AI technology to root out resumes that have higher volumes of keywords they are searching for. Don’t overdo it to the point where it looks unnatural (you want your resume to flow), but use enough keywords to where these AI technologies will highlight your resume entry.

Keywords you should use when applying to a medical device company can typically fall into one of three categories: sales performance, product knowledge, and clinical expertise. For sales performance you will want to highlight your professional achievements either in medical device, or working another B2B sales gig. Keywords such as “quota attainment”, “territory management”, “pipeline”, “QoQ/YoY growth”, etc. should be used to describe your performance. Product knowledge is information on the goods you have sold in previous positions. “Capital equipment”, “disposables”, “devices”, etc. can be used here. Clinical expertise is a “nice to have” if you have previous medical experience, but is certainly not mandatory if you are applying for an entry level med device sales position. Keywords here should be tailored towards the product of the company you are applying to. In our cardiac stent example, you would want to use keywords such as “Cath Lab”, “cardiac”, “implantable device”, “stents”, etc.

One Quick Note on Using ChatGPT

Over the last year, the majority of resumes I have reviewed have clearly been done on ChatGPT. This is your warning to NOT do that, or at the very least not make it as obvious. Why is that important? As a hiring manager, I am looking for individuals who take initiative and have work ethic. Maybe I’m just old-school, but having ChatGPT write your resume for you comes across as lazy. You want your resume to be tailored towards the company and job you are applying for, and ChatGPT often generalizes verbiage. In my opinion, it can be used as a tool to help you write your resume (such as picking the best keywords to use), but it should not be used to write your entire resume for you. Just my two cents!

Sincerely,

S.M.K., The Sale’s Mentor’s Playbook

For a more personalized approach to your career journey, I conduct one-on-one coaching through virtual portals (Zoom, Teams, etc.), and would be happy to schedule a free 20 minute introductory call to see if I can help you. To reach me, please respond to this email with your contact information.