Always be thinking about ways that you can be of service and support. By doing so you’ll establish a natural and open relationship and others will be much more likely to help you when you’re helping them.

Your cover letter, in combination with a winning resume, is your primary self-promotional tool and should reflect your main strengths as they apply specifically to the position you are interested in. The following are 15 ways to ensure that your application gets noticed!

1. Be concise. Cover letters should be reasonably short and to-the-point. Generally 3 to 4 paragraphs will do to introduce yourself, state what position you are applying for, and why they should choose you. Recruiters almost always have a ton of applications to go through and do not have time to process long documents.
2. Be creative. You would like to make an impression, without getting off topic. What makes you uniquely qualified for the job? Describe your skills in a way that brings them to life.
3. Sell yourself. Show what you have to offer. Give clear examples of your past performance and what you are capable of at this point in your career.
4. Do your homework. Find out as much as you can about the company, the position and the person they hope to hire, then explain exactly how you intend to benefit their organization using their own criteria. Show that you care enough to do this kind of investigating ahead of time.
5. Use examples. Demonstrate how past experience and accomplishments could specifically benefit their organization.
6. Show a little personality. You are giving a prospective employer a glimpse of the person behind the paper; try to give an accurate sense of who you are. How well do you fit into their corporate culture?
7. Personalize. Try to address your letter to a real person; find out who is in charge of hiring, and/or their title. Once again, this kind of attention to detail will set you apart.
8. Be professional. Maintain an appropriately formal format and tone.
9. Use a writing style that is appropriate, yet distinctive. Do not be afraid to use humor in small doses if this reflects who you are, or if you have a particularly relevant anecdote.
10. Customize. Write a different letter for each position, or at least modify the details to maximize your use of pertinent information.
11. Attention to detail. Don’t skip important steps such as proof-reading, spell-checking, and including the date, position title, and your up-to-date contact information.
12. Show some enthusiasm. Employers want to attract employees who will contribute positive energy to their work environments.
13. Pay attention to the flow of your letter. Try to avoid beginning each paragraph with “I.” And keep paragraphs short.
14. Show sincere interest, without excessive embellishment. Qualify your claims, showing how past experience demonstrates your dedication to a shared cause, etc.
15. Be honest about your experience, not overly humble or exaggerating. You want to get the interview, but not only to have them discover that you are not who you claimed to be.

Trust me, you need all the help you can get to get employers excited about you. Its not that you aren’t qualified or that you don’t deserve to get that pharmaceutical job of your dreams, its just that competition is fierce out there and you’ve got to use ingenuity and a whole lot of creativity to get noticed. In this brief article, we will tell you 5 ways that you can get noticed by potential employers.

1. First of all, make sure that résumé and cover letter are the best that they can be and help you stand out from the crowd. After all, you only have a few short moments to make a great first impression. In addition, your cover letter and résumé are a direct reflection of your uniqueness and abilities so you need to make sure that they are absolutely powerful documents. To really help you stand out from the crowd, you might consider using a fancy brochure-style résumés or one that includes a professional photograph. Cleverly accentuate your exceptional accomplishments, unique educational background, savvy sales skills, etc.
2. Second, use fonts and headlines to your advantage. Don’t be afraid to use color and fancy fonts (but don’t go overboard). Instead us a dash of color and ingenuity to accent the positive. For instance, if you have over 20+ years of sales experience, highlight this in the Summary of Qualifications section and make sure that you put it in bold.
3. Third, figure out how to network with someone influential at the company that you’re interested in. One great suggestion is to ask for an informational interview where you can find out in-depth information about the position that you’re interested in. For example, if you’re seeking a pharmaceutical sales job, see if you can meet with one of the key salespeople at the company and then you can casually mention that you’re interested in working there. They’ll hopefully direct you to Human Resources or tell you about an opening. What a great way to get your foot in the door.
4. Fourth, use ingenuity when sending out your résumé package. Don’t be afraid to use a bold colored envelopes or send your resume special delivery. Also be open to using dimensional mailers including tubes, boxes and packages. By doing this, you’ll demonstrate that your mail is special and that it stands out from the crowd.
5. Fifth, instead of including a simple résumé and cover letter in your package, be a bit more creative. Include a photo calling card, a pen with your sales slogan, an airplane with the theme (hire me and watch your sales soar) or something else. The key here is to be ingenious and creative while demonstrating that you have what it takes to excel at creative sales.

In conclusion, there are many creative ways to get noticed by employers. You simply have to be willing to think outside the box and use creative measures to get your package in the right hands. Once you do, it will be smooth sailing to your dream sales position.

But, how do you create such a phenomenal resume? Well, it really isn’t that hard. Even if you’re no professional resume writer or have never created a resume in your entire life, you can still razzle and dazzle potential employers with your resume writing skills. In this article, we’ll tell you how to craft a great resume that gets you hired. So, put down the job ads and get ready to learn all about the persuasive art of writing great resumes.

1. First of all, you should know what a great resume looks like. To learn, visit your local library or book store and pick up some great resume books and peruse them. See what styles that really “tickle your fancy” and see which ones make you cringe with boredom. Figure out which ones work and which ones don’t. Buy and study them and do your best to emulate the resume writing style.

2. Second, know the difference between a functional and a chronological resume and then decide which one would serve you best. For instance, if you’re making a career change then you might craft up a functional resume that highlights your skills and qualifications. If however you’re staying in the same field, a chronological resume would work best.

3. Third, make sure that your resume reflects your accomplishments and unique personality. Not only will this help you stand out from the competition but will also create an image of professionalism in the hiring manager’s mind. Be careful to accentuate the positive and not the negative. For instance, if you’re currently a homemaker but are trying to get into the sales field, perhaps you can include your volunteer opportunities and how your girl scout troop exceeded sales goals by 100%.

4. Fourth, make sure that your resume is a true representation of you. Don’t embellish your strong points to simply make yourself sound good. Instead be honest but positive and make sure that you. It is never a good idea to misrepresent facts, exaggerate them, or lie on your resumes. Employers are like detectives and when they do background checks, they can find out about your untruths and this could be very bad indeed. Only use verifiable information.

5. Fifth, know that content and presentation is what counts the most. When you’re crafting your new resume, make sure that it looks professional and contains absolutely no typing errors whatsoever. Use quality resume writing paper and try out various styles and fonts to really make it come alive. You might even consider adding a professional photograph to the top for sales resumes.

6. Sixth, remember that grammatical errors are intolerable. They not only signal that you’re sloppy but also signify that you’ll likely do a crappy job as well. And trust me, no employer wants to hire a sloppy worker. To be on the safe side, ask someone else to proof your resume when you’re done proofing it to make sure that you don’t miss any errors.

In conclusion, you can create an outstanding resume that attracts an employer’s attention and helps you land that dream pharmaceutical job of your dreams. You simply have to put forth a little effort, some thought and let those qualifications shine through.

The optimal job experience to secure a pharmaceutical sales job is at least two years prior “outside sales” experience. The definition of outside sales means not retail sales. This means selling to a customer base outside the office. Selling products to customers that you initiate yourself is called “cold calling” Jobs such as office equipment, healthcare related products, uniforms, bandages and telephone sales are good examples of jobs where you cold call for customers. Generally, your employer will give you a listing of established customers and a list of potential customers. You may have to find your own leads. Your job is to increase sales.

Often these jobs pay you a commission on your sales, or a draw versus commission. If you don’t sell, you won’t make money. This type of experience is optimal because it proves you have been able to find a customer, present a proposal and close the sale. If your job involves repeat business, you will be demonstrating rapport building. These are the same ingredients that make up pharmaceutical sales. Keep records of your sales with commission receipts, sales quotas and achievement letters, etc.

Don’t worry if your only sales experience is in retail sales. You are not automatically eliminated from the candidate pool.

Ordinarily, as a recruiter, you provide the customer with what they want. A few years ago, I was in a position to supply candidates for a direct job with Abbott Laboratories. I was not the hiring Manager this time, but the recruiter supplying qualified candidates. Abbott wanted candidates with outside selling experience.

I made the decision to forward Sue, a candidate with no outside sales experience, for the job. Why did I recommend her and why did she win the job? Sue had a degree in Sports Medicine, which was a plus, and the conviction energy and motivation for this position. But, her professional experience was all retail. At least that was what her resume told me. She sold clinique makeup at Macy’s department store.

As it turned out her job was not merely standing behind a counter taking orders, but also involved actual selling, some even outside the store. As I questioned Sue about the responsibilities of her job, she described her activities. Sue developed sales outside the store. On her own time she gave makeup classes at health spas to meet customers. Sales increased by her initiative. She did have experience in selling to customers! She had experience cold calling. She arranged for the sales clinics, secured the appointments and sold products. She retained these customers for repeat business. This experience is analogous to pharmaceutical sales and outside sales.

If Sue had not been a friend of a friend, I would not have met with her for an initial interview. Her resume indicated no outside sales. After our meeting, we reworded her resume, emphasized her sales experience and accomplishments. Sue got the job!

The moral of the story is that your retail experience can be as valuable as outside experience. But outside sales experience is more similar to pharmaceutical selling. Just use examples of your selling experience (retail or outside) that are as similar to pharmaceutical sales as possible.

Syndicated columnist and blogger has been on a roll lately providing valuable information that could have just as easily been written for PharmBoard. She decided to write for Yahoo! instead.

In she clearly defines five things you don’t

have to be in order to be a successful networker. My favorite…

You don’t have to be a manipulator.
Networking is about being nice. It’s about figuring out what someone needs, and determining how to help him get it. Be aware of what people are trying to accomplish in their lives so that you can help them reach their goals — either by helping them yourself or putting them in touch with someone who can help them.

This grand slam of an article came just six days after . While I don’t agree with all of the points she makes in the article, there are a couple that are truly exceptional – especially for PharmBoard readers…

Understand the behavioral interview.

yogi bear dvd

When someone asks you a question that begins, “Tell me about a time when…” it’s a cue that you’re in a behavioral interview. There are established ways to answer this type of question.

The interviewer is trying to see how you acted in the past, which is a good predictor of how you’ll act in the future. You need to tell the interviewer about a situation you encountered, the action you took to solve the problem, and quantify the results. This is called the STAR response — Situation or Task, Action, Results.

PharmBoard.com is loaded with behavioral interview questions just waiting for a STAR response. Those who are best at the STAR response have mastered the art of Penelope’s 1st tip from this article…

Tell good stories.
When someone says, “Tell me about yourself,” they don’t want to hear you rattle off a list of what you’ve done or what you’ve accomplished. People want stories. Stories are what make you stick in people’s minds.

is a career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance. Her syndicated column has run in more than 200 publications. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition and a bankruptcy. Before that she played professional beach volleyball. Her forthcoming book is

(Warner, May 2007).