The best time for you to begin to position yourself for one of these openings is while you are still in college. This will let you take the courses needed during the semesters they are available, which means no delay in working toward your degree. Having a master’s or a doctorate will benefit you in your quest for either a nuclear chemist or nuclear pharmacist position. Pharmacy reps, on the other hand, have many varied backgrounds, and there is no cookie-cutter profile or mold that fits these salespeople.
Many of today’s pharmacy reps have degrees in areas that are not even related to science. Representatives in this field will often have college degrees in areas besides pharmacy or other science subjects. Some of the top pharmacy reps that are working today have business degrees or degrees in marketing.
Having good grades to show a future employer is important, but also try to be involved in school sports or committees while you are in college. This is important as it can convey the fact that you are capable of being part of a team and can interact well with others.
If you can find a small, part-time job to garner some sales experience of any kind you should consider doing so as soon as possible. Even some basic sales or customer service-related jobs on your resume will help your cause when it comes to getting a pharmacy rep position. Employers like to see people who take the initiative and are capable of being self-starters.
Without any prior experience in the pharmaceutical industry, looking for a job as a pharmacy rep can take 6-12 months. You should not become discouraged if your search is taking longer than you had anticipated. It may be as long as 4-6 months before you even get your first in-person interview, and then it may take another month or longer for a call-back interview.
Getting a position as a pharmaceutical representative is known to be a long process. Just the interval between an interview and an actual job offer can take as long as 2-4 months. There are several reasons why it takes such a long time to finally get hired as a pharmaceutical rep.
Pharmaceutical reps have some great benefits and bonuses, including use of company cars. This position also gives them access to pharmaceutical products that they are taking to hospitals and doctors around their sales area. This is a position that requires extreme trust, and the employees chosen are carefully selected from a large pool of potential candidates.
These employees are chosen as the ones who will represent the manufacturing company that produces these products, and that company will want to make sure that it is selecting honest and trustworthy people for the job. It will require some time to make sure you are right for the job. Companies are going to check your driving record, references, background, and do drug tests as part of the pre-selection process for jobs in this field.
Most individuals who are in pharmaceutical sales only deal with a few products from their company. They will receive a base salary and additional commissions on the products that they sell to hospitals and doctors. If the pharmacy reps meet their sales quotas, they are then paid a bonus commission.
Depending on how their particular bonus commission is structured, pharmacy reps can reasonably expect a year-end bonus of $20K or more every year. An experienced pharmacy rep can anticipate making well in excess of $100K annually with bonuses included. If you are hired by one of the new biotech firms, you might make $100-200 thousand a year.
Biotech firms are looking to recruit the superstars of sales and they will make it well worth their time to come and work for them. These pharmacy reps will be rewarded with $40-60 thousand-dollar bonuses at the end of a year and will accept this without blinking. People who are hired by biotech industries are highly motivated and will often have a network of contacts within healthcare institutions that they established as entry-level pharmacy representatives.
They know how to leverage their contacts to create sales for new products that they are now representing. Usually, a new graduate will not be hired by these companies because they want to be able to see firsthand the proof that you are a sales superstar in the medical field before they hire you.
A good way to begin your search for a job in the pharmaceutical field is to go online and look for job posting boards with national coverage, like PharmaceuticalCrossing.com. This is a site that has only pharmacy-related jobs listed, but it has all of the top openings from around the country. You can search for those jobs that meet your needs and that fit your education and experience.
Not only are jobs listed for pharmacy reps, there are jobs listed for quality control specialists, clinical research associates, and nuclear chemists as well. You will discover that individuals with backgrounds in the sciences are being heavily recruited, and job postings online are one of the best ways to find out more information about these jobs. These chemists are needed by companies that are currently conducting many forms of research, and these positions are utilized by manufacturers of drugs as well as many other industries.
This is one way that you can make sure to hear about openings as soon as they are available. Early notification can mean that you actually get a jump on your competition. Go ahead and arrange the best resume that you can. You might consider letting a professional writer put it together to make it pop a bit if you have to. Boring resumes are a dime a dozen, and while you want yours to be easy to read and sharp enough to stand out from some of the others, you do not want it overworked. For those people with serious interest in being hired as pharmacy reps, developing networks in the medical community and finding industry connections are two of the best ways to boost your efforts to enter this high paying job field.
