Adams thought her job with Pfizer, the biggest pharmaceutical conglomerate in the world, was secure. But in October 2008, she discovered she was wrong. She was laid off, and she wasn't alone. Suddenly, she found herself in a job search for jobs that didn’t exist in a very competitive market.
Revamp Your Resume
Adams signed on with SalesLadder and started talking to recruiters. They took one look at her resume and told her she needed to revamp the entire thing! Their advice? To focus exclusively on results and accomplishments, not job descriptions or job duties. In the end, all that really matters is what you achieved, they told her. Three days later, Adams had given her resume a total image makeover.
Expand Your Horizons
Revamping her resume also gave Adams new insight into her job search. It enabled her to see that more of the jobs she saw posted on TheLadders - with companies she previously knew nothing about - might be something she could do. As a result, she expanded her search to include positions with medical supply and biotech companies, and not just pharmacy jobs or pharmaceutical jobs.
She also decided to apply for both sales and marketing positions, since her college degree was actually in marketing.
Adams interviewed for many positions in the two months following her layoff - some in person and others by phone - and focused on highlighting her experience to show potential employers how she contributed to getting results in her former position.
Get Hired
Adams took her job hunt seriously and treated that as her full-time job after the layoff, working every day with regular business hours and a serious focus. Her persistence, her image makeover, and her new way of thinking with an open mind (considering all the possibilities - not just pharmacy jobs in sales) led to her success! In less than three months, she landed a position with InVentiv Health and started working for them in February 2009.
While the company is based in Somerset, NJ, their business is to serve as consultants to biotechnology and healthcare corporations nationwide. So Adams will be able to work from North Carolina without having to relocate, and she's happy about that. Her new position is also considered a pharmaceutical sales job, but her duties and responsibilities will be more expansive, providing her with new and broader opportunities that will help take her one step closer to her ideal career of working for a pharmaceutical company as a hospital representative.
For now, Adams is happy to have found a job so quickly and thankful she kept an open mind about everything. She's looking forward to progressing in her career at InVentiv.
