As you may have noticed, this blog is dedicated to experienced pharmaceutical and medical sales professionals. By “experienced” I mean you’ve been in either of these fields awhile. So, doing the math, you may be a bit older than some of your colleagues. And you may be sensing a potential age-bias in your job search – or at least an additional challenge due to age in your job search.
The numbers bear this out: if you are older, it will take you longer to land your next position; we’ll dedicate an article to this shortly – and how you can speed up your job search. For now, let’s talk about avoiding the circular file because of your age.
According to the U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services, there were 77 million babies born between 1946 – 1964. These are the “baby boomers”. I am one of these folks. Guess what – nearly 3 in 10 Americans is a Baby Boomer.
This constitutes the largest population group in U.S. history. Is there strength in numbers? Well, yes – but we need to work on a uniform message in order for us to prosper. So, I did some research and found 4 new ways to overcome age-bias in our job searches. This is specific to us pharmaceutical sales and medial sales types. God help us.
1.) Don’t put any pre-1980 dates on your resume. Seriously, due to EEOC regs, no HR person will tell you this, but it’s a reality. You put pre-1980 dates on your resume and there is a calculator coming out to determine how much it will cost to cover you for insurance. Remember, we in pharma and medical sales have to play the return-on-investment (ROI) card – and if we end up costing an employer more in medical insurance due to our age, our ROI better compensate for that.
2.) Show rising numbers in your most recent 5-10 years of sales experience. If we show you reaching a peak in sales 5 years ago, and you are doing OK now, it’s a bit like a professional ball player who batted .300 5 years ago and now produces a nice .285 average. Ok – but nothing to write home about. Employers prefer the fellow batting .285 now, and clearly on their way to batting .300. Yes, I’m a baseball fan. If you don’t like the baseball analogies, sue me.
3.) Show a mentoring or training role. You know the drill – someone in corporate realizes you are good with people and asks if you’d like to train others. You either make that face like the in-laws are coming over, or you initiate improvements to training and development. This is big: it shows you are not only staying up on new business technologies and concepts, but want to help develop tomorrow’s sales leaders: music to the ears of any company. It also shows more initiative than your peers who just taking ongoing training courses.
Go way out of your way – now – to ask if you can get involved with the training folks on any kind of new technology based products or services – and get that info on your resume. You especially want to mention any technology catering to the current “hottest 3” call points: neurology, cardiology, or orthopedics.
4.) When asked if you know the names of all four of the Beatles, pause and ask, “The who?” And when they say, “You know, that group that had Paul McCartney in it”, squint your eyes and ask, “Oh…Wings?” Practice before a mirror so you look and sound sincere.
I remember as a child someone asked me how old I was. I proudly replied, “Five and a half!” Now, when someone asks me how old I am, I have to stop and calculate. Sometimes Ignorance really is bliss.