You've heard it before: tailor your resume for every job. But what does that really mean, and how do you actually do it?
This episode breaks down the crucial process of customizing your resume to stand out in a competitive job market.
We will discuss:
- Why tailoring is non-negotiable, for every single job. Yes.
- Key areas for customization -don’t skip these!
- The power of the professional summary
By understanding the “why” and “how” of resume tailoring, you can significantly increase your chances of getting noticed by hiring managers and moving forward in the application process. Remember, a well-tailored resume, combined with a strong networking strategy, is your key to unlocking industry opportunities.
In this Episode:
[2:55] Key word density matters because AI is eliminating you!
[15:01] You probably have more skills than you realize, and you have to phrase them well
[20:41] Bringing back the elevator pitch
Links and Resources:
Industry Insider – 12 hours of CME, learn exactly how to land a rewarding nonclinical career without a new degree, special connections, prior experience, or a pay cut
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 135 – What Does it Really Mean to Tailor Your Resume for Each Job Application?
Hey there. Welcome back. Today, we're going to talk about what it means to tailor your resume to the job that you're applying for, and what are some specific elements that you should look at to operationalize this, to truly do the tailoring. And we know this is extremely common advice, and I think it's really good advice. It's important advice that you do indeed take the time to tailor your resume for each application, right for each new job, each new role that you're applying for. It's really, really important. But I think it is for many people, very vague. They don't know exactly what that means, and in today's episode, I'll break it down.
If you are thinking about a career move into pharma or medical device, check out my course Industry Insider, a complete guide to landing your first industry role, even if you have no prior experience or special connections, my students have made the switch with thriving careers at top companies, and you can too. Before we go into how to do this. Let me take a moment to tell you about why you need to do this. I've said it in many episodes already, and I'll say it in more. I know I discussed this in the course.
It's critically important to tailor your resume for each job application if you want it to be seen. This is so important because in academics or in clinical medicine, it's pretty likely that if you apply for a role at a hospital system at a university, that your resume will get looked at by the person who's in charge of the hiring.
And in part, this is a numbers game. It's because there are only but a handful of applicants at any given time, and so they're probably going to be pretty carefully considered by a person who is doing the hiring.
And therefore that person has a vested interest in really looking thoughtfully at their qualifications and history, and they also are in a position to be able to understand what is transferable from that person's experience into the role that they are hiring for. So there's it's just a very different situation in industry, because you'll submit your application for every job posting that you see and that you're applying for.
You can be assured that there are hundreds of applicants, and probably at least 100 if you know of qualified candidates, right there. There are a lot of people who apply who are not qualified. That's a story for another day. But there are there. The competition is huge. From a volume point of view. There are hundreds of applicants for every job you apply for. So the first step is there is an applicant tracking system, which is essentially a computer. You can think of it as AI, or however you like. It is doing what is effectively just keyword screening. It is looking at the job posting, and it's looking at your application, and if there is not a sufficient density of keywords that match, it is going to throw you immediately in the trash so you'll never be seen by any person, never really considered by a person. Then of the applications that make it through, right, make it past this initial screener, which is ruthless. The next person is a human resources professional, right? This is a recruiter.
Their professional background is in recruiting, so their job is to look for resumes that seem like they match the job description. So they're a human version of the of the applicant tracking system. And they may have also spoken to the hiring manager and said, hey, you know what? What in particular Do you want me to be on the lookout for? So they might have some additional context for which of the many skills that's listed on the job description are the most important for this particular hiring manager? And they may even have some things that are not on the job description. So that's something we can never do anything about, which is why I'd never take it personally if you don't get the job. There could be some other things going on in the background. But the main point is they are a human version that is essentially doing keyword matching.
They understand what the hiring manager is looking for based on a conversation or based on a document or both, and then they're looking at your document. And again, they have many. So I don't know how many of the hundreds get through that, but it's dozens, at least, right? And they need to go through and they need to figure out which of these am I going to provide to the hiring manager for them to take a look at? And they really want to narrow this down, so we're going to go from hundreds to maybe a dozen, maybe 1520, at the most, right? They their their job is to provide a small, curated subset of applications to the hiring manager that they think are the best, so that the hiring manager can choose, again, a subset of those and probably interview three to five candidates, and if somebody works out in that three to five, that's it. So, so that's the job. The challenge, therefore, for you is you want to land on the desk of the hiring manager. You want to be in that dozen that gets through, and then ideally, of course, you want to be in the five that get interviewed.
But in order to go from the hundreds that get received to the hiring manager's desk for their eyes, you have to tailor your resume so that you don't get inadvertently tossed out in the process, because either the keyword matching software can't tell by your transferable skills that you would be a great candidate, or the human resources professional can't tell because, again, they're sort of a human version of the keyword matching they. They aren't really in a position to look carefully at your resume and try to think about whether or not, there is something transferable there. It needs to be really clear.
Jump off the page for them. Also, they don't have time to do that for everybody, so they don't do that. And this is why the onus is on you as an applicant. So this is the reason why it's so important. And so, because it's so important, and so you'll be doing it for each and every job application, I recommend that people start by taking their clinical or academic CV and turning it into what I'll call a master file for an industry resume. This should be something that contains all the stuff that you don't want to forget from your CV, that you have decided is important, potentially worthwhile for inclusion on your resume, and that you've taken the time to sort of write the bullets about right the impact of these various experiences and roles in such a way that connects the dots for industry employers, so that it's clear what you are saying your transferable skills are bringing to the table. And if you have all of this in a master document, then the specific tailoring you do for each application is a much lighter load.
Okay, so there is a process where you start with your CV, end up with your master document, and then from there, though, with your job description in hand of the job you intend to apply for. There's a handful of things that you ought to do. None of this, by the way, has anything to do with the format. So this is not reformatting. People talk about, you know, what format is best you can take any template. I'm sure that you find online that seems visually pleasing to you, like that part does not really matter. It is, as long as it's a standard, you know, standard flow resume, that that's not what we're talking about here.
The tailoring is not about the formatting. It is about the content and the framing, right? Because, remember, your resume is a marketing document for you as a professional. It does not include everything you've ever done. It, of course, only includes things you have done, but it also provides context and framing, and this is the place where you get to emphasize or de emphasize certain skills, and de emphasis may even be omission, right, so that your resume is short and persuasive and includes the things that are relevant and important and does not dilute it out with things that are not relevant and important.
Okay, so what do we mean by this? One of the easiest areas that you should look at for tailoring of your resume is in what I'll just call keywords. This is looking through the job description to make sure that the choices of word that they use to describe something is the same as what you have on your resume, and if it is not that you change it. And for a lot of this, I'm talking about synonyms. So for example, in the research world, some companies might talk about protocol development, and another company might use the term protocol design, and if you have protocol development, but they're talking about protocol design, that is, that's the low hanging fruit, right?
That's just very easy. These are essentially synonyms. You should go through and modify your resume to match the job description. Similarly, you might see people talk about medical education versus scientific education. The same is true for medical writing versus scientific writing, or scientific writing or in scientific publication. So there's a lot of opportunities where, essentially, we're talking about synonyms in the pharma specific industry lexicon, for example, the term cross functional is used a lot to describe teams of people from different backgrounds, different education and different sort of areas of focus in the hospital or healthcare setting. We often call this multidisciplinary.
So you may have things on your resume that speak to multidisciplinary work, multidisciplinary committees, multidisciplinary groups that you have led, or projects that you have executed. And if you have an opportunity to reframe those as cross functional, if that's what you see in the job description, you should do that. This is again, low hanging fruit. These are essentially synonyms, and you need to. Change them up to make sure that they match the terms that are being used by the company in their job description. Now I have heard some people suggest that what you should also do is take the job description, copy it and paste it in a really tiny font in white on your resume somewhere, so that essentially, it's not seen by the human eye, but it is detected by these AI systems. Please, don't do that.
Don't do that. This is this is not like to game the system in that way that would look so unprofessional. First of all, if someone caught on to you there and like that's not the point of doing this right. The point is to look for opportunities where your word choice, your framing and your emphasis can more closely match the job description that is in your hand, and it is not to try to sort of deceive the systems.
So please don't do that. Don't follow that advice if you hear it. But do look for opportunities where words are interchangeable or close enough that you think you can frame your experiences, and you know, an honest and true way with those terms, and then definitely do that. All right. The second area that you may want to tailor is your background, so you may see that they are might ask for, you know, a board certified physician specialist in a particular specialty that they might identify. And they may also say that a certain number of years of clinical experience is a plus, or a certain number of years of industry experience is a plus. And you want to think about your own background and whether or not it very, very closely matches this.
So if you happen to be a board certified physician who is in that same specialty that they are asking for, then you should absolutely emphasize this. It should be right at the top in your summary statement that you are indeed exactly this person as is being described. If you are not, then think to yourself, is there an opportunity for you to describe yourself in a way that is similar or adjacent. So perhaps you are a board certified physician in an adjacent specialty, and there's an opportunity for you to frame your experience in a way that closely matches the requirements. So for example, if you're looking at a role that is, they are looking for a cardiologist, but you happen to be an emergency medicine physician, then you might say, instead of leading with, I'm a board certified emergency medicine physician, right?
Because that's not what they're looking for. They're asking for a board certified cardiologist. And so that may be confusing, but maybe you lead with that you are a board certified physician with extensive experience in cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular conditions or something like that. So now you have, which is true, right, as an emergency medicine physician. And so obviously, when they get down to your training and education, it's not a secret that you are an emergency medicine physician, but your framing is to say, which of the things can you check the box to say, I am this?
They're looking for a board certified. Yes. Looking for physician, yes, looking for someone who's a cardiologist, no, but you have experience in cardiovascular conditions, great. Put that in there and that kind of framing. So when you when you have something that exactly matches, you want to emphasize that when you have something that does not match exactly, my recommendation is to do what you can to frame, you know, again, honestly and truthfully, frame your experience in a way that is as close to relevant as possible. And sometimes that does mean that you would take out the statement that you're an emergency medicine physician in your summary, obviously, in your education and training, it'll be there, but in your summary statement, you're just a board certified physician with experience in cardiovascular conditions, because that prevents the reader from being confused, right?
There's no reason to sort of put right front and center something that will make them say, Oh, that's not who I'm looking for. Rather, put the parts in front that that does describe how you are the person that they're looking for. Okay? So that's another way to tailor in terms of what kind of person are they looking for, in terms of your background, your degree, your education. So you can frame that that way. Then the other thing you want to do to tailor your resume is to think about the role or the function that you're applying for.
And by this, I mean, is this a research and development role, and within that, is it a medical monitor role? Is it something more strategic in early drug development? What type of job is it? Is it a pharmacovigilance role? Is it a medical affairs role? If it's a medical affairs role, is it a field role, like a medical science liaison, or is it more of a strategic role? So understanding what the roles are will help you to understand which of your experiences and skills are likely to be most relevant, and therefore what how you can frame them, because you want to think about and this will be in the job description, by the way, you'll, of course, know what the role is you're applying for. And. And the other thing that will be in the job description is a general overview of your intended duties, right? What is what is your day to day? What is your function? What are you expected to be doing? Read that part carefully, because that tells you what they're looking for someone who can do those things.
And so then you want to look at your own experiences and see how can I take some of this and make it an illustration of how I am skilled and capable to do what they are looking for here? And I know that many of you don't have any industry experience whatsoever, so your entire pitch is based on transferable skills. And so for that reason, for example, if you are applying for a Medical Affairs role, the way that you frame up any type of research or presentation or publication experience that you have will be different than how you frame it for a research and development role, because the day to day work that those folks do is different, but the transferable skills that come from having been involved in some kind of research, whether it be clinical or medical education or quality improvement or otherwise, and then the process of writing it up and submitting it and going through peer review and then eventually presenting it somewhere, all of those things are important and relevant, transferable skills, but they just look different if you're in a research and development role as compared to a medical affairs role.
So you want to, again, look at the way they describe the duties and the functions, and the way they describe the skill and experience that they're looking for, and make sure that you take that same skill that you have and rephrase it, reframe it to be appropriate to the specific role and to the specific duties and functions that are listed in the job description. The other thing that you need to do when you are tailoring your resume is give some consideration to the total length and the focus. So again, depending upon the role, depending upon the company, depending upon your direct relevance to that specialty or therapy area, and depending upon the way in which they describe the duties and the skills and requirements. You may have a lot of stuff that you feel like matches really, really well. And if you do stop at two pages or wherever it is, and don't put in a bunch of other just additional things that will feel miscellaneous at this point, even though that's been, you know, a part of your academic or clinical life and it's meaningful to you on your CV, if it is distracting or diluting to include in your resume, then you don't want to do that.
As you're going through this process and you're looking at the types of work that you have done in the past, whether it be committees that you've worked on, publications, presentations, and other types of, you know, quality improvement projects, administrative, whatever it is that you're doing, and also your clinical care, by the way clinical care and your multidisciplinary work and maybe teaching of some students or residents, all of these things are the building blocks of transferable skills that you're going to include you know that come from your master document, that get tailored in your resume to try to match them up to the specific duties and skills and functions that are listed in the job description.
And you want to think about, you know, when, what's the right time to end your document right if, if you find that for a particular job you have, what you think is pretty impactful, and it's, you know, two pages and it's clear and it's compelling, and you know, then you don't need to be trying to make this unnecessarily longer. We're not trying to embellish our skills or our experiences. We are trying to just connect the dots for recruiters so that they understand what your transferable skills are and the ways in which the work that you have done is making you ready for this role. Don't let it be too long. On the other hand, if you have things that are incredibly well connected to the job, and they're highly, highly relevant, and they're very specific, and so it's less of a transferable skill and more of something really clear, like for example, let's say that in your clinical role, you happen to have been doing a lot of clinical trial work. You've been a PI you've been part of studies.
Those studies have been part of pharmaceutical company submissions for FDA approval. They've been approved. If you have done that, which almost all of you have not. But let's say you have, and you have four pages of that, and you're applying for a job in that same therapy area for which this is all like, very clearly and highly relevant. Then go with the four pages. There's no need to cut any of that out. That is really building a very strong case that you have a lot of pharmacy relevant experience, I think, where I'm coming from here with this, and where people have the most trouble is when the vast majority of their resume is based upon transferable skills.
And so you are providing that context, providing that framing, very careful word choice, emphasis on connecting the dots and those transferable skills, those should be shorter. You don't ever want to give the impression that you're sort of grasping at straws or reaching or embellishing. You want to give a clear and compelling and confidence inspiring resume that basically says to the hiring manager, I know that I don't have direct pharma experience, but I do understand the job that you're posting for, and I can do it. Here are the reasons why, even though they're not direct experience, they're relevant, and they show that I have those skills and capabilities and I'm going to be able to do it and then stop for most physicians, that could be at two pages, because, you know, our education and so forth takes up a whole page in and of itself, basically. But do think about as you're putting together your tailored resume, when are you reaching the point where anything additional is diluted and it's not actually highly relevant, because there's a lot of cool stuff that you've done in your life, and it might speak to your character and your dedication and a lot of good attributes about you personally, but if your resume is based on transferable skills, there is a sweet spot where you communicated that sufficiently and not diluted it with a bunch of things that that won't seem relevant to the recruiter. The final tip that I'll include in this episode is that you know your resume should always have a summary at the top right.
A professional summary section is no more than three to five sentences, where you essentially can pull the highlights from wherever they happen to be in your resume, and bring them on up to the top. And this way it's very scannable. So when you think about the job description and the job for which you are applying, and you've done the work to kind of go through in a detailed way and see what is relevant, what you can frame up, what you should emphasize when you're done with that, you want to pick out the handful of things that are that make you sort of the best match in an elevator pitch point of view, and put that right up there at the top. And this is my example of where your emergency medicine physician just becomes a board certified physician with experience in cardiovascular conditions, for example, right up there at the top, later in your education, it'll say exactly what your education and residency training and so forth and board certification are.
But at the top is where you have that sort of editorial opportunity to frame your experiences in a way that hopefully will very much match the criteria listed on the job description. So don't under utilize the summary section, and don't forget to personalize that part as well that that really is sort of the elevator pitch. They will see it. If it's short enough, they will read it. And that is where you sort of can make your case, and you can make sure that certain things that might otherwise get lost in the format of a resume don't get lost. And for example, by that, I mean, let's say you have, you know, one or two publications, so not very many, but one of them is in a great journal.
There's an opportunity in that summary statement to include that you have a pivotal publication in, you know, a top tier journal, there is an opportunity for you to include names of the places that you have worked. So if you have education or training or a prior appointment at a place it's extremely prestigious, or maybe that is geographically related to the company that you are applying for, or otherwise makes a connection of some kind, like, yes, it's still represented in your work or in your education, but you can bring it on up to the top. So this is where you can really curate that elevator pitch part for yourself. And this should be very specific, again, per company, per job, per job description. The reason that in an episode like this, I have to be somewhat vague in terms of telling you what to look for and for the opportunities to tailor rather than just literally telling you what to do, is because it will be actually different depending upon the job description you have in your hand. And so while I can pull up a job description right now to use it as sort of an example or an illustration of how you can identify opportunities for transferable skills. What you actually do depends upon the job description that you have in your hand, and, more importantly, your own lived experience at work.
And so there's no way for me to spoon feed to everybody who's listening what exactly you should say you've done, because I don't know. You've done, everybody has had a different type of experience. Only you know what you've done. And what a lot of people struggle with is whether or not it's important, whether or not it's relevant, whether or not Pharma would care about that. And what I'm hoping you've gotten from this episode is a method of approaching that really looking at the type of person they say they're hiring for, the type of job, the specific duties, functions, skills, experiences and so forth that they list.
And then you look at your own background, your CV, your master document, or just what you know in your in your mind, of what you've done in your day to day, and figure out how to contextualize and frame that in a way that's most relevant to what's listed on the paper in front of you, and by all means, maximize your opportunities to do keyword matching as you do that. Because again, there is not going to be a thoughtful person looking carefully at your resume until the very, very last step, if ever. It's really just a hurdle that you have to clear in order to get an interview.
And so if you don't do this, your likelihood of essentially immediate and automatic rejection is very, very, very high, and that's the reason why just huge amounts of applications not an effective strategy. We won't talk about this in this episode, but it is also the reason why you have got to have a networking strategy. It doesn't need to be difficult. It is not about small talk, nor is it about asking for a job, and I do teach this in industry insider course, but you can cultivate a network today from scratch, if you know nobody, so that you do have folks in the companies of where you want jobs that can at least bring your attention, bring your resume to the attention of the hiring manager, which is worth gold in terms of the likelihood of you being actually considered for the role. It's not a guarantee, because I know every time I've hired, I've gotten dozens of internal referrals, people saying, I know this person.
You should look at them. Here's my colleague's resume. There's actually a lot of that as well. But when you think about it, if you've got hundreds of applicants going in through the sort of black box that are getting filtered out by a computer, and you have potentially dozens of people being hand delivered to that hiring manager to say you should really check them out. I mean, which pile Would you rather be in? Both are competitive, but which pile Would you rather be in? Clearly the latter.
So you do need an excellent resume. It's not the only thing that you need. So look for my other episodes and check out the course so that you can be sure that you are really maximizing the most important strategy of all, which is that deliberate strategic network building. Okay, that's it for today. Hopefully now you have a better idea of what's meant when people say you've got to tailor your resume for every job. You know why you need to do it, and you know how to get started doing it. That's all for today. Bye for now.
Before you go, please leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, share and subscribe to this podcast. Your support makes all the difference and it truly helps this information reach someone who may really need it. Until next time, thanks for listening.
