Avoid These 10 Pharma Resume Mistakes Now

Does your pharma resume speaks well with the recruiters? Is it up to date and doesn’t have the same mistakes as most of the other professionals? Well, you possibly missing out some critical things while updating your resume.

This article will share some common mistakes you must avoid while sharing your resume with the recruiters. While you may have read numerous articles like this but this one is specifically focused to add value to pharma recruitments.

Resume writing for pharma is much different than other industries due to a wide range of diversity in the portfolio. Some things common while some totally different.

Thus, it is essential to correctly express in your resume “what” and “how exactly” you know about healthcare industries through your experience. In short, it should be factual and actual of your professional know-how.

Though there are several tiny ways to optimize your resume, here are the ones that will perhaps cost you a job. Let’s dive right in.

1. Incomplete Information

Your important information should be easy to identify whether it is your name, contact details, or any of the key elements in your resume. If not done so, you’ll end up being ignored.

When recruiters find some important information missing, they’ll simply jump to another resume.

Following items should be placed correctly and easy to catch the recruiter’s attention.

• Contact details (Email, Phone No., Address, etc.)
• Latest Educational Qualification – Just your last qualification is enough to land you on the job (Don’t include a table or matrix of your academics)
• Clear timelines of your job postings
• Your undertaking at the end of the resume
• Don’t use headers to put out your personal information. Online software tracking systems can not read those, instead, they mark them as missing.
• Use the valuable space wisely.

Once you rectify the above, the next thing recruiters easily catch in your resume is typo and grammar mistakes.

2. Typographical or Grammatical Mistakes

This is the place you should demonstrate the quality of your resume writing. Grammatical mistakes in fewer spaces can be considered. But if it’s more often, then it makes a bad impression on your overall writing skills.

According to a survey conducted to find the most looked after parameters in reviewing resumes, it was revealed that typo mistakes are more likely to get attention.

Therefore, you must address and fix this parameter correctly to take your recruiters in confidence. For identifying the loopholes, usually asking your colleagues you trust would help you identify and rectify the gaps.

Because when people self-write their resumes, it is hard to find the gaps themselves. You can also use online tools such as Grammarly to wipe out those errors.

3. Focusing Responsibilities More Than Milestones

Portray your accomplishments rather than your job responsibilities because not doing so would reflect that you are just copying your Job Description in your resume.

Your milestones tell the recruiter that you are a result-oriented or a performance-centric professional as you lay down the benefits you bring to the table.

Just to give you an example, here are the two statements.

1. Responsible to conduct day-to-day manufacturing activities and bring yield within acceptable criteria.
2. Effectively managed manufacturing activities to ensure the product yield consistently touches or excels the upper limit. Recognized within the industry for improving the process operations and productivity by +10% in FY2019-20.

What do you think? Which statement looks action-oriented? Number 2 certainly overhaul number 1. That’s the way you should write your achievements through quantifiable words rather than just showing what you are responsible for.

Again, replace the “responsible for” with action verbs to boost up the tone of your pharma resume.

Quantifying such statements actually drive recruiters to focus on your action-based approach and not just what you are told to do.

4. Sharing Your Same Pharma Resume Everywhere

Professionals often make mistakes sharing the same copy of their resume for different positions they apply for. Maybe time constraint is a culprit here.

Remember that every job requires different skills or expertise if you look at them closely. There might be different cultures or specific requirements to do certain jobs.

To make it a habit, follow this simple procedure while sending out your resumes to different companies or job opportunities.

1. Analyze the opportunity
2. Note down the key performance indicators in the offered job descriptions
3. Identify and keep handy the information on how you fit the purpose
4. Optimize your resume in the best possible way including those keywords (Provide genuine information)
5. Convert the file to PDF
6. Rename it to something like this “John Resume_Company Name” so that you don’t have to remember, for which organization you applied with that resume.
7. Create more such copies and place them at one location for easy retrieval.

This way, you’ll be able to perform better while approaching for different jobs.

5. Missing Objective Statement and Professional Headshot

5.1 Missing Objective Statement

This one is actually an option whether you choose to add or not. But in general, you should. Remember not to include vague statements like “Professional who has accomplished almost goals and now seeking more growth opportunities.”

Such statements are too common and do not actually justify any objective. Try to find a common thread between the employer and yourself and then create an impactful statement that quantifies.

For example, you may state “Professional having 10 years of experience in effectively managing quality assurance department of different MNCs reducing their quality issues by 30% overall.”

Quantifiable and precise statements tend to get a bonus point while getting shortlisted. So, ensure you prepare such one-liners and test them with different job applications.

5.2 Missing a Professional Headshot (Especially for International Hiring)

A professional headshot is a photograph of you with professional attire including your head and shoulders.

Though it is not a mandatory thing, you should include it in your every resume. This is required to showcase your personal branding and to help the employer make the first impression about you.

Use attire that is simple in design and contrast in color. Take a photograph on plain white background preferably. Make several copies for different sizes for quick modifications if required.

6. Improper Design and Layout

Recruiters immediately make their first impression upon overviewing your resume. This is the aspect that defines how you are good at editing.

Usually less complex is sufficient. Do not use black background over white text. Keep it simple, clean, and uniform.

Tables describing your previous educational qualification should be avoided and only include the latest degree you have.

That way, you’ll end up saving the unnecessary stuff in your resume and focus on your skills more.

You should preferably include your LinkedIn profile link in your resume to showcase how well your professional presence is. Keep the font sizes on medium. Don’t make the keywords bold just for the sake of emphasizing them.

These are very minute points worth considering to make a decent impression on your resume. So, choose a design and layout that is simple, clean, easy to read, and short.

7. Writing to Impress

Some professionals feel if they add buzzwords to their resume they’ll impress the employer even if they go beyond the context of the application.

This will nothing but decrease the credibility of your resume. Rather it will be best to include the words that relate to your job application and align with your skills.

Some of these buzzwords you should avoid are

• Problem solver
• Hardworking
• Dynamic
• Strategically sound
• Thinking outside the box

These words will actually cause you more harm than good. It becomes very tricky and difficult to justify those. In short, go as naturally and practically as you can.

8. Not More Than 3 Pages

First of all, your resume should not pop-out as an essay. So don’t make it long. Rather make it of less than or equal to 3 pages at max unless you have vast experience to back it.

Recruiters don’t have much time to filter the keywords they are searching for, so better to respect it.

In case you are almost a fresher, thrive to make just a 1-page resume that communicates well depending upon your editing skills.

It’s better to implement infographics than writing long-form sentences. Infographics help anyone to understand what you want to communicate effectively in a lesser space.

Once you are successfully able to make it short and clear, chances are very high that you’ll be called for an interview.

9. Don’t Include Personal Information Unless Required

It is not required now, especially in India, to share your personal information such as Gender, Marital Status, Religion, Personal Hobbies, etc. as practiced in the past.

It will be better if you don’t include this stuff and clutter your resume space unnecessarily unless you are going for international hiring as few countries require them.

Focus more on showing how you are the closest fit to the job posted by the recruiter. Blend some sentences to make them engaging, interesting, and curious.

10. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Some professionals feel, bombarding the recruiters with multiple keywords will do the trick. This process is called keyword stuffing and better you stay away from it.

Keyword stuffing not only makes a bad impression but makes your resume redundant. Recruiters might believe that you didn’t even care to put some quality time into crafting your resume. Instead, use the keywords wisely that flow between the lines naturally.

Conclusion

Having said that, make the most out of your resume and use it to talk to the recruiters effectively. Avoid these resume mistakes to surpass your competition in the pharma-related industries.

To wrap-up the things, let’s revisit what type of mistakes we discussed.

1. Incomplete Information
2. Typographical and Grammatical Mistakes
3. Focusing Responsibilities More Than Milestones
4. Sharing Same Resume Everywhere
5. Missing Objective Statement
6. Improper Design and Layout
7. Writing to Impress
8. Not More Than 3 Pages
9. Don’t Include Personal Information
10. Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Once you rectify those, recruiters will see the precise details that matter to them most (your qualification, experience, and skills). This will also avoid their distraction and eventually reading a professional resume.

Though this is not an exhaustive list, it’s sufficient enough to keep your resume productive. Once your resume hits the spot, the time is to prepare for an interview.

Not sure if you are making these mistakes? Request a free resume review and get to know! Simply send your pharma resume to [email protected] and get detailed suggestions on improvement.

There is a great free online tool to create a ready-made design for your pharma resume if you want to try. What do you think about these mistakes? Comment below.