How to optimise your CV for a job in Pharma

Whilst you should already be making your CV great by clear formatting and great content, here’s a quick checklist to make sure you’re making the most of it for a job in Pharma. 

1. Make sure your CV highlights the Pharma related experience you’ve got. This may be obvious, but give it a bit more space and go in to a bit more detail. Don’t forget to include your achievements rather than just a list of things you did.
2. You should refine your CV for the job you are applying for. Look at the keywords in the job advert, then make a list of around 10 or so, and where appropriate, include them in your CV. This might be therapy areas, drug names, companies, competitors, procedures, regulatory / regulations, organisations etc. This is important for numerous reasons including the fact that increasing numbers of organisations use automated parsing to scan your CV for matching keywords even before a human looks at it.
3. Try and “Dumb down” the non-pharma jobs and experience unless you’re sure it’s relevant to the role you’re applying for. Still include it by all means, but just give it less prominence. If your CV is more “non-pharma” than “pharma”, you’ll struggle.
4. More generically: read and re-read your CV. Nothing shouts “bad candidate” than an obvious  typo on a CV – especially if it’s a drug name or biotech company you’ve worked for. 

Most of these are obvious, but it never hurts to review what you’ve got and how you’re approaching things.