Speaker: Tom Lobl, Consultant at Lobl Consulting
Tell us a little bit about you.
Tom Lobl: Hello, I'm Tom Lobl. I am a member of the KGI Advisory Council. I have an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina and a graduate PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I have also done postgraduate research at Caltech and at Rockefeller University. I've worked in both big pharmaceutical companies and small pharmaceutical companies, start-ups. I have worked at the Upjohn Company before it became Pfizer and for about 14.5 years and I've been in California in a variety of start-up companies from San Diego, LA and Northern California. I have a lot of experience in getting jobs and helping people get jobs. And so I'm looking forward to talking to you about how to find a job.
What are the important things to do in preparation for a job search?
Tom Lobl: in preparation for a job search. First of all, you need to learn about the company and its products. You need to be able to include something about the company and its products in your cover letter and how your application, your experience, your academic training, and your other experiences will help you lead to a good fit for the job opening. You need to learn about the job opening and its requirements so that you can be sure that information about the job opening is sprinkled throughout your resume and your cover letter. Finally, if you know someone who's working in the company, you should contact them and find out about the job opening itself, the job opening it may not even be published or at least the one you want may not even be published or public knowledge yet. But someone on the inside would know about that and they may help you do it. This is exactly what happened to me when I was looking for my first job at the Upjohn company. I knew a former student of my PhD professor who worked there. He and I talked about the opportunities there in the company. And I got two different job interviews for jobs that weren't even public information yet. And that was the value of having someone that I knew on the inside. And then he attended my interview seminars and I participated in the interviews and he may have been responsible for swinging the two different openings for me. And I got two different offers from the those interviews.
What message and information do you need to include in your resume?
Tom Lobl: you want to include in your resume? First of all, you need to understand that your resume is an advertising document and you are the product. So you are advertising yourself with this resume. It is not just a recitation of your previous experiences and you need to have an objective at the top, which is not a rehash of what your experiences are below, but it is how your goal and objective for a career overlaps and is related to the job opening that you're applying for. That way it looks like the resume fits your requirements and the job opening simultaneously. And that goes in the objective. You need to sprinkle throughout the resume, words that relate to the job opening so that they will read your resume and see how your background and experiences relate to the job opening as described. You need to realize that there's no page limit to the size of your resume. If you are fresh out of school, your resume should be short, maybe one or 1.5 pages. But if you've had a career and you've had other jobs it could be multiple pages. My CV is 37 pages long and I'm not embarrassed by submitting that. I have a short resume for those that don't want to see all of that stuff. But I make it available to anyone that wants to see the full details of my history. Finally, you need to include your publications, and patents, and presentations if there's significant presentations, at the end of your resume, unless it's a very long list, so that they can see what kind of experience you have. Because if you're applying for a research related job, they want to see publications, and patents, and evidence of your creativity. So, don't forget to include that. If it is a long list, then you can put it on some kind of online account and I give them a link to that so they can go there and look at it at their leisure and they can click on it and see your publications in detail. So all of these things are required to go into your resume. But again, remember the resume is your advertising document. And the real goal of your resume is to advertise your qualifications for the job and you need to have the keywords because they're gonna do a computer search of resumes in their database. And the one with the most keywords will be put at the top of the list for looking at seriously and then maybe bringing in for an interview.
What message and information do you need to include in the cover letter?
Tom Lobl: The cover letter is an opportunity for you to explain how your experiences qualifies you for the job that you're applying for. It enables you in a paragraph to describe how your background and experiences make you ideal for the job that they're trying to look for someone for. So in your cover letter, you start off by in the first paragraph, sort of restating that you're applying for the job and you give the job description and title. The second paragraph, you put all that stuff that is not in your resume and not obvious from your resume, but qualifies you for the job in ways that would not be obvious for someone that just read your resume. This gives you an opportunity to put your personality into it, but also to emphasize things that you think would resonate with them as they consider who they want to bring in for an interview. The second paragraph then describes all those things that are not in your resume, but you want them to know in the end of the letter you offer to speak to them live, either virtually or in person to learn more about the company and the job. As well as for them, they inquire more things about your background and experiences that they did not see answered in the cover letter or in the resume. This is an important thing to offer at the end. It shows that you are willing to speak with them more and cover it in detail. So what you want to do is use your resume and your letter to get you at the top of the interview list. So that the first three to five people that they decide to interview, you'll be on that list. And then after that, you can go in person or virtually, and then use that time to convince them that you are the best candidate.
What are the different purposes for the resume and the cover letter?
Tom Lobl: the resume and the cover letter? You need to remember that the cover letter and your resume or CV are advertising documents that describe you and you are the product of their advertising. The resume, CV is a relatively cold listings of what your accomplishments have been, what jobs you've had, what you did at those jobs and what training and experience you've had academically. The cover letter, has a completely different purpose. It allows you to put in your personality and describe to them in ways that are not covered in your resume or CV, how you qualify for the job in ways that are not obvious in your resume. So it allows you to put in some personality but allows you to customize your responses to them. Ok So that they can see that, how you qualify for the job in ways that may not otherwise be obvious. So the cover letter is an opportunity to customize it and put your personality and discussion in there and allows you to emphasize things that may not be easily emphasized. You don't want to use the cover letter to cover things that are already in your resume or CV, that would be a waste of space and a missed opportunity.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
Tom Lobl: As you think about your job hunting activities, remember the job hunting is a very stressful activity. You need to focus on it and it could be a full time job if you do it right. You need to customize each cover letter for the job. You need to customize each resume for the job. And if you do that right, it will show if you're using boilerplate and everybody gets the same thing that will be very telling to the job, or the HR person or the job hiring a person. Ok It's very important to do networking also. You never know where you're going to find out about a job that's interesting or who you might talk to that might give you an insight into something that's valuable in your job hunting search or to tell you about opportunities that you don't know about. So networking is very important. Go to meetings and conferences and things where the companies that you would like to work for are presenting or have a booth in an exhibition or someone that works there is presenting and get to know the persons that are presenting. Go up to them and talk to them. This is very valuable things to do and you need to prepare and read papers from the company. If this is a research job you're looking for, then you need to be able to know something about what the company is doing by reading their research papers. When you get an interview or something happens, you can cite that paper or you can ask some questions about the research they're doing, it shows them that you are prepared and you are the right candidate for the job. This is our important things to do. In addition to your resume and your cover letter, it gives you a leg up on the competition because a lot of the people that will also be applying will not go to that trouble. But if you do it, it'll be well worth the trouble that you spent doing it.
