This reflection paper examines the results of two career assessments — a career interest inventory and the StrengthsQuest survey — and connects them to a chosen career path in pharmaceutical sales. The paper identifies top career matches including employment interviewer, admissions counselor, and marketing, then analyzes five personal strength themes: achiever, maximizer, positivity, strategic, and developer. Drawing on these results, the author outlines plans to pursue pharmaceutical sales, explains the appeal of a competitive, people-centered environment, and identifies the primary developmental gap — building a stronger scientific and technical background — needed to succeed in the field.
The top career choices identified for me were employment interviewer, admissions counselor, business manager, marketing, and communication studies. All of these careers involve communicating with people in order to find out their needs and then engaging in some type of activity to help them meet those needs. For example, the employment interviewer role involves working with an employer to determine its needs for a new hire and then interviewing prospective employees to see whether they fill those needs. Even the marketing position directly involves communication and needs assessment; marketing is about not only fulfilling needs, but also sometimes creating needs in people.
The assessment did not really reveal new information about me. Before taking it, I knew that I genuinely enjoyed communicating with and getting to know people, and that I seemed to have an ability to help people find what they need. However, I had not honestly put this information into a work context. Therefore, the assessment helped me view my personal assets and personality as a means of defining my professional self. I would have described myself as more of a helping professional than these roles suggest, but looking at the recommended jobs I see a sales element in all of them — one that is absent from a traditional helping profession, yet that I believe I would find personally rewarding.
This information will help me in my planning process by giving me not only a starting point for career searching, but also by ensuring that I pursue the necessary educational requirements for the careers to which I am best suited. It will help narrow down the jobs for which I should apply and will also help me in the interview process by showing how I can highlight my own personality as a candidate for those positions.
My five top themes from the StrengthsQuest assessment are: achiever, maximizer, positivity, strategic, and developer. This information helps me understand my unique talents in concrete ways.
I am very much a to-do list person. It is important to me to actually accomplish things during a day; I do not feel productive if I am unable to check off all of my goals. Understanding that I am an achiever helps me recognize why I experience low-level anxiety when I fall short of my daily goals. The maximizer theme is less immediately clear to me in terms of how it reflects my talents, though in many ways it seems to capture the idea of multitasking — I am generally not content to accomplish a single task when I could be working on several simultaneously.
I am not surprised to see positivity among my top themes; I have consistently worked to maintain a positive outlook in life. I have found, however, that being upbeat can sometimes be off-putting to others, as there is a tendency toward pessimism in many areas of life. While the result itself was not new information, I found the explanatory material about the positivity theme helpful in showing me how to share that attitude with others rather than imposing it on them.
As for being strategic, I have always believed in making a plan, adjusting when necessary, and following through. I believe this theme will help me establish and meet career goals, because I naturally think ahead and seek to anticipate obstacles. Finally, I was somewhat surprised to find developer among my themes. I had not fully appreciated how important follow-through was to me until I reflected on it — from sending thank-you notes after job interviews to making follow-up calls with future clients. I believe this theme will serve me well throughout my career.
"Reasons for pursuing pharmaceutical sales career"
"Identifying technical knowledge gaps and training needs"
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