Your resume is the key that unlocks the door to your dream job. Invest in it wisely, and let it showcase your unique blend of skills, experience, and potential. With the right words, format, and strategy, you can open doors you never thought possible. In this episode, Samuel Adeyinka sits down with Cathy Lanzalaco. Cathy, who started as a nurse and later transitioned to HR, shares her journey of starting her own business and how she helps people land jobs and build their careers through effective resume writing. She offers tips and insights on how to write a winning medical sales resume that will help you stand out from the competition and land your dream job. She shares how to make the most of your experience and skills, and explores the common mistakes many job seekers make when crafting their resumes. Tune in for valuable advice on how to take your career to the next level!

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How To Write Your Medical Sales Resume With Cathy Lanzalaco

We have with us another special guest. She goes by the name of Cathy Lanzalaco. Cathy was a nurse turned career coach and resume writer. The story of how she transcended all careers is a fascinating one to read about. I’m so excited to have her on the show. We are going to get into when she started. She was doing her thing back in the ‘80s. She’s going to describe for us the landscape of what it was like to be in medical sales from a nurse’s perspective in the ‘80s. We are going into what it was like afterward in her role as she transitioned to career coach and resume writer, and then we are going to get into the details of how to write an effective resume for medical sales.

If you’re someone that’s trying to get it in the industry, then this is an episode you need to pay attention to. In celebration of Nurses Week, we are happy to have Cathy on this episode for this interview. As always, we do our best to bring you guests that are innovative, doing things differently, and changing the game within medical sales. I do hope you enjoy this interview.

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Cathy, how are you doing?

Samuel, I’m doing great. How are you?

I’m doing fantastic. No complaints. Tell us who you are and what you do.

I’m Cathy Lanzalaco. I‘m a professional career coach and resume writer. I help people land jobs and build careers in less time than going in alone.

I love that line. Tell me this. You are unique because you started off as a nurse. You are a nurse that eventually became a resume writer. That’s a first for me. Take us back. What got you started as a nurse? How long were you a nurse? Where were you a nurse? Give us a little bit of that story.

I was a nurse back in the ‘80s, so we’ll take it back that far. It was the days of the big hair, the white uniforms, and the caps. That’s how long ago. There weren’t a whole lot of different opportunities for nurses at the time, but I loved nursing. I still do. I’m a nurse at heart. I worked for fifteen years at a local hospital and loved it. I worked on all kinds of floors. It was a teaching hospital. For those of you that are involved in that, you know how challenging that can be. I worked on a lot of different floors. I worked in surgery for a while and did discharge planning, so I saw all of it end-to-end.

I had an opportunity to leave the hospital and do case management. I did case management working from my home before remote work was a thing. This was back in the late ‘90s by this time. I did case management. I went with clients of insurance companies to their doctor’s appointments to try to expedite care for them, help them get back to work faster, or minimize the insurance company’s loss. I did that for a couple of years. That was a great use of my nursing.

Before we even go further, let’s go back to nursing. You were a nurse. You said you started in the ‘80s. Was it the ‘80s to mid-‘90s?

Yeah. I graduated in 1984 and worked in the hospital until 1997. That’s fifteen years of bedside nursing.

Most of our audience are people that want to get into medical sales or people that are already in medical sales. Let’s talk about it. What was the scene like for medical sales reps back between ‘85 and ‘95? Give us a scenario. What was it like?

I know a lot of times, they met at them with their offices, but they did come into the hospitals. They met with the pharmacists as well. With the interaction that I had with them back then, the relationships were very transactional. They came in, were trying to get their medication formulary, and were doing whatever trying to get the docs to accept it. I have seen over time the evolution of relationship management and holistic patient care since then.

Back in the ‘80s, things were in these little silos. It was starting to touch on the real benefit of interdisciplinary care, strengthening the peer review for the providers, and so forth. It was still pretty siloed at that time. You can fast forward and see how those relationships with the providers have been developed with the medical sales professionals. Truthfully, it’s all the transactional about the medications or the devices if it’s capital devices or whatever it is that they’re selling. It’s about partnering to ensure the best patient outcomes. It’s so much more of a holistic approach now than it ever was before. Back in the ‘80s, it was a different world.

I know a lot of nurses that when they come to the end of their career, they’re thinking about no longer doing bedside. They get into case management. You mentioned you got into case management. Take us back. When did you get into case management? What year was it?

That was in 1997. With a fellow nurse of mine, we were both doing discharge planning at that time. For those of you that are familiar with that, that is setting up home care services for people, getting people set up to go to nursing homes, and things like that. It is helping people move from the acute care setting into something else.

With a friend of mine, we were in discharge planning together. She had gotten a job at a national case management company and said, “This might be a great step for the next part of your career. I get to work from home. I get to go into physician’s offices. I meet directly with clients one-on-one as opposed to the chaos of the hospital. It wasn’t weekends. I’ll tell you what. I still haven’t gotten over not working weekends. Many years later, I still appreciate it.” I applied for the job and got it in 1997. I started doing case management and I did that for three years.

What a great way for nurses also to leverage their experience, helping insurance companies, helping clients, and being that conduit with the doctors to be able to get the approvals for things that they need for testing and whatever that they need for their patients. It is very similar to medical sales, trying to be that conduit for improving patient outcomes.

For people to have a little bit of context, give us a little bit more on the difference between bedside nursing and being a case manager as a nurse. Nurses know they can become clinical educators or medical sales reps in some capacity. Someone might be reading this episode and they might be new. Case management might still be something that they’re not even considering. Give us the differences between being a bedside nurse and case management nursing.

Bedside nursing was running a team. We had the floors. I was assigned to a floor and we had teams that we were assigned to on a daily basis. Usually, it was a nurse or maybe an LPN. I was an RN, and I might have an LPN helping me or a couple of aides. I was in charge of all of the care for my 15 to 20 patients or whatever it was. That meant everything from medication administration to wound care to vitals taking. This was the days before technology. They use the EPIC system. They’re online. They’re charting. We did not have any of this. We had paper charts. We were writing our care plans down.

I can’t even imagine.

I remember working at a hospital as an LPN when they got their first CAT scan machine. That was a big deal. It was at a different hospital. It was rudimentary in some ways from how far it has come over time, but it was very hands-on. We’d meet with the docs. They would come to do their rounds. They would give us orders verbally, too. We would change medications on the floor. Those were the days we mixed our own chemo. I worked on an oncology floor and we did it on the floor. It was a different time for that.

For precautions, we had people in isolation. We didn’t have COVID back then, but we had MRSA and different things that people might recognize. We had those types of procedures. It was very hands-on care and rigorous. For the nurses that are in hospital practice, it was swinging shifts. Even if you were assigned a day shift, you had to do your rotations for the other shifts. You worked every other weekend. You had to do holidays and all these things.

From my perspective when I was young and before I was married and had kids, it wasn’t a big deal. There are so many other things you can do that fits in and grows with your lifestyle. If you want to stop working weekends or maybe you need to work nights because that’s the best thing for your family and your partner works a different shift or whatever, that’s the beauty of nursing. You can always find a job doing something, leveraging your experience, and finding that schedule that you want.

When I left bedside nursing, I went to do discharge planning in the same hospital, setting up people for the next step of their care. That’s when I went to do case management. Case management is when you are orchestrating one particular person’s care with the provider, the insurance company, and the X-ray place.

I was the point person to try to put it all together to make sure that our patients got the best care in an expedient manner and cost-effectively. I try to troubleshoot, like, “What’s happening in the home? How can I help? Do you need linkage to social work?” or whatever the case may be. It was very hands-on but not in the uniform. I was controlling my own time. I was making my own appointments outside of when I had to go to doctor’s appointments with my client.

It did require me to have vast clinical knowledge so that I could go with them whether it was an orthopedic doctor or I was going with them because maybe they had been involved in a car accident and they needed pain control or pain management. I had to be familiar with that. This is another great way to be able to tap into this huge base of knowledge that nurses have without having directly to be at the bedside.

For case management, why did you leave case management? What did you go on to do?

I got an opportunity then to do medical case management for a local grocery retailer in the area where I work at. To give you some context about that and what that is, for anybody that grocery shops, there is a whole business behind how these products get on the shelves. The people that stock the products, the people that manage the other people, or the people that are working the registers may hurt themselves in the course of their work. It could be that they drop a box on their foot or slip on something in the seafood department. That’s where I came in. I manage the workers’ complaints.

It was a great job to go from managing all these clients and all these insurance companies to this very prestigious, at that time, retailer. I got to work right in their headquarters and help employees directly. I would help get them back to work faster. Return to work programs, I helped create those. I helped talk to the doctors to expedite MRIs. I was like, “Could we work out light duty for them? Could we do transitional work? What do we need to do to get this guy back to work? How many hours a week can they work? I’ll help work with the store manager to arrange that.” I was doing that. I loved that job because I shopped there. Is there a better thing than to be able to support businesses that you support and love?

That was awesome. I did that for a couple of years, and then that position went away. I said to my boss, “There’s nothing left for me to do here then if this position goes away.” They outsourced it to someone else. I said, “I’ll tell you what. I saved you a lot of money working on your workers’ complaints. How about you allow me the ability to start a disability management program? I’ll do the same thing for your disability claims.” People have heart attacks that have nothing to do with work. They have heart attacks at home. Maybe they have problem pregnancies. They can’t manage their diabetes or whatever it is. They’re paying costs for disability. Let me save you some money there.” My boss said, “What a great idea.”

You created your role.

I created my own job. They said, “To do that though, we’re going to put you in the human resources department because it interfaces a lot with benefits and with human resources. That’s a good place for you to sit. Go ahead. Go save us some money.”

That’s how you got your start in HR.

Yes. I was a nurse working in HR. I was getting people back to work sooner and saving the company some money. This was in late 2003. As everybody still is seeing, nothing’s changed. Here, it is, “My job went away again.” Who cannot relate to that? The position went away not because of anything in particular other than they were restructuring the department. They were sharing service with another sister company. Again, my job went away. Here I am, a nurse sitting in the HR department and I don’t have a job.

I go back to my boss again, the SVP of Human Resources. I said to him, “I know you don’t have any more room for a nurse here, but I see that the position of compensation and benefits manager is open. I’m not qualified to do that job, but why don’t you give it to me and let me figure it out?” My very forward-thinking boss at that time said, “We could say that you probably know a little bit more about benefits than most people because a lot of them have to do with the healthcare piece. The compensation piece and all the administrative and regulatory compliance, you can figure that out.” Most importantly, he said, “We’re only going to have this job for one year. How much damage can you do? You can have it. Do what you can with it,” and so I did. I took over the job.

I had no idea about compensation practices. I didn’t know the first thing about benefits other than how to file a medical claim. I didn’t know anything. That’s when I went back to school and I got a Business degree. I went back and got an MBA. That’s when I started then saying, “I like HR. I could do this. Maybe my job won’t keep going away.” I got certifications in HR. I kept taking on assignments. I studied and learned what HR was about. I had no idea. I was not a business person. I was a nurse.

I worked in that job for seven years. It got changed into a few different things, but it did go away eventually. There was a sister company that needed another compensation and benefits manager. I took that job and held that job for twelve years. I ran an HR department for 600 people at a distribution center. That was a huge job. By then, I was an HR leader and I was sitting at the table with the other executives. Nobody considered me a nurse at that point. I was an HR leader.

What were maybe the top three skills you say you got from being that HR leader?

Strategic thinking. It’s not that you don’t think and you assess. You do that, but a lot of it is very much in the moment if somebody needs something, whether it is pain medication or you’re doing your assessments, or you’re in the middle of a treatment. This was long-term planning beyond care planning. It taught me that.

It taught me how to work at a business executive level. In the hospital, the doctors were the executives, if you will. There was a chief nursing officer. If you ever got to see her, that was incredible because she was busy. She was probably the only woman at the table at the time. She was busy doing her thing. That was the other thing I learned.

I learned a lot in general business acumen. In my first spreadsheets, I was learning how to use the early days of Word, Excel, and those things. There was no call for that in the hospital. I had no idea. I didn’t know how to use a calculator, let alone put functions into Excel. I knew nothing, but being at the table taught me a lot.

This translated into you becoming a resume writer.

It was one step at a time.

Walk us through that transition. You’re an HR executive and you say, “I’m going to go into business for myself.”‘ What happened? Give us a story.

I would like to say that I was that strategic and that I had that much vision, but I did not. I had the job. I was an HR leader at this distribution center or at this warehouse, and I loved it. I called it my big fat HR job. I got paid a ton of money. I worked for a wonderful person. The people that I worked for or the people that I served as an HR person, I loved them. I would stay there and retire from there. It was the best gig, but they closed the facility. The business changed and the needs changed. They didn’t need that facility anymore, so my job went away. All 600 people that worked there, their jobs went away.

In the course of that, as the HR leader, I was called upon to start helping people transition into other jobs. They had to leave our facility and go find new jobs. In some cases, these people didn’t have a lot of skills. They had worked in the warehouse. There were not a lot of things that they could do. Some people were there for 25 years and didn’t know anything else. Sometimes, I was working with executives. Sometimes, it was people in the warehouse. Sometimes, it was people in the corporate office. I had to start helping people transition. People would come to me, “Can you look at my resume?” They would come to me and say, “What should I do now?” I started getting a bit of a feel for career management.

I then had to start thinking about my own career. I was like, “What do I do next?” We all jump into starting to throw our resumes out. I didn’t know any better. I did get another HR job. I got an HR job scheduled before I left, but I knew that I didn’t want to do HR again. I’d already done it. By this time, it was many years now and I was getting a little tired of it. I loved it, but if I couldn’t keep my other job, then I didn’t know if I wanted to do it full-time.

The owners brought in career transition specialists or outplacement people to work with us, the managers. I remember sitting at the table. We went around. The people or the coaches that were talking to us, we all had to say what we wanted to do next. I said, “I want to do what you are doing.” That never left me. I said, “I love this energy of helping people figure out the next step.”

I went on to the job that I had planned, which was my next HR job. I even took another job after that. I worked at that for a while, and then I took another job after that. This is where trusting your gut comes in. One day, for no reason, it came to my head to say, “I bet I could write resumes and help people get jobs. There is probably some money to be made. I could probably do it.”

One day, I said, “Does anybody need a resume? I’ll write it for you.” I had no clue what I was doing. I started a job. I didn’t even realize it was a job. I started a company. I didn’t even realize what I was doing, but I started doing it. Before you knew it, it was 3 months and then 6 months. I found a thriving business where she was a resume writer and a career coach. I said to her, “Can I work part-time for you? Can I subcontract for you and learn the business? I still have my full-time job. Can I run my own side hustle here and you teach me what I need to know about the business?” She took me under her wing and mentored me.

I’m running my own business. I have a full-time job. I’m working for her, learning the business, and going to get certifications. I’m rebuilding myself and reinventing myself as I did in HR. I’m going back for certifications, learning the standards of the industry, networking with people, and starting all over again. My business was doing so well that I said, “I have to make a decision. Am I going to pull the plug? Am I going to jump and invest the time into my business or am I going to stay in HR and play it safe?” One day, I walked away.

At that time, I was working for a university. My daughter was an incoming freshman at that university. Part of the gig when you work there is you get free tuition for four years. I said to my daughter, “I’m leaving anyway.” I left the free tuition on the table and walked away. I started and threw myself into my own business at that time and she got her student loans. How about that?

You had so much confidence going into this role. You must have loved it to make that decision.

I did, but I’d be kidding you if I tell you I was that confident. I wasn’t that ignorant. I didn’t know what it really took. I was confident.

I get it. Naively confident. How about that?

Yeah. I like that. Let’s can that word. That’s fantastic. You don’t know what you’re getting into all the time. You ask the best questions that you can. I’ll tell you what. For anybody that’s reading this, I hope the one thing that you hear throughout this story is trusting your gut and taking leaps of faith sometimes. Things will get put in front of you.

[bctt tweet=”Trust your gut and take leaps of faith.” via=”no”]

I didn’t know that I wanted to work in HR, but one opportunity led to another. One day, I had an idea about resume writing and reached out to this woman I didn’t know. She said, “Sure. Why not?” Sometimes, you got to ask for things that you want. Sometimes, people will say no. Sometimes, they will say yes, and it can change the whole trajectory of your life.

You went into resume writing. You finally did go into business for yourself to the point where you said, “I’m going to bypass getting my daughter’s tuition payment and I’m going to do this full-time.” It panned out. When did you realize that it panned out?

By then, I had rented office space. It was pre-pandemic. I don’t know why I felt like I had to meet with people. There were local people that I did meet. I’m from Buffalo, New York. We’re very close-knit here. People like to come into my office. I was doing some work. Maybe it was Skype at that time. I don’t even know, but I did have clients all over the country.

What I did know that I made it was when I bought a business. I started my own setup. I threw my shingle out. I started seeing clients. I started attracting nurses because I was a nurse. I started attracting HR people because I was an HR professional. I knew what I knew and people came to me for that. The woman that had mentored me was the original owner of the company. She had cancer and she passed away. She was very young. After she passed away, I bought the business from her husband. It was that when I bought a business and rolled my other business up into it that I’m like, “I’ve got more responsibility, too.”

That is so fantastic. That’s an inspiring story. I love how you keep referring to your intuition. Your intuition said, “Let’s try this. Let’s go here.” You stayed open the whole time, and it took you from opportunity to opportunity to the point where you created an opportunity for yourself to have your own business. That is fantastic.

May I say one thing?

Yes, please.

There is a source to all of this, and I want to give credit to this. It is another friend of mine who’s passed, unfortunately. I had another nurse friend that I worked with when I first did the case management work. She said to me, “Nurses are smart. They can do anything.” She pushed me for that job in HR and said, “You could do that. You’re as good as everybody else.” I said, “I’m not. I don’t know anything.” She said, “You can. You get there. You go take that job.” I didn’t even know, but she had faith in me. She always said, “Nurses are smart. They can do anything.” I’ve never forgotten that. That was the source of everything, I feel like everything unfolded and I stepped into it but she encouraged me. Nurses encourage each other.

[bctt tweet=”Nurses are smart. They can do anything.” via=”no”]

I love that. We need people in our corner to push us into those new unexplored territories. Let’s change gears a little bit. You’re a resume writer. You focus primarily on medical sales or nurses. Give us your niche.

My niche is executives in general. I do a lot of work with healthcare professionals and medical salespeople. I do a lot of work with nurses more than nurses themselves. That is because the way the job market is, it’s more with healthcare executives that I work primarily with like COOs of hospitals, CNOs or Chief Nursing Officers, and those kinds of roles. I work with a lot of people in medical sales, capital sales, and that type of thing. In pharmaceuticals, I work with lots of those people. I also do brisk business working with new college graduates. Some of them go into sales as well as consulting. They do a lot of consulting, too, for the new college grads.

Give us a little bit about what makes a good medical sales resume. I want you to think of the professional that is new to the industry. It is someone that was a customer service representative. Maybe they were a nurse, a teacher, or even a sales rep in a different field. They all want to be in medical sales. What would you say are some of the things that have to be on that medical sales resume?

I’ll tell you what. Medical sales is so exciting, but it all forms the basis of starting with transferrable skills. You have more skills than you think you do. If you’re looking at a posting online and saying, “I would love to go do medical sales,” and then you’re reading the posting and you’re like, “I don’t have that,” you probably do. You don’t realize it. It is about identifying your transferable skills and being able to articulate them. It does start with things like time management and organization. These things are critical when you are in medical sales.

Think about things like complex problem-solving and cross-functional collaboration. You know that you’re doing this, whether you are a customer service professional or a nurse. You may not call it those things, but that’s the crux of what you’re doing. It is being able to bring teams together to be able to influence outcomes. All of these things, you’re doing, but you aren’t giving yourself credit for doing. These are things that are essential in medical sales professionals.

You have to start looking internally and saying to yourself, “Let me write this down. What do I do in the course of a day?” I encourage people to write down the action they do, whatever the task is, and then to put sub-bullets underneath it and say, “What am I drawing on to be able to do that? What do I have to do within the context of that?” That’s a great way to figure out what these skills are that you’re using. Before you know it, you’ve got 20 to 30 of them down there. You’re like, “I never even thought about myself that way.”

That’s a good point. When you think about medical sales, we have pharmaceutical sales, medical supply sales, capital equipment, and ortho-based medical device sales roles. Would you say that there’s a big difference between what those resumes look like or would you say they all fit under a similar template, for lack of a better word, because they’re in the medical sales space?

I do think there are certain common threads between all of them that could match any of those particular lines and those verticals. However, the real key is about how you’re going to bring value and how you can explain that you’re going to bring value to any of those or each of those and be able to target those jobs specifically. Maybe the jobs aren’t so different, but the way the companies function are. It is to be able to market yourself for each of the particular jobs. What I mean is it is not one-size-fits-all. I don’t care if you’re in medical sales or anything else. However, and you said template, there is a huge foundation of things that are similar across all of these. If you can harness that, these other things are tweaks.

Give us maybe the top five no-noes. I’m sure you’re going to say some things that seem obvious. Give us the top five no-noes that are a little bit unknown that people writing their resumes should keep in mind.

The first thing, people don’t always think about this. I see this a lot in the younger crowd, and that’s okay, but I’m going to tell you no pictures on your resume. I don’t care. There’s one exception to that, and that person is not reading this. The other thing is a very old, outdated practice that serves no value to you or the company you want to work for. Get rid of that objective statement. I see them every day. It is like, “I want a growing position in a growing company and to add value.” You’re not saying anything. That’s an old-school practice. They know your objective is to get the job.

Instead of that, use 1, 2, 3 sentences, or maybe 4 to do what I call a branding summary station. Tell me a little bit about you. Why should I hire you? What value are you going to bring to me? Figure out how to tell me concisely in a couple of statements. Objective statements are dead. Branded summary statements are in. That’s the other thing.

I don’t care what business you’re in. The other huge mistake is people seem to copy and paste their job description into a new document and call that their resume. Those days are gone, too. Nobody cares what you did. What they care about is how you did it and the results you got. Look at those tasks that you’re copying and pasting and say, “How can I reframe these to show the value that I added? What did I do? Maybe if I’m a nurse in a hospital, was I part of their shared governance? How much did I participate in? Did I help increase safety numbers and decrease falls? What other committees was I on that I could demonstrate how I worked cross-functionally? What other initiatives was I at that increased patient outcomes that I could take credit for?” That’s the stuff.

[bctt tweet=”One huge mistake people seem to make in their resumes is copying and pasting their job description into a new document and calling that their resume.” via=”no”]

If you’re in some other business like customer service, how many calls did you handle in an hour? You all get reports. How many positive feedback did you receive? How many issues did you resolve in a day? These things are critically important. A list of everything you’ve always done, nobody cares about that anymore. They care about how you did it and the results.

The other thing is people still are putting accountability for every job they’ve ever had since high school. They got their paper roots on there. Get those off. It only needs to be relevant to the job that you’re searching for. Nobody cares. If I was to put my resume together, I wouldn’t be including my stuff from the ‘80s unless it had a direct correlation or unless I wanted to go back into the hospital for some reason. Even then, my skills were rotated. You don’t have to account for every minute of your time.

I’m also going to say, don’t be afraid of that gap in your employment. Maybe you were out of work because of COVID. Maybe you took time off to raise your family. Maybe you took time off to go pursue a degree. Maybe you said, “I need to slow my life down,” and you decided to take two years off. Maybe you took your own sabbatical for your own health or took care of a family member. You can include that as a job. That can mean one line that says, “Personal sabbatical for family care issue. Completely resolved. 2020 to 2021.” Be done with it. Don’t be afraid of gaps. You also don’t need to tell me where you’ve been every single day for the past fourteen years either. Nobody cares about that. It’s about relevancy.

Those are the main things that I would say. They’re very basic. It’s a shift in the way that people think about resumes. It’s a shift in the way that people think about how employers want to see them. They’ve got a lot of competition out there. There are 200, 300, or 400 jobs at least for these jobs. You got to find a way to stand out.

This is a fact. That list was a healthy and great list. I hope everyone that is reading is taking notes because those are things that will help with their resume writing. Thank you for that. It was wonderful spending time with you. We got to learn what nurses can do and how nurses can think when they’re thinking about leaving bedside nursing. I love that you highlighted listening to your intuition and being open. Medical sales is a great opportunity for nurses becoming clinical educators and things like that. They want to be open if they want to leave bedside nursing.

I’ve heard this and everybody has. For the nurses out there, nursing is ranked as the highest trusted profession above and beyond everything else. It is higher than doctors because people trust us. If you are a nurse, listen to that. There’s equity. There’s power in that. Say to yourself, “I can do anything and people want me to. They will trust me, whether I want to go into medical sales or do something else.” It’s a natural progression. People want to listen to nurses. They want advice from nurses. They want care from nurses. Whether it’s verbal care or bedside care, you have it to offer them.

Cathy, it was awesome spending time with you. I want to wrap this up by asking you a few questions. It’s our lightning round. You have less than ten seconds to answer. Are you ready?

Let’s do it.

The first question is what is the best book you’ve read in the last six months?

I‘ve read it several times. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

You got to read that at least once a year. It’s a classic.

I do. I got done re-reading it. There you go.

What is the best movie or TV show you’ve seen in the last six months?

The Offer. It is about the making of The Godfather. It’s on Paramount+. I can’t get enough. The Godfather is my favorite movie of all time. It’s from the perspective of the producer of the movie and how the movie practically didn’t get made. It’s fascinating. If you’re a Godfather fan, that one is for you.

I’m watching that. I am a Godfather fan. What is the best meal you’ve had in the last six months?

My best meal is spaghetti parmesan or a big plate of spaghetti. I’m Italian, so I love that food. Especially if it is covered in drippy cheese. It is delicious. I can’t have too much. I got to watch that cholesterol and the carb. Every once in a while, it’s a treat.

Is this something you make or do you have it at a restaurant?

There’s a restaurant around town that is the best in town. I can only go there once every six months because I got to watch my cholesterol.

What’s it called?

I’ll put in a plug for Chef’s. It is called Chef’s here in Buffalo.

When I visit Buffalo, I’m going to Chef’s.

Get spaghetti parm. Call me. I’ll treat. Let’s go.

The last question is what is the best experience you’ve had in the last six months?

The best experience I have had is joining a local networking group. It’s called Western New York Entrepreneur. The whole concept is to mix and mingle with other entrepreneurs, learn from each other, and be able to get out there even if it’s not in the same industry. I’m the only one doing what I do. It is to be in an environment with people that are ahead of you, behind you, or similar in your journey where you are and listening and absorbing everything from them. I love having meals with them and having a relaxed time with them. It’s about building relationships, not selling to each other. It’s fantastic. It has helped me grow personally and professionally.

Is there anything else you’d like to share? Do you have some last lines you’d like to share with our audience before we end?

Medical sales is such a great opportunity. The field of healthcare is never going away. Nurses can do anything. Also, think about if you want to break into that type of role, you don’t have to be a nurse to do it. It is an extricated thing. When you’re looking to make a change in your career, it’s about transferrable skills. Consider going for a job where you are marketing yourself. Tell them why you are unique. Listen to your gut and go for what you want.

Cathy, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Samuel.

—

That was Cathy Lanzalaco. For those of you trying to get into the industry and even those of you looking for new positions or new fields, I hope you paid attention because she gave us some great insights into doing a resume. Honestly, that’s a very small fraction of what you need to get into a medical sales position, and an even smaller fraction of what you need if you’re looking to transition from a different field to another one.

If you’re trying to break into the industry, you’re going to need a lot more than a good resume. You’re going to need a good resume. You’re going to need a career portfolio. You’re going to need to have a LinkedIn profile that communicates your value to the position. You’re going to need to know how to interview, how to network, how to ask the right questions, and how to close an interview. You need to know what to do before an interview, during an interview, and after an interview with your interview skills. You need to know how to sell in the space you want to be in. There’s a lot that goes into becoming a medical sales rep.

If you are serious about stepping into this space, then take serious action. Go to EvolveYourSuccess.com and select Attain Medical Sales Role. Submit an application and have a conversation with us here at Evolve Your Success. Let us get you into the medical sales role you deserve. If you’re looking to transition to a different role, we can help you as well. As always, we do our best to bring you innovative guests that are doing things differently, pioneering, trailblazing, and setting a name for themselves in the medical sales industry. Make sure you tune in for another episode of the show.

Important Links

• Cathy Lanzalaco
• Think and Grow Rich
• Western New York Entrepreneur
• Attain Medical Sales Role
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/CathyLanzalaco/
• Inspire Careers

About Cathy Lanzalaco

Cathy is CEO of Inspire Careers, a full-service career marketing firm based in Buffalo, NY and serving job seekers across the country. A registered nurse with 15 years of bedside and staff management experience, Cathy leveraged her clinical and leadership skills to move out of the hospital, first into case management, and then into human resources. Following a successful 18-year career in HR, she left the corporate world and founded her first business. In 2018, she purchased Inspire Careers, which has grown into the #1 career management firm in Western New York, serving executives and healthcare professionals at every stage of their career journey. An award-winning resume writer and certified career coach, Cathy provides insights and strategies that help her clients land jobs and create careers they love in less time than going it alone.

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