Looking For A Job As A Sales Rep? Try India
8 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 29th, 2010 // 2:57 pm
Are you worried that you may soon join the thousands of other former sales reps looking for work? Are you already among them? Yet you hold out hope of finding yet another position knocking on a doctor’s door? Well, you’re in luck. We know of a company that wants to hire 5,000 reps - that’s right, 5,000. There’s one catch - it’s going to be a long commute if you’re not already in India.
No, we’re not kidding. PharmexxIndia, an outsourcing firm, plans to hire that many reps to blanket the market over the next five years. With predictions that the Indian market will surge, managing director Chenthir Kumaran tells The Business Line that science grads and pharmaceutical diploma holders will be sought, and about 3,000 will be deployed in rural and semi-urban areas. His plan also reflects the larger trend delighting other contract sales organizations that are picking up business as pharma cuts permanent employees.
So pack up your troubles in your old rep bag and buy a ticket for Chennai. This may be your moment. Pretty soon all of the multi-national drugmakers will have far fewer employees in the US and Western Europe as they ramp up in places like India. And if this helps cushion the blow, remember that they already speak English in India and the food is quite good. In other words, rupee for you.
industry insider
Anticipating further consulting work in BRIC countries, I completed an intensive course in Mandarin last year and have advised colleagues to do the same. Emerging markets is where it’s at for 20-30% of my business over the next five years. If you are mid-career and have the opportunity to do a seconding in the Far East or South Asia you should take advantage of it. Not only will you get valuable experience, when you get back stateside it’s almost a guaranteed promotion. Hopefully, like me, you will have an understanding family.
industry insider
Go for it!
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/10/30/stories/2010103051142300.htm
Teflon no more
Of course you’ll have to condition yourselves to their way of life in every way.Without going into detals (which I don’t really know but am sure they’d be scary) you’d be living at maybe 10% of everything here in USA. Also your chances to survive their country as a whole, which is still so much behind us in every way (except if you move in with some Maharaja) are minimal. So the “experience” you’d get there is simply worthless. Better approach would be to start some kind of good action (like Tea Party) to stop these multinationals from doing what ever they want in the name of profit and globalization. This so called needed growth all over the world is the biggest bs ever. It only serves the interests of big biz while giving the poor of the world an extra chicken bone per month. Protectionism is needed and will be revived sometimes in the future. The only thing it might be too late or will lead to worldwide conflict.Once China and India (with nukes) are well used to sending us their cheap stuff and taking our jobs at the same time, they will not look kindly at us turning off the pipe to protect our way of life. For them to come up we have to go down. There is no way the world can survive with them coming up to our level of life style. Most likely as we go down and they clime up, it will be over somewhere in the middle.
Globalization is a bad as climate worming. Each will lead to disaster but both will speed it up many times.
So go along with “opportunity” in India or China if you like, I’d rather man the barricades here if someone would put them up.
industry insider
Protectionism protects no one and nothing here in the US. Two reasons: 1) Pharma is highly decentralized in the US, and mostly non-unionized ,and thus non-organized. Thus there is no political consituency to make the case; 2) America is not as strong trading partner as it used to be. We are highly import-dependent. Imposing import tariffs in US will not only hurt the American economy, but the BRIC countries will simply seek other trading partners whose economies are in much better shape than Americas’.
The only thing US is doing by way of exports is exporting jobs to lower wage countries. Together with the fact that US has highest corporate tax rate in the world, there is absolutely no incentive to keep high paying jobs in the US for the forseeable future.
When they say “Go West” in this decade, they mean WAY west, until you hit mainland China.
Michael Hanson
I don’t really think people should worry about jobs when it comes to the marketing industry. The need for sales reps will never go down because as the market develops and as the economy changes, sales reps will be needed by larger companies to find customers/clients. Get my drift? If you go to http://jobs.renego.co.in you will see sales representatives jobs there. Opportunities are oozing everywhere, you just have to know where to look
industry insider
Thanks, Michael. Your post reminds me of the Marketing slogan from one of my former company’s campaign for a new osteoporosis drug: “Osteoporosis is like opportunity; it’s everywhere. You just have to look”. Same way for many other drugs.
Awesome
Teflon no more: thank you. Yours was unintentionally the most hilarious post I’ve read in years: ill-informed, illogical, xenophobic, poorly worded and poorly spelled. And you ended with the idea that you’d man the barricades if only someone would build them for you. Lazy and foolish is a powerful combination for uselessness. Priceless.
industry insider
Bladder, I would be more likely to welcome an Indian rep into an American office because they know how to speak proper English. I would advise any American rep to invest in a course that teaches how to lose your regional accent, which will also help your management prospects anywhere but in the Deep South, perhaps. Listen to most senior managers, and not only will you hear the practiced art of elocution, but nary an accent will be detectable as well.