What’s it like to work for a CRO?

Over at ask.metafilter, someone has posed the question “what’s it like to work for a CRO?”

The person asking the question is a university research assistant with a background in cognitive neuroscience and an interest in statistics and applied math.

So far, one excellent answer has been posted.

“I have worked in both CRO and pharma, and prefer pharma overall (although you are unlikely to get a pharma job without CRO experience first). CROs don’t pay quite as well, but the tradeoff is that they are much more willing, in general, to hire people who will need some training.”

You can read the rest of the answer here.

Of course, there are many different kinds of CRO. In this case, the focus is on clinical research, and there are many large and small CROs that specialize in designing and managing clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies and biotechs.  The larger firms, such as ICON, Quintiles and Covance, offer comprehensive services covering all phases and aspects of the clinical phase of pharmaceutical development. These are multinational companies with well-developed training and development programs.  There are also hundreds of smaller CROs that specialize in different things.  For example, some may focus on patient recruitment and site initiation, whereas others only do data management or site monitoring, or may specialize in a particular therapeutic area (such as oncology).

My experience with recruiting clinical research associates was that most of them preferred to work directly for pharmaceutical firms.  However, this is less common these days as many firms have outsourced this part of their operations to CROs. Working for a CRO can be challenging, as you may be working on several different projects at the same time, each with their own protocols.  There is less opportunity to get into a groove and develop expertise in a particular area.  On the other hand, some CRAs enjoy the variety.

Good luck in your search.

Posted: June 12th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Clinical research, Preclinical R&D | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

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