Effective cover letters for Medical Science Liaison jobs

I’ve been given permission to share another article from Dr. Samuel Dyer, the founder of the MSL World career site dedicated to the medical science liaison role. Here, he provides some advice about cover letters.  Dr. Dyer worked as an MSL manager for many years — it’s great to get the perspective of a hiring manager.

5 Strategies for Creating an Attention-Grabbing Medical Science Liaison Cover Letter

By Dr. Samuel Dyer

“Attached you will find my resume for the position of_______”. How many cover letters have you created and submitted that included such a standard opening? How many other candidates do you think have done the same? Put yourself in the recruiter’s or hiring manager’s position and imagine how tedious it must be to read submission after submission with these same or similar words.

Recruiters can easily receive 100’s of cover letters and resumes for each advertised MSL opening. As a result, your cover letter needs to grab the attention of the recruiter or hiring manager very quickly. Most employers will only spend a matter of seconds during an initial pre-screening or review of your cover letter. If it doesn’t grab their attention in some way, it will be discarded.

What strategy can you use to catch the attention of the recruiter or hiring manager? You need to use an attention-grabbing relevant opening while simultaneously remaining professional. In short, write something that will motivate the reader to learn more about you.

Here are five unconventional strategies to create an attention-grabbing opening:

1. Mention a previous discussion with the hiring manager

Obviously you can only pursue this tactic if you have spoken with this person. However, if you had shared such a conversation you have a distinct advantage. Start the letter by referring to this prior contact.

Example: “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me regarding the MSL role in the __________therapeutic area. This position is very interesting and seems to match well with my experiences and to what you and the company are looking for.”

2. Mention the name of the person who referred you

Recruiters and hiring managers are much more likely to remember a cover letter when it mentions a trusted colleague or friend.

Example: “Hello, my name is ______ and I received your name and contact details from John Smith. I am contacting you to learn more about the MSL role with _____ Pharmaceuticals that you are working on”.

3. Open the letter with a description of a major (and relevant) success

Concisely describe this major accomplishment and point out how you can achieve similar results for their company.

Example: “As a senior MSL with _______ Pharmaceuticals in CV, I was able to develop and manage significant KOL relationships which resulted in _____________. I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you regarding the MSL role in (CV or specific drug) with ______ Pharmaceuticals.” (You need to match and relate your background, accomplishments, pre-existing KOL relationships within the same Therapeutic Area, or any other relevant experiences to the needs of the role and company you are applying to.)

4. Quote the hiring manager directly

If the hiring manager has been interviewed in the media or has posted a comment to a social media site or blog, quote the statement in your letter and highlight how your business practices and values are aligned.

Example: “In a recent interview you had with _________, you stated, “the MSL role continues to evolve as a greater number of KOLs increasingly recognize the important contribution that MSLs can make in the development of their research projects.” After reading this statement, I was confident that my relevant MSL experience of documented history of successfully working with KOLs on numerous research projects would be valued at __________ Pharmaceuticals.

5. Quote a recent industry article or statistic

Quoting an article or statistic relevant to the specific company or industry demonstrates your knowledge of industry trends, latest news, or recent developments.

Example: “The recent (for example-specific Medical Journal reference) article stated that ________ Pharmaceuticals CNS product (or drug) went into phase III trials for the treatment of severe pain. Having relevant experience of worked with two pain products in phase III trials while at _________ Pharmaceuticals, will enable me to play a critical role in assisting the company to be successful in this important step.”

The first paragraph should make it clear how your background and experiences fit well with the role and how you can add value to the team. If possible, try to make a connection with the company, the hiring manager, a mutual colleague, or some other relevance to your background to grab the attention of the reader.

Obviously, the most important factor that a hiring manager considers when screening applicants is that the candidate meets the minimum requirements for the role. However, when several candidates meet the initial criteria, one way to distinguish yourself is to write a unique cover letter to grab the attention of the reader to motivate them to arrange a telephone interview or screen.

If you’re not already working as a medical science liaison, you may be despairing that several of Dr. Dyer’s examples are written from the perspective of an experienced MSL.  It’s true that without direct experience, it will be that much harder to grab the attention of a hiring manager in your cover letter.  You’ll have to find other examples from your experience that illustrate the same objectives as the MSL role, such as your abilities to understand the clinical implications of new research, to build relationships, and to effectively communicate with scientific leaders.

How to make a great impression in a Medical Science Liaison interview

Dr. Samuel Dyer is a former Medical Science Liaison and MSL manager who has held leadership roles in Medical Affairs for companies including Bristol Myers Squibb, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Abbott and Genentech.  He is the founder of Medical Science Liaison World, a website dedicated to providing career guidance for MSLs. I recently spoke with Dr. Dyer, and have offered to share some of his career advice with the readers here at the Your First Pharma Job blog.  In this article, Dr. Dyer gives some great suggestions for making a great impression at your medical science liaison job interview:

Keys to Researching Pharmaceutical, Biotech, or Medical Device Companies for a Medical Science Liaison Interview

by Dr. Samuel Dyer, MSLWorld.com

The key to successful interviewing is preparation. This preparation includes performing thorough research on the company that you will be interviewing with.  Too often MSL candidates seek to limit the research stage and as a result appear disinterested and uniformed during the interview process. Insufficient preparation can seriously jeopardize your chances of moving forward in the interview process and ultimately obtaining a job offer.

Areas of Research

Many hiring managers and other interviewers will disqualify those candidates who don’t seem to have in depth knowledge of the company and its products especially those that the MSL will be working with.  Your research should include:

• What products the company manufactures – or if it is a big company, its blockbusters?
• What is its history, mission and goals?
• What is the company’s primary Therapeutic Area or Disease State focus?  Who are its primary customers?
• Is the company a National company or does it maintain a global presence in its specific market or the Pharmaceutical Industry?
• How large is the company in terms of number of employees and revenue generated?
• How is it positioned in the industry so that it differentiates itself from its primary competitors?
• Who is the leadership team composed of? What are their backgrounds?
• How does the company carry out corporate responsibility in terms of social and environmental issues?
• Find out if the company is on the Fortune 500 list and where it is positioned?  Find out how it was positioned in the prior year and ask why the change?

Thoroughly researching a company will prepare you to be able to confidently and accurately respond to questions regarding these topics. There are a wide range of research tools that MSL Candidates can utilize to research a pharmaceutical/biotech/medical device company.

Tools for Research

• The company’s website for its history, mission, marketed products, research pipeline, organizational structure, and staff bios.
• Read any press releases as they will highlight current news, such as new product offerings or staff changes.
• Review industry-based publications not only to obtain information regarding your target company specifically but to obtain the latest news related to industry trends and issues.
• Use Google alerts to stay current with regard to company news.
• Use social media to keep current on company and industry news.  Follow key decision-makers on Twitter and search for their profile on LinkedIn.  Use Linked In groups to establish a presence and build rapport with company and industry insider.
• Online directories such as Bloomberg and Standard & Poor’s also provide financial and market data on many types of businesses. 

Discuss the Research

At some point during almost every interview you will be asked to describe how well you fit into the company culture and values, along with what you know about the company beyond the information contained on the company website. If you have performed sufficient research, this will give you an opportunity to potentially stand out from other less prepared candidates by allowing you discuss and share relevant responses to these questions. Taking the time to show interest in potential employers will likely result in their showing interest in you as well.

Whether you’ve succeeded in getting a job interview, or are still in the process of conducting informational interviews, you can use this advice to boost your knowledge and show off your awareness of the key issues facing individual companies and the industry as a whole.  It’s a great strategy for making the best possible impression and boosting your chances of getting your first pharma job.

New Book: PhD [alternative] Career Clinic

Readers of this blog may remember Jane Chin, who provided some insightful commentary on the realities of a career as a Medical Science Liaison.

Jane has recently published a book which sounds very interesting: PhD [alternative] Career Clinic Read the rest of this entry »

Interview with a Medical Science Liaison

I know many people who come to this blog are especially interested in Medical Science Liaison careers and are interested in learning how to get an MSL job.

You might be interested in this interview with an MSL posted at Nature.com. Shannon Payne, a medical science liaison at a molecular diagnostics company, talks about her career path. She mentions that informational interviews were very helpful to her, helping her to refine her resume and identify jobs that would be the best fit for her.

She also discusses how the Medical Science Liaison role may change over the next 5-10 years:

“In my role as a Medical Science Liaison, there will be increasingly more stringent regulations on interactions between industry and researchers and clinicians. It will be more important than ever to produce the highest quality scientific evidence and facilitate that evidence speaking for itself. We will need scientifically trained communicators with a clear understanding of, and dedication to, working within the regulatory framework in order to educate researchers and clinicians on forthcoming products.”

Be sure to check out my earlier post on preparing for a career as a medical science liaison as well as a cautionary tale shared by one of our readers.

If you’re a currently a student, post-doc or scientist with access to a medical library, you might also be interested in checking out some journal articles about the medical science liaison role.

• The Role of the Medical Science Liaison in Industry (Baker 2010)
• Integrating Medical Science Liaisons into Key Account Management (Kientop 2010)
• Medical Science Liaisons: a Look to the Future (Dumovic and Chin 2008)

You may also wish to check out a new resource: MSL World, a niche career source entirely focused on the Medical Science Liaison role. I recently spoke with their founder and was impressed with their dedication to providing a quality resource.

Remember, knowledge is power!  Good luck in your job search!

Resources for your pharmaceutical job search

As you know, I am a huge believer that doing self-study and learning about the pharmaceutical industry job you hope to fill is an important step in preparing for a successful job search. These are just some quick links to books that might be helpful in finding a job in the pharmaceutical industry.

These books cover a wide range, from general pharmaceutical career advice, to detailed specifics about business development, pharmaceutical sales, medical science liaisons, clinical research, regulatory affairs and medical writing. I will follow up on each of these books in more detail in future posts.
Read the rest of this entry »

Medical Science Liaison careers: a cautionary view

Following my post the other day on preparing for a medical science liaison career, Jane Chin of the MSL Institute drew my attention to a cautionary note that she has for PhDs tempted by this career path:

I’m writing this in 2009, but I’ve been seeing Medical Science Liaison programs eliminated and entire teams laid off ever since late 2006. There are many MSLs who have experience and don’t have jobs right now. There are many more who are worried about their jobs. The reality is that at most companies, the MSL function is seen as a cost-center, and a heavy one at that. It can be easy to justify cutting heads from the MSL team to save the company money, or when the company’s drugs go generic, or when an investigational drug approval process gets interrupted.

Any PhD who enters the Medical Science Liaison career should consider the “what if’s”, especially in today’s times. What if I lose my job as a MSL? What are my alternatives? If an academic track has been this difficult for postdocs, what additional difficulties will this route present now that I’ve been out of the academic scene for a few years?

From my perspective, I suspect most of the PhDs who are interested in Medical Science Liaison jobs and other careers in pharma have already made the decision that a life in the laboratory isn’t right for them, so while the difficulty in returning to research is a real consideration, it probably isn’t one that weighs very heavily. And an MSL’s role, positioned as it is at the interface between clinical development, medical affairs and marketing, offers a number of possible exit strategies for continued career development in the event of layoffs. Nonetheless, Jane’s note is sobering and everyone, PhD or not, pursuing any career in pharma should go in with eyes wide open to the risks inherent in this sometimes chaotic industry.

You can read the entirety of Jane’s note, and find out more about her thoughts on MSL careers at the Medical Science Liaison Institute website.

How to prepare for a career as a medical science liaison

Medical Science Liaison jobs are often seen as the “Golden Ticket” for advanced degree holders looking at career options in the pharmaceutical industry. The thought of receiving a six-figure salary to travel from place to place discussing the latest scientific research is incredibly alluring, and many PhDs and postdocs see the skill sets required as a “perfect match” for their own experiences carrying out research and making presentations. But for most, MSL jobs remain out of reach, because they don’t think carefully about what the industry is looking for in applicants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Review: Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development

Here’s another great resource for your pharmaceutical job search: Career Opportunities in Biotechnology and Drug Development, by Toby Freedman.

Freedman has put together a solid resource for finding jobs and developing your career in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. At 409 hardcover pages, this isn’t the kind of book you can slip in a pocket to browse on the subway — it’s a comprehensive guide that I could see being an invaluable aide to finding your first job in the biotech industry.

Early chapters on resume writing and interview techniques, including informational interviewing, are brief but well-written and useful. If you’ve read a lot of career guides, these chapters probably aren’t going to teach you anything you haven’t heard before.  The real meat of this book is the industry-specific information that follows.

In an excellent overview chapter, Freedman explains the breadth of the industry, and summarizes the different product development pathways followed by therapeutic, nontherapeutic, and medical device companies.

Next, individual chapters, each about 20 pages long, cover a wide range of career pathways: drug discovery, preclinical research, project management, clinical development, medical affairs, regulatory affairs, quality assurance and quality control, operations, product development, business development, sales, marketing, and corporate communications. Chapters on executive management, legal affairs, finance, management consulting and even recruiting round out this comprehensive guide.

Each chapter includes ‘snapshots’ of various roles and offers a thoughtful analysis of both the positive and negative aspects of a given job.  For example, in clinical development, Freedman notes that “Original and applied clinical research is exciting.  Outcomes are unknown until trials are completed, and each trial is unique. Your work is close to the market”, but “There is frequent pressure to meet constantly looming deadlines, and the objectives often seem to be ‘too much, too soon, with too little’”. When you’re just starting out, and trying to decide what path to follow, knowing the downside of a job can be very useful information.

Naturally, salaries and compensation are a matter for discussion, as is the potential for career development, and a look at how future trends might influence job security for each role is useful in today’s economic times.

Perhaps most usefully for job seekers, Freedman clearly lays out job requirements and typical pathways into the role, and offers tips that could be helpful for getting one’s foot in the door.  Descriptions of what it takes to excel in a role, and qualities common to good candidates are also helpful.

This guide isn’t cheap, and it isn’t very portable — but if you are looking for a career in the pharmaceutical and biotech sector, this book should be at your side.

Watch out for scams in clinical research training programs

This is a subject that really makes me angry.  If you’re reading this site, it’s probably because you are anxious and hopeful, perhaps even desperate to find your first job in the pharmaceutical industry.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who are willing to prey on that desperation and take advantage of job-seekers.

A common way to do this is to offer ‘training programs’ of dubious value, usually offered online at a cost ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.  I’m aware of a number of these courses related to specifically clinical research and so-called ‘CRA training’. These courses will provide you with some information about ICH-GCP (which you could have found online for free), give you some online ‘exams’ (which you can often retake as often as you like) and in the end, give you a ‘certificate’ that you can print out and proudly reference in your resume.  What you don’t know is that industry recruiters are well aware of these scam companies, and the only thing that these certifications will indicate is that you were gullible enough to be taken in by a con artist — probably not the impression you wanted to make!

The most disgusting of these scam companies has created a whole empire of sham companies and organizations, building a web to lure you in.  They have a phony recruiting company, a phony industry association, and several phony ‘biotech companies’ and CROs.  These sham organizations will post fake job advertisements promising entry-level opportunities in clinical research.  When you apply, you’ll get an email telling you that sorry, you aren’t qualified, but you should consider taking a online training program, which they’ll happily refer you to.  If you’re ‘lucky’, you may even be told that you qualify for a special ‘scholarship’, offered by the phony industry association.

I don’t know why the guy behind this scam hasn’t been busted and hauled off to prison.  He’s probably scammed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars out of desperate job seekers, many of them new immigrants, over the years.

Why aren’t more people aware of this scam?  Well, part of it is that the head of this operation seems to be litigious.  Many discussions about Clinical Research Training programs over at Indeed.com refer to the program, but critical comments are mysteriously removed after the ‘CEO’ of this company posts to ‘respond to his critics’.

If you read enough of these forums, you’ll find that a lot of people are taking these courses, and many of them will even recommend them.  Some of these sound like shills to me… if you’ve created a phony training program, creating phony supporters isn’t that much more difficult.  Others sound like genuine people who don’t want to admit that they’ve invested more than $1000 in a program that won’t help them get where they want to go.

I am not going to directly link to the fraudulent sites in this post because I can’t afford to be sued.  But I will link you to a forum where braver souls than I are discussing this scam.

So, if you are still set on getting some training to help you land that first pharma job, how can you stay safe and avoid getting scammed?

1.  Avoid online courses if possible. If you must go this route, ensure that the course is offered by a legitimate organization, like an accredited university or a government agency. In-class training is almost always more valuable, especially if it includes a co-op or other hands-on element.
2. Do your research! Use the power of the internet to search for discussions about the program you’re considering. Be extremely skeptical when reading positive reviews and pay close attention to any negative comments being made.
3. Ask the experts. Try to speak to people who are actually working in the industry to find out what training programs they recommend. Check out the websites for professional association, and see which programs they recommend.  For clinical research, you should check out the Association for Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) or the Society of Clinical Research Associates (SoCRA).

Of course, clinical research is not the only area where scam courses and certifications exist. I am also aware of some shady sites related to Medical Science Liaison training. Basically, any career path that is in high demand by job seekers provides an opportunity for con artists to take your hard-earned cash.  Be careful out there.