Your First Pharma Job

When you’re applying for a  job in the biotechnology sector, one of the best ways to set yourself apart from the competition is through the knowledge of the industry you bring to the table.

If you’ve ever thought of taking your PhD into the world of high finance, or dreamed of starting your own company someday, then the free e-book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to a Biotech Startup is a must-read — but understanding how all the different parts of a biotech company work together will help you in your biotech career no matter what you do.

No job exists in a vacuum. You may be applying for a job as a preclinical scientist, but if you understand how the work you do at the bench relates to the rest of the company — intellectual property, regulatory affairs, technology transfer and more — then you are in a position to deliver real value.

The Guide is a phenomenal resource for understanding how biotech companies are put together.  The author, Peter Kolchinsky, is a Harvard-trained virologist who finished his PhD and began working as an investment analyst in the biotech sector. The guide clearly explains how biotech firms are built from the ground up, beginning with an idea, and moving chapter by chapter through the business plan, legal issues, staffing, public relations, business development and more, all the way to raising capital and going public with an IPO. The chapters on drug pricing principles and clinical development are fantastic introductions to these fields for anyone exploring a career in health economics or clinical research.

The book closes with a brief note on networking, and I think the closing paragraphs are too good not to share:

“Knowing someone involves more than remembering their face and name. Well-networked people . . . find opportunities to interact with the same people on multiple occasions. Like a finger-drawing on a fogged window, a network must be traced and retraced or else it disappears.”

The best thing about the guide?  It’s free! You just need to register at Evelexa BioResources, a site full of information about biotech ventures, and you’ll be able to download it as a PDF.

Resources biotech, book review, clinical development, entrepreneur, finance, health economics, networking, startup

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.

Clinical research, Interviewing, Marketing, Medical Science Liaisons, Preclinical R&D, Regulatory affairs, Resources, Resumes & CVs biotechnology, book review, career, freedman, jobsearch

When you are beginning your job search, you need all the resources you can get. I’d like to recommend two great books that can help you get off to a great start.

The first is Put Your Science to Work, by Peter Fiske. Fiske himself has a PhD, and he has done a great job of putting together specific advice for science grads. This guide is not specific to jobs in the pharmaceutical or biotech sectors, and in fact Fiske encourages science grads to think broadly about how their skills can fit into a wide variety of careers. He explains that while graduate school studies may appear very esoteric and specific, they actually provides students with excellent training in a wide variety of transferable skills that are valuable in a wide range of business contexts. His guide helps science students to take a step back and evaluate their skills and experience in a broader context. His approach is encouraging and optimistic and I think many science graduates would benefit from his perspective on the job search. Well worth buying as a general career guide for those coming from a science background.

The second book I’m going to recommend is expensive, but well worth it for those considering a career in pharma. In fact, this book was part of my inspiration for launching this website. Careers with the Pharmaceutical Industry, edited by Peter D. Stonier, gives a detailed overview of a variety of different career opportunities ranging from medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, to pre-clinical and clinical research, sales and marketing, quality assurance, drug safety, regulatory affairs, medical information, medical writing and more. Each section gives background on different roles, including typical entry points and pathways for career development, as well as descriptions of typical responsibilities that give an idea of what “a day in the life” might be like for each position. Each section is written by an industry expert in the particular field. The book is written from a U.K. perspective, which may cause some confusion for North American readers as there are sometimes subtle differences in job titles and responsibilities in the U.S. and Canada, and the suggested resources, such as educational programs and industry associations are also U.K.-centric. Despite this drawback, the book is an excellent overview of some of the diverse opportunities available in the industry, and would be a valuable resource for those trying to decide what role they would like to play.

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