Your First Pharma Job

Science has a new article on their careers site about developing skills during your education that can transfer into a career outside of academia.  Communication, leadership, and management skills are highly valued in industry and public sector jobs but tend to get minimal attention during the average graduate or post-doctoral program.

“The quality that is hardest to find in the science policy world is the ability to write clearly and quickly,” says John Marburger, Washington, D.C.-based science adviser to President George W. Bush. “Communicating technical material in technical journals does not give you the skills to communicate to nontechnical audiences,” he says.

The article suggests some resources, such as the National Postdoctoral Association, that students and postdocs can turn to for help in understanding and developing these skillsets.  Some of the suggestions in the article will be familiar to readers of this blog — joining Toastmasters or relevant campus clubs, for example.  The suggestion to take charge of a lab responsibility, like radiation safety, as a way of demonstrating leadership is also a good one.

—

You may have noticed that there’s been a bit of a gap in posting lately.  I’ve actually just started a new job myself, so things might be a little uneven until I get settled.  Thanks for your patience!

Uncategorized career, communication, leadership, management, skills, transferable skills

The Regulatory Science program at the University of Southern California offers a variety of graduate certificates, a Masters program, and a new Doctorate geared towards regulatory affairs professionals. In the Regulatory Science program, students learn how to guide medical products and foods through the complex regulatory and reimbursement paths required to bring them to market. Regulatory Affairs is an incredibly important part of the drug development process, and in a very real sense plays the key role in determining the success or failure of a drug development program. Ultimately, it’s a company’s regulatory affairs team that must make the case to the FDA that a drug is safe, effective, and deserves to be on the market.

The program has posted a PDF scan of a great article on regulatory affairs careers from The Scientist, which is usually only available by subscription. The article, “For the Hottest Jobs - Go Regulatory”, follows a typical day in the life of a regulatory affairs associate, Joan Kwong, who started her career in the laboratory and made a career switch a few years later. The article offers some great insight on career potential and typical salary ranges.

The article also includes a sidebar piece entitled “So you want to be a regulatory affairs professional - here’s how to get started”. The article notes that one of the hardest things to get used to at first is the abundance of industry-specific jargon and acronyms. A great resource for learning the language of clinical research and regulatory affairs is the online glossary hosted by the Applied Clinical Trials journal.  ACT also recently posted an interesting article, “eSubs and eCTD and RPS, Oh My! ” which discusses some of the changes regulatory teams are dealing with as the submission process goes electronic.

Education, Regulatory affairs career, dayinthelife, glossary, regulatory, Regulatory affairs

Clinical Research Associate jobs are in high demand. CRA jobs pay well, are often home-based, and offer a relatively high degree of personal autonomy. It’s a job that offers a good mix of solo time as well as working with others, and it’s a job where you can really feel like your work matters, because you’re contributing to the safe development of new drugs that can improve lives. The CRA role hasn’t changed a great deal over the years, with the exception of the increasing adoption of electronic methods for collecting case reports. But the nature of CRA employment has changed and is continuing to shift as companies change the way they do business. This article will discuss the four most common CRA employment arrangements and make some predictions for the future. Read more…

Clinical Research Associates, Clinical research career, clinical, clinical research associate, clinicalresearch, contract research organization, CRA, CRO, independent, outsourcing

About 250,000 scientists are employed by biotech firms in the United States today, and a career in commercial biotech is a goal for many PhDs, post-docs, and undergraduate science students.

Recently Fiona Murray, an associate professor from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, carried out a study of knowledge work in this sector that provides enlightening reading for those interested in a biotech career.

Her report is available for download from the National Academies’ Center for Education.  Many of the report’s findings are summarized in an accompanying presentation.

Scientific jobs in biotech can be separated into three streams:

• Technicians normally require a university degree and 0-2 years of experience. They typically receive more guidance, and have little influence over the direction of the work they do. At this level, university education is increasingly being substituted for practical technical diplomas. On average, a level one technician earns just over $40K annually in base salary. Career trajectories are often limited, as it is often not possible to move up to a scientist position without a PhD.
• Scientist positions require a PhD, and frequently a post-doc as well. Even at the entry level, scientists earn considerably more than technicians — about $80K on average. Scientists have more independence and control over the direction of their research.
• Managers have often moved from a pure science role into their position, which involves the strategic direction of scientific groups, project management, and operational and financial decision-making. Often, a switch to the management track is required in order for biotech knowledge workers to shift into a higher-paid salary trajectory.  Although level 1 managers earn about the same as level 1 scientists, they command a premium at higher levels.  At level 5 (12+ years of experience), a manager earns on average $40K more than a scientist.

Why don’t scientists earn more? At a base salary of $80K+, scientists are well-paid, but when you take into account the opportunity costs of spending many extra years in graduate school and low-paid post-doctoral positions, maybe they’re not paid as much as you’d think. As with many economic questions, the reasons why come down to supply and demand:

• Large numbers of scientists are trained every year;
• The other job options for scientists outside of biotech pay even less (academia) or offer lower job satisfaction (big pharma).

What skills are biotech companies looking for?

Murray identifies some skill gaps that biotech job-seekers should consider carefully. If you can find ways to develop your abilities in these areas, you’ll be well-positioned to set yourself apart from the competition and provide employers with the profile they’re looking for:

• In terms of science, there is beginning to be a shortage of ‘traditional’ understanding of biology at the systems level.  Understanding the bigger picture of how molecular pathways relate to tissues, organs, and general physiology can help you relate your science to the pursuit of medicine and human health. Scientists with a good handle on genomics, bioinformatics and computational biology are also in short supply.
• Business skills. Scientists working for biotech firms always need to remember that there is a commercial goal at the end of their research, and if you can show that you understand these goals you’ll be way ahead of candidates who can’t break away from an academic mindset.
• Collaboration and communication skills. Commercial biotech scientists can’t hide away in the lab — being able to work with a team and communicate both with other scientists, and non-scientists is incredibly important. You can show that you have this to offer if your resume includes extracurricular teamwork activities, and by joining Toastmasters to develop your skills.

Finally, Murray’s paper takes a look at some future trends that may impact biotech jobs in the years to come, including the “deskilling” of biotech work and outsourcing.

Overall, it’s an eye-opening look at careers for scientists in biotech.  Well worth your time.

Preclinical R&D biotech, career, management, salary, scientist, skills, technician

Here in Toronto, the MaRS Discovery District is a biotechnology research hub that was specifically developed to connect the science, business and finance communities.

If there is a biotechnology hub like this near you, it can be a great resource for your job search. MaRS frequently holds events and seminars that allow students and interested members of the public to learn more about all aspects of the biotechnology sector.  One series of lectures, called Entrepreneurship 101, is especially useful for getting a behind-the-scenes look at what’s involved in the operation of a biotech business.

Not in Toronto?  Never fear!  The Entrepreneurship 101 lectures are available for free online as webcasts.

This particular session, “Managing your Career - how to sell yourself and manage your career goals“, is of particular relevance for this blog. Teresa Snelgrove, an executive recruiter specializing in the pharmaceutical and biotech sector, and Frederic Sweeney, a scientist who left the lab to start a career in finance, both share insights into the job search and career development.

You can view the webcast here, and download a PDF of the presentation here (requires a free slideshare registration).

A webcast of a previous version of the same presentation can be viewed here.  You may also want to check out the full archive of Entrepreneurship 101 presentations.

Education, Resources, Resumes & CVs, networking caree, career, finance, networking, recruiters, video, webcast

Genentech is one of the world’s most successful biotechnology companies, and has been named to Fortune magazines “100 best companies to work for” for 10 years running. their human resources department has put together a series of videos about working at the firm.

This video, targeted primarily at students and other entry-level candidates, offers career advice for biotech job-seekers from a handful of Genentech employees.

Of course, right now, Genentech is flirting with acquisition offers from Roche, which may have human resources implications for both companies.  But the advice in this video is sound regardless of what companies you target.

Uncategorized advice, career, genentech, video

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

A look at some recent economic numbers has the BioJobBlogger suggesting that the future may look dim for new PhDs and postdocs who were hoping to find entry-level work in the biotechnology sector.

The Future of Pharmaceutical R&D : Bio Job Blog.

“. . . a majority of the almost 160,000 employees layed off by pharma companies in the past few years have been R&D scientists. . . . Unfortunately, this paradigm shift doesn’t bode well for doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows who are training in the life sciences. This is because many entry-level biotech positions, traditionally filled by newly-minted PhDs and postdoctoral fellows will likely be filled by experienced, pharmaceutical employees who lost their jobs in the recent rounds of layoffs.”

Is this true? Maybe. However, there are a few positive things to consider about entry-level positions:

1. A lot of people are not interested in taking a step back in their careers and applying for entry-level work if they’re already accomplished and experienced at a higher level.
2. Companies trying to fill entry-level positions sometimes will not consider more experienced people for these roles. Fairly or not, more experienced candidates can be seen as more difficult to manage and more likely to be unsatisfied with low-level work and salary.
3. R&D work can be incredibly specific to particular assays and model systems. A newly-minted PhD with the exact skills a company needs may be a better bet than an experienced scientist who has been working on a different system.

So, if you have your heart set on an R&D position in industry, don’t lose hope entirely — although keeping your eyes open for other opportunities is always smart.  One last piece of advice — be mobile!  Being genuinely open to relocation will ensure that you have the most opportunities available to you. Locking yourself down to one location will almost always limit your career trajectory.

Preclinical R&D assaydevelopment, career, jobsearch, labwork, nonclinical, preclinical, R&D, research, scientist

When you’re looking to get your foot in the door and find your first job in the pharma industry, sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly what a particular job entails.

If you’ve ever wondered what a typical day is like for a clinical research associate, then you might be interested by the story of Ann, a lead CRA for the UK-based firm CDSS. When it’s time for a site visit, Ann begins her day at 5am and works through to 8 o’clock.

The site also hosts similar ‘day in the life’ stories by Clinical Trial Associates and a Clinical Nurse.

Uncategorized career, clinical, clinicalresearch, clinicaltrialassociate, CRA, CTA, dayinthelife, jobsearch

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.

Clinical Research Associates, Clinical research, Education, Medical Science Liaisons, Training career, clinical, clinicalresearch, conartist, courses, CRA, Education, jobsearch, ripoff, scams, Training