So you didn’t obtain a fellowship. What now?
By. Kenneth Liu
The answer is much more optimistic than many might anticipate. If the biopharmaceutical industry is your ideal focus, your opportunities are by no means limited.
Many companies directly hire recent PharmD graduates without any fellowship experience in areas such as drug safety, medical information, and more. A Doctor of Pharmacy positions you for these positions because of the rigor of the curriculum, and how well it translates into these specific departments. Especially as companies begin to expand, more and more graduates are moving into full-time positions right out of pharmacy school. After several years of experience in the industry, these employees are better positioned to move laterally to other departments if that is their desire. These may be full-time positions or through a third-party human resources agency by which you would work as a temporary “contractor”, for a finite period of time – typically anywhere from 6 months to 2 years.
Agencies that work closely with pharma are always in need of scientifically trained employees. Agency positions are as varied as their pharma “equivalents” – one can be a clinical research associate at a contract research organization, an account manager at a marketing and advertising agency, a medical writer at a communications agency, a commercial strategy/market access analyst at a business consulting firm, and much much more. Pharmaceutical companies work with many, many different agencies, or “vendors” as the industry calls them. By working closely with their specific accounts, many agency employees demonstrate their aptitude and make the switch into the client side – and vice versa. Depending on your preference, you may actually find working on the other side of agency-client collaborations to be more fast-paced and possibly even more lucrative, depending on your level of responsibility. In areas with a large concentration of pharma such as Boston, New Jersey, North Carolina, and California, there will always be an even larger number of agencies and consulting firms that are in place because of their huge demand.
The most common agencies for a recent PharmD graduate focus on medical communications/medical writing, clinical research, marketing and advertising, and drug safety. The best way to do your research regarding different consulting firms or agencies is to search online. For example, typing in “medical communications agency” or “pharmaceutical advertising” into a search engine of your choice will yield many, many results. There are lists of ranked agencies, some with more reputable ranking determinations than others – so be careful. Often agencies will display their work or recent clients on their website, so do your research before reaching out. Perhaps there is an agency that works closely with a pharmaceutical company you would like to work for, and can give you the opportunity to make contacts and prove your abilities to the client.
Business consulting is slightly different and a little more difficult for a PharmD to break into. Vault.com has a list of prominent healthcare business consulting firms that typically have a focus on the biopharmaceutical industry. There are also many, many much smaller “boutique” firms that focus on more specialized areas in business consulting, such as market access, market and competitive intelligence, and business development. Your responsibilities could range from providing recommendations to a pharmaceutical company regarding how they should price their soon-to-be approved product in Germany, to giving the rationale from a scientific perspective as to why your client should not engage in a bidding war with another company to acquire a smaller biotech. PharmD graduates typically come in at the analyst position, and with a few years of hard work could make consultant.
As you can see, the fellowship path is most definitely not the end-all way into working in (or with) the pharmaceutical industry. There are so many different paths to the same goal!
Fellow Diaries 