Discussion
Still attempting to pivot out of academia and into a pharma consulting, real-world evidence, outcomes research, medical writing or data science role
It's not a crisis right now, but the job I'm in won't last forever, it turns out
I'm actually hoping to get a job with a big pharma company, so if anyone here lives in that world or can help me get in, would appreciate very much
:boost_requested:
Also, :NoAt: no need to reply if you're going to tell me about how bad big pharma is
@researchfairy have you heard of/tried Prime Global?
I was referred to them by a group leader at my old labs, got pretty far with it but got a charity job instead. Not sure how they are with remote tho, I was going to be based in Ldn https://primeglobalpeople.com/
@noodlemaz Checking my spreadsheet, I've applied there three times for jobs I saw on Linkedin (med comms and med writer jobs) but no luck hearing back yet
I'll add them to my daily check though, thanks for reminding me about them
@noodlemaz Btw, if you know anyone who works there and you could connect me, I'd love to say hi :)
@researchfairy hmm @jakobpunkt dost thou know of anyplace currently hiring..?
@researchfairy as an aside, I have a friend who works in a secure government role dealing with fraudulent pharma claims (ie stopping snake oil imports/sales/advertising). Pretty interesting. I suppose you know about that field of work but just in case.
Smart move getting out of academia, it f*ing sucks.
I've got enough applications and rejections that I can do a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis
Long-rank test p-value is 0.035, indicating that the curves are different overall
HR for rejection in applications to non-Medical Science Liaison (MSL) roles compared to MSL as baseline is 3.65 (95% CI 1.02 to 13.16, p=0.047), indicating faster rejection
@researchfairy Thank you for posting this - this will make my disclosure/disclosed nothing analysis much easier, I think.
If I stratify my job applications by company type ("Big Pharma" vs Other), there seems to be no difference in the rate at which I am rejected by these types of companies
Curiously, if you put all my applications together, the rejections all seem to happen either right away (just after 0 days) or right around the 1-month mark or the 2-month mark
Definitions:
- MSL: Field-based Medical Science Liaison roles focused on scientific exchange with healthcare professionals.
- RWE: Real-world evidence, HEOR, epidemiology, and safety surveillance research roles.
- Trials: Clinical research and CRO roles involved in study execution and trial coordination.
- Other: Roles that don't fit neatly elsewhere, including patient engagement, science communications, and medical education.
Job search milestone: sent out 50 applications as of today
(I started censoring applications at the 90-day mark, assuming that 90 days with no word is a quiet rejection)
55 applications sent out so far
65 applications sent out so far (the graph looks different now because I changed the graph's week bins to start on Monday. I had messed them up before and they were starting on Thursday or something.)
I have had 2 job interviews this week, and I'm feeling optimistic
The job application survival curves have progressed a bit
The MSL, Trials and Other curves look more or less the same
Medical Writer jobs is fresh, so there's no rejections yet
New is the RWE rejections, which seem to come a bit faster than the bulk of the rejections in the MSL curve
It's still the type of job that seems like the best fit for me
I just got rejected after the second round of interviews :/
Back to square one
Sent out a few more applications, up to 70 now
Playing the numbers game
75 applications sent out now
I applied for a data sci job a month ago
Got an interview for it a week later
The interview was ~ 5 min and 1 question long:
Interviewer: Oh, you're in Montréal. Can you move to Ottawa? No? Pity.
So we parted ways
The job showed up in my Linkedin alerts today because it was posted again under "Greater Montreal Metropolitan Area"
Same company, same job, word-for-word
(Deepsigh)
Got a job interview
But not with a human
It's with some video AI thing
I hate this timeline so much
Anyway, that makes a 15% first-interview rate for RWE jobs, and a 5% first-interview rate overall out of 81 applications sent so far
82 applications so far
Doing my best
88 applications sent
Playing the numbers game 🎲 🤞
Send help 🆘
Glaxo always sends a survey link after you apply for a job
"How was it like to apply?"
They're all multiple choice questions like "What made you want to apply?" with several options provided
There is no way to give them my actual feedback: that the application form requires me to choose my degree from a list of possible degrees that does not have mine, or a reasonable equivalent, or an "other" or the option of typing my own
95 applications sent out now
Still at it
Attempting to pivot out of academia and into a pharma consulting, real-world evidence, outcomes research, medical writing or data science role
I'm actually hoping to get a job with a big pharma company, so if anyone here lives in that world or can help me get in, would appreciate very much
No need to reply if you're going to tell me about how bad big pharma is
Now at 97
A couple people with industry jobs I talked to, said to expect to send 100-200 before getting a job so—
Three more and I'm done right?
Landmark: 100 applications sent out as of today
Still trying to get an industry job, put about 6 months into it, did 4 job interviews
If you have any leads or if you're already in the world of pharma, or if you know someone who can help me out, please get in touch!
Up to 105 as of today
I have a list of "Careers" pages for different companies that I'm gunning for
I go through it before 0800 every morning
Sometimes Linkedin also emails me about a new job that I already found there
I score a point against Linkedin if I have already identified and applied to a job via the company's Careers page before Linkedin tells me about it
I'm tired, friends
Deciding to radically accept at face value the parts of rejection letters where they try to be nice
I *am* dear
I *am* among many very qualified applicants
My time and interest *are* valuable
I *do* accept updates to a pharma company's careers site into my heart
There isn't much to work with tbh
Wow guys
That's a lot of rejections today
Save some for later ha ha ha
I mean, I did massively ramp up the number of applications per week in the last few weeks, and the first 2 weeks is the steepest part of the KM curve so I guess this is to be expected
108 applications out now
And I'm starting to get a sense of what to look for
🤞 Here's hoping that I only need to do a few more tosses of the dice
(Also if any of you wants to connect me to someone in the pharma/CRO/consulting industry, please do!)
That little gap a few weeks ago in the bar chart
That's where I had gotten to the second round of interviews
They were at the point of discussing which days per week they're wfh and details of office culture
I really thought that was gonna be an offer
OH WELL
"Oh nice, Pfizer must have posted a new job on Linkedin"
I've applied to a new job on average once per 1.6 days since the end of January (4.2 applications per week)
It's good to get so many rolls at the dice so to speak
And it's orders of magnitude better than the academic job market
But it's also exhausting
If you're gonna post approximately the same job after you reject me, I'm gonna send in an application again buddy
You're saying you use AI's to screen my applications, so I'm just gonna keep tweaking my CV slightly each time until the keywords align and a human recognizes that I can do that job after all
@researchfairy to be honest I never did figure that out.
but I was never applying to a big company before. I had the luxury of telling myself "When they do decisions based on LLM I am glad they rejected themselves" because I never "pimped my CV for the LLM". But I guess when you apply to big corporations you want to exploit the machinations of big cororations e. g. provide LLM-generated summary of the job offer inside the CV.
LLMs seem to prefer other LLM generated text¹.
@researchfairy That actually seems to match the pattern I've seen with the applications I've been throwing around. A few will reject within hours but if I haven't heard back in a week it doesn't happen for several weeks.
@researchfairy congratulations on finding 30 (!) jobs that use your skills and training to apply to!
@bookandswordblog Oh there's lots of jobs out there, unfortunately it's still very competitive
I talked to a guy who works at a job similar to the kind I want, and he said he applied to ~200 jobs before he got the one he's at
Which is much better than looking for academic jobs
@researchfairy I work for UCB in Belgium, they are really good org and have lots of offices around the world, dm me
Just out of curiosity, do you also consider jobs in regulatory agencies?
(No idea where you are looking geographically, I guess FDA is not the most attractive employer currently)
In industry I heard quite pessimistic things about the job market in the short term but I guess this will pass.
Regulators of course don't pay as well as industry, but I really enjoy the work
@climbertobby I'd be open to it, but Health Canada is cutting back at the moment :/
@researchfairy good luck! Crossing all fingers for you
@researchfairy I'm kind of adjacent to that world. Feel free to ping me some questions and/or send me a LinkedIn invitation (link in my profile).
In the meantime, maybe this is of interest?
https://emwa.org/career/getting-into-medical-writing/
@statsguy Thanks! I sent a connect request on Linkedin :)
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