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I feel that I would be shirking my responsibilities as a blogger and so-called "job pundit" if I did not offer my readers a prediction or job forecast for the New Year.

2006 was a good year for the bioscience industry. In particular, the biotechnology sector experienced better than average growth. This was likely due to shrinking pharmaceutical pipelines and the bad press  that many pharma companies received in 2006 regarding the safety and efficacy of their  products. That said, the job market looks particularly bright for the bioscience industry in 2007.

As I mentioned in previous posts, their is a burgeoning need for individuals who are interested in the medical communications (medcom) field.  Also, there is still a dire need for employees in bio-manufacturing and clinical development.  

A new emerging field within the bioscience sector is project management. Project management is an established discipline  within many highly visible industries, e.g. telecom, energy, automotive etc., and is now, just gaining traction in the bioscience industry (most notably in the pharmaceutical sector).

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In recent years, a lot has been said about the growing importance of  "teamwork" in pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporate environments. The  mere mention of the word "teamwork" conjures up images of baseball or football players (soccer for my international readers) struggling together with the common goal of winning a  game or match. The reason why these "team members" function so well together is because they have trained together, understand one another's roles and responsibilities and have a clear and shared vision of what it means to "win"  However, in contrast,  pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporate  teams are frequently populated  with: individuals who have never worked or trained together, do not understand individual team member roles and responsibilities nor understand how to play the game to "win". 

I think it is unreasonable for corporate management to expect their employees to function in teams because a majority of these employees never received any formal training in "team work". Until very recently, instruction at the primary and secondary school levels was focused almost exclusively on individual students rather than on groups of students organized into classroom teams.

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Those of you who have heard me during my career advice seminars and workshops, have probably heard me mention medical communications or  medical writing as potential career paths.  I am certain that many of you do not know what medical communications or medical writing is.  The reason for my certainty is that I did not know anything about medcom (as we in the biz refer to it) or medical writing until about two years ago.

As you all know, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies spend enormous amounts of money on developing new drugs and therapies.  However, drug discovery and development are a small part of the lifecycle of any newly developed product.  The next step in a product's life cycle is to market and sell enough of it to make a profit.  In order  for that to occur, companies must convince .physicians, health care providers, insurers and patients about the efficacy and safety of their product.  

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