Career Development for Life Scientists: An Ongoing and Disturbing Trend
For the past 10 years or so, I have been providing career counseling and development seminars and workshops for life scientists. In the early years, students, postdocs and a smattering of faculty members would attend to learn about the industry trends, the job market and more recently alternate careers for PhDs and postdoctoral fellows. However, over the last few years, a disturbing trend has emerged—the lack of faculty participation at these events.
Yesterday, I was invited to participate as a panel member to moderate a career development event sponsored by the graduate student and postdoctoral associations at the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine. The event was well attended (over 85 participants) and the discussion lasted for more than 2 hours. Joining me on the panel was a PhD-trained scientist/manager from Bristol Myers Squibb and a healthcare company executive who received his PhD degree from the university about 16 years ago. Many of the questions asked by the participants were spot on and revealed that graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are extremely anxious about their futures. The panel did its best to describe what it takes to get a job in the life sciences, the process and steps required to successfully win jobs and some ideas for alternate career options for PhD-trained scientists. Unfortunately, not a single University of Rochester medical school faculty member attended the event. In fact, I met the PI of one of the postdocs who sponsored my visit and he said with all sincerity (I think) “Thanks for coming...the students are really looking forward to your talk.” Obviously, I don’t it ever crossed his mind that he, like his students and postdocs might learn and benefit from a discussion about career options and hear (probably for the first time) how anxious and fearful his and other students are about future job prospects.
The fact that faculty members are routinely eschewing career development seminars and forums is troubling and extremely disturbing for a variety of reasons. First, as I have said many times before, I believe that PIs have moral and ethical obligations to help their students determine what careers they are best suited for. I don’t think it is too much to ask or labor-intensive for PIs to learn about what is going on with the job market outside of academia. Despite an ongoing lack of tenured track faculty positions and the extremely fierce competition to win them, academicians continue to exclusively train and prepare students for academic careers. This makes absolutely no sense from a “supply and demand” perspective. Second, the lack of faculty support and participation sends a clear message to graduate students and postdocs that their anxieties, fears and concerns about job prospects simply isn’t that important to their PIs. The mantra of most academicians —“just continue to do good science and everything will be okay”— is outdated, anachronistic and self serving (for PIs) at best. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the failure of tenured faculty members to actively engage and participate in discussions about career options reveals the unbridled contempt that most academicians have for scientists who work outside of academia. Most academics choose to not concern themselves with non-academic and mundane issues like jobs and careers. And why should they? Once they win tenure, their lives are set because they are guaranteed jobs and benefits for life!
We are living in very challenging and troubling times. In the past three years, over 180,000 pharmaceutical workers lost their jobs and national unemployment will likely hit 15%. Academic and government jobs are hard to come by and the competition for these jobs is ferocious and extremely competitive. And, sadly, current academic training programs are woefully inadequate to prepare graduate students and postdocs for alternate career opportunities in the life sciences.
As I have stated numerous times before, life science graduate training programs are in dire need of systemic change and be overhauled to remain relevant. Unfortunately, systemic changes are unlikely because tenured faculty members can’t be forced or induced to change their practices, attitudes or beliefs. While a minority of life sciences faculty members realizes that the system is broken, the majority doesn’t. To that end, if graduate students and postdoctoral fellows want change to occur than they must band together and collectively send a message to their PIs and mentors that “We are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore!” Anything short of a widespread massive protest will be ineffectual!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!
Over the past year or so, more graduate students and postdoctoral fellows have been asking me about management consulting careers in the life sciences. I spent several years working as an independent management consultant and while it was a great experience the revenue stream was unreliable at best and the ability to work was highly contingent upon the economy. However, I can assure that my experiences as an independent management consultant were marketing different than those of consultants who work at the consulting firms like McKinsey or the Boston Consulting Group. For those of you interested in life style of a high-powered management consultant I highly recommend you visit their websites for more info. .jpg)
Cliff Mintz, 
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There was an interesting 
While life sciences companies are still reluctant to take the “social media plunge,” many other companies (with active social media programs) frequently hire employees known as social media managers who oversee and run their social networks. This is because successful social media websites require daily attention and are extremely time consuming and labor intensive. In general, employees who are hired for these jobs have strong backgrounds in social media and technology but frequently possess little expertise in the industry that they are working in. Because social media is so new, many hiring managers believe that the social media and technology skills of these managers are more important than an understanding of the industry that they work in. However, while this practice may be acceptable in other industries, it won’t be the case for the social media managers who oversee pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices and diagnostics social media websites. These managers will likely be required to have a firm understanding of current rules and regulations guiding drug development and marketing and advertising of approved life sciences products. This will be necessary if the drug makers who hire these managers want to steer clear of regulatory scrutiny by the US Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies.
The 
Everybody who works for a living has to learn how to deal with annoying co-workers who, either directly or indirectly, may have an effect on your career trajectory. However, we are living in uncertain financial times, when having a job--no matter the circumstances--is more important than personal happiness on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, office politics are a reality regardless of how good or bad the economy is. To that end, managing difficult co-workers is essential if you want to learn how to adroitly deal with workplace politics sand advance your own career. 
Yesterday, I gave a lecture entitled “Alternate Careers: Taking the Road Less Traveled” to over 100 members of the University of Pennsylvania’s Biomedical Graduate Student Association. As always, there were many good questions and comments during and after the presentation. Some of the career anecdotes offered by several of the students reminded me of a conversation that I had several weeks ago with one of my Fundamentals of Bioscience students—I teach a Product Development and Regulatory Affairs course in the program—who refreshed my memory about a typical graduate student approach to career development and job searching. “We don’t think about jobs or our careers until we begin writing our PhD theses” she said. “Until then, our advisers don’t talk about careers or jobs and only bring it up because our funding will run out” she added. Admittedly, I had forgotten this because so many years have passed since my graduate student days. That said, it forced me to consider how much the life sciences job market has changed since I was graduate student and how vitally important it is for today’s graduate students to think about and possibly explore different career options throughout the course of their graduate training..jpg)
While I was at the Experimental Biology meeting in New Orleans, LA this past week I presented a seminar entitled “Using Social Media For Career Development in the Life Sciences.” This was the first time that I presented this talk, and was expecting a large turn out given the popularity of Facebook and more recently Twitter, a microblogging platform. Much to my surprise only 15 students showed up for the talk—many of whom hadn’t heard of Twitter and were only vaguely familiar with Facebook. Luckily, a few attendees had Facebook profiles and one or two were on Twitter so the talk wasn't a complete bust. Nevertheless, the lack of interest in this talk was extremely puzzling to me—my other seminars, “Interviewing Tips” and “Alternate Careers for PhDs” were very well attended and I was booked solid for one-on-one resume critiquing sessions during the five days I was in New Orleans..jpg)
Are you a life sciences or healthcare professional with a passion for computers, IT or software development? If so, you might want to consider a career in health informatics—one of the hottest, new fields in the life sciences and healthcare industries. Health informatics specialists typically have expertise in medical records and claims, clinical care and programming. In other words, they have a foot in two worlds— medicine and technology — and can easily bridge the often daunting gap between them. It is important to point out that there is a difference between healthcare IT and informatics personnel. The health IT people run the servers and install software, but the informatics people are the ones who analyze and interpret clinical/ medical information and work with clinical and other healthcare staff to advise and help them.
Did you know that the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world spent close to $50 billion dollars last year on R&D? That sum could be used to purchase the entire US biotechnology industry except for the five largest companies—Genentech, Amgen, Gilead Genzyme and Celgene. Further, pharma’s R&D budget is about 4 times the R&D budget of all of the US biotechnology companies combined. According to a.jpg)
Like it or not, the best way to land a new job whether or not there is a recession is to network. While career counselors and recruiters trumpet the virtues of networking to job seekers, many people really don't understand what it is or how to do it correctly. I found an
Online career sites like 
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, the answer to that question is a resounding yes!!! .jpg)
directly or indirectly, may have an effect on your career trajectory. Managing difficult co-workers is essential if you want to learn how to adroitly deal with workplace politics. I came across a 
As a self-anointed career development professional, I frequently read blogs and online articles dealing with jobs and career development advice. That said, I happened upon a piece in Yahoo Education entitled “
I just returned from my career development sojourn at this year’s FASEB meeting in San Diego, CA. Not surprisingly, all of my sessions were well attended. In fact, attendance at many of the presentations was standing room only. Again, this was not terribly surprising because the job market for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows for the last 5 years has been dismal. However, in contrast with past years, there was a noticeable and palpable difference in the attitudes of many of the students and postdocs who attended the sessions. In previous years, many career development participants seemed resigned to the possibility of a “jobless future”. However, this year there was a small but vocal group of participants who openly expressed their anger and resentment at the possibility of not finding a job after completing their training. I think that many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows have begun to realize that they are being exploited by a fundamentally flawed academic system and that they are “not going to take it anymore.”
I am sitting in Newark Airport waiting for my flight to San Diego which, not surprisingly, has been delayed for about 2 hours. As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I am on my way to the 2008 FASEB Career Development Symposium which is run every year at the annual FASEB meeting. 
Many people think that organizing a job search requires little more than quickly throwing together a resume, applying for online jobs or answering print ads and then kicking back to wait for responses from prospective employers. While this scenario may have been accurate 10 years ago– when jobs were abundant and the economy was humming– it is no longer the case. In fact, the current science job market may be one of the most challenging in the past 20 years or so. This is likely due to shrinking government research spending, contraction of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and the possibility that the American economy is slipping into recession. Nevertheless, there are still available jobs out there. But, in contrast with the past few years, getting them will require a carefully planned and well orchestrated job search..jpg)
downward turn. Even the recession-proof pharmaceutical industry has taken a huge beating over the past year or so– and things seem to be getting worse! The biotechnology industry, which is highly dependent upon venture capital and private equity to remain healthy, is also trending downward and will be hit hard if the economy slides into recession. To make matters worse, the US Department of Labor recently released figures which showed projected growth (for 2006 to 2016) for the fastest-growing occupations in America (see below). Not surprisingly, scientists–industrial or academic– did not make the top 20 list.
