BioJobBlog Surpasses the 2.0 Million Reader Mark!
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I started BioJobBlog in 2007 primarily as a means for me to express myself about life science careers and issue and challenges confronting the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical devices industry. That said, I never thought that BioJobBlog would ever amount to much; it was simply a vehicle for me to rant and rave about things that were important to me! It is a daunting challenge to begin a blog with no readers and then realize that 5 years later over 2.0 million unique readers have visited to read my thoughts and ideas about a wide breadth of topics.
I want to thank the readers who continue to visit BioJobBlog. And, I hope that what I have written over the past five years has either helped or induced you to think about issues in the life sciences industry. While I have no plans to stop blogging; my schedule is becoming increasingly challenging and I can no longer post articles as frequently as I have in the past. Nevertheless, I will continue do what I can to keep the content at BioJobBlog interesting, fresh and thought-provoking.
Please feel free to contact me with ideas, thoughts or comments about the blog (or anything else for that matter).
Thanks for supporting BioJobBlog!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!
The past several years I have been 
A fascinating article entitled “
Fewer and fewer American college students are choosing to major in Science Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). This has been an ongoing trend in the US for the past two decades. However, within the STEM majors, the life sciences are faring the best. While I believe that the US needs more life sciences majors to remain competitive with the rest of the world, there are a 
Times are tough for many in the legal profession these days. However, the demand for patent experts including attorneys and patent agents is skyrocketing. According to an 
While getting a PhD degree in the life sciences (or most other disciplines) is no longer de rigueur, those of you out there who are courageous enough to make the attempt may benefit from an article entitled “
A 
The tough job market and economy have caused lots of folks to consider changing careers to find gainful employment. While sometimes a career change is warranted, it may not be as easy as you think. With this in mind, there was a great article entitled
As I mentioned in numerous previous posts, health or healthcare informatics is one of the hottest and .png)
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I recently wrote an article that discusses nontraditional career options for PhD life scientists and ideas about how more jobs can be created for these individuals in the the life sciences industry. The article entitled 
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Over the past several weeks, I have participated in various online conversations and discussions about the wisdom of getting a PhD degree in the life sciences. While the conversations have been wide reaching and, at times quite emotional, a common theme is beginning to emerge and I think that the time has come for me to weigh in on it. To wit, getting a PhD degree is not the best decision a person can make if he/she wants a guarantee of employment upon completion of his/her training.
Last week’s special issue of Nature Magazine.jpg)
I am not a big fan of top ten lists but I decided to take a look at the list compiled by Cecilia Capuzzi Simon in a recent article that appeared in the April 13, 2011 New Times Education supplement. Entitled
When it comes to job searching, the curriculum vitae (CV) or resume is the most important document that a jobseeker must create. Despite the importance of this document, many jobseekers, especially graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, fail to give them much thought or put much time into creating them. In today’s economy, typos, poor grammar and too much information are certain to cause most hiring managers to take a pass on you as a job candidate. However, as Caroline Potter of Yahoo HotJobs describes in her article entitled “The Biggest Resume Mistakes You Can Make” there are more critical issues that must be considered and addressed when crafting a successful CV or resume. 
Unlike PhD-trained scientists, physicians and other healthcare professionals must be licensed to practice medicine and are annually required to participate in continuing medical education courses (CME), seminars and lectures. CME training is required by medical licensing agencies to insure that healthcare practitioners are update to date with the latest clinical practices and informed about medical development within their respective fields. 
John Lechleiter, PhD, chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly & Co. today told members of the Detroit Economic Club that the US is losing its competitive edge and that “evidence is mounting for an .jpg)
Looking back on my career, I don’t think I would have done many things differently; except one. That is, I wouldn’t have listened as much to the advice of others who I thought knew (better than me) about what I should do with the rest of my life. Don’t get wrong, it is important to listen to what others think and the advice that they offer but—at the end of the day —the career path that you choose must be something that you like or perhaps even love to do! This sentiment was clearly and cleverly expressed in a 
While attendance may be down at this year's Experimental Biology meeting in Anaheim CA aka the city that Disney built, attendance at FASEB Career Development seminars has been greater than normal. This is not surprising given the state of the economy and the increased competition for traditional career opportunities for persons with a life sciences PhD degree which include academic and pharmaceutical R&D jobs. With this in mind, I thought it might be useful to list some of the fastest growing and hottest new alternate career job opportunities for PhD life scientists. .jpg)
I started writing BioJobBlog about three years ago mainly to express my personal views on a variety of topics ranging from science education and career development to happenings in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. At the time, blogging was a relatively new phenomenon (especially in the life sciences space) and I had no idea whether or not anybody would really care about what I thought or had to say. 
My father was an elementary school teacher who eventually became an elementary school principal, a position that he retired from about 15 years ago. As you might imagine, education was an important part of the lives of my three siblings and me. Like my father, three of four of us eventually pursued careers in education: my sister teaches art to high school students in California; my brother is a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Vermont and I have been a science educator for most of my adult life..jpg)
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Amy Bishop, a tenure track faculty member of the Biology Department at the University of Alabama-Huntsville .jpg)
Let’s face it; scientists aren’t generally regarded as being funny. While I have met several very funny researchers during my almost 35 year career, the vast majority of my colleagues have been mostly serious and, at times, difficult to amuse; especially when things weren't going so well in the lab..jpg)
I am frequently asked by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are having trouble finding a research and development job, whether or not it makes sense to go to business school to get an Masters of Business Administration) MBA degree to enhance their business acumen. While I don’t think it would hurt (especially if you are interested in business), I also don’t think most scientists benefit from enrolling traditional MBA degree programs. With this in mind, some forward-looking academic institutions have launched joint PhD-MBA programs which allow students enrolled in these programs to graduate with PhD and MBA degrees at the end of their graduate training..jpg)
While this isn’t a 
Healthcare informatics (HCI) is one of the fastest growing professions in the US. This is because the Obama administration has allocated billions of stimulus dollars to create electronic healthcare records (EHR) in an attempt to reduce healthcare costs. 
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 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 
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. 
I suspect by the growing numbers of people who read BioJobBlog, that some of you may be beginning to wonder who I am. While nobody has taken me to task about my credentials or musings to date, I figured it may be worthwhile to share my “story” with those BioJobBlog readers who may be at a crossroads in their careers. I credit my graduate school experiences and PhD degree for the tenacity, perseverance and the ability to reinvent myself during an eclectic, and oft times, circuitous career path. 
In a previous post I .jpg)
According to a 
Despite its humble beginnings in the late 1970s, the biotechnology industry has transformed itself into one of the most vibrant sectors of the American economy. Pharmaceutical companies, once the bell weather of the life sciences industry, have finally conceded that biotechnology and not small molecules are the industry’s future!
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 
After yesterday's post about career planning for life scientists, one of my soon to be former students in the Fundamentals of Bioscience Program aptly pointed out that my readers might have benefitted more if I had, in fact, offered information about alternate career possibilities for bioscientists. I don't want the student to get too overconfident but I had the same thought immediately after I uploaded the post. .gif)
Over the past three years, more than.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)
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I became a medical/science writer after a rather circuitous, unconventional and sometimes, checkered career. Along the way, I learned a few things that I thought would be important to share with other PhDs who are seeking to change careers, t broaden their horizons and or simply to bring home a paycheck! I am sure that I missed a few things but here are my top 10 reasons to consider a career in medical/science writing:
The social development of the web 2.0 has largely bypassed science. Hugely popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and the like have millions of members and generate huge amounts of traffic. But those who use these sites come from all walks of life. None are devoted solely to science. .jpg)
Yes, even the Ivy League isn’t immune to food poisoning outbreaks from time-to-time. There are currently 10 confirmed cases of 
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.