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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 few things you ought to know before you take the life sciences plunge.

1. More than 86,000 American biology majors graduate each year
2. About 58% of all bachelors’, masters and doctorates in the life sciences are awarded to women (who continue to earn substantially less than their male counterparts)
3. Entry level salaries for biology majors range from $40,000 to $50,000 per year (computer and engineering students start at salaries of $55,000 to $65,000 per year)
4. PhD degrees in the life sciences take on average six years to complete
5. Postdoc starting salaries range from $37,000 to $40,000 per year
6. More than a third of biologists are still working as postdocs or in other non-tenure track jobs six years after receiving their PhD degrees
7. Only 14% of PhD-trained biologists win tenure track positions within six years of receiving their degrees
8. Because of tighter funding for government jobs and the loss of 300,000 pharmaceutical jobs in the past decade, many newly-minted PhDs are forced to become serial postdocs (supported by soft money) or help senior scientists set up and run their laboratories waiting to see if they can win permanent academic employment
9. Fewer tenured life sciences professors are retiring because of the financial downturn

If you still want to be biology major after reading this post, then I think that you know what career path you ought to pursue! Just sayin’......

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

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I just returned from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) meeting in Washington DC where I gave three talks about biocareer development strategies. One of the talks, "Emerging Job Opportunities in the Life Sciences Industry" was reported on (see below) by a writer from Fierce Pharma.  While I don't usually "too my own horn." about my achievements, I thought a Number 2 ranking in the publications daily top 10 list was certainly worth a mention.  

 
New job opportunities emerging in Big Pharma
October 26, 2011 — 7:24am ET | By Maureen Martino

Since 2001, 300,000 pharma employees have lost their jobs, primarily in R&D and sales. That's according to Clifford Mintz, the founder of BioInsights, which develops and offers bioscience education and training. Mintz spoke at a session on new job opportunities in biotech and pharma at the annual AAPS meeting in Washington, D.C. While the losses have been steep, they're balanced by emerging, in-demand careers in the industry.

The industry's struggles are well-known: Many companies are facing loss of exclusivity on their biggest sellers but have little in the pipeline to pick up the slack. Productivity is dropping as the cost of bringing a new drug to market soars. Government and payors want more effective drugs for less money. The list goes on.

Developers are looking to new markets and new technologies to address these issues. But how do these trends play out for the pharma job seeker? Many people, particularly Ph.D.s, may have to consider getting additional training if they want to land their dream job. "Companies used to be willing to just hire smart people. But with the economic downturn and global competition, companies can no longer afford to invest in people who have promise. They need to see proven skills," Mintz explained. With the right blend of skills and experience, however, there still some pharma jobs that are in demand.

Clinical Research and Regulatory Affairs

"Clinical research is the lifeblood of the industry," Mintz said. As developers expand in emerging markets, there's a particular demand for people to manage and organize overseas clinical trials. "There's a huge need for clinical research professionals worldwide," he said, noting that most Phase I and II trials are conducted outside of the U.S.

Another one of the industry's perennial needs is regulatory affairs professionals. "Regulatory affairs experience is a skill that all companies large and small would die to get their hands on," explained Mintz. The increasingly complex and uncertain world of FDA regulation--particularly when it comes to new technology and science--means that companies are always on the prowl for individuals with solid regulatory knowledge and ability to interact with the FDA. You can read more about the demand for clinical research and regulatory affairs jobs here.

Biomanufacturing

The pharma industry's interest in biologics remains strong--just look at Sanofi's buyout of Genzyme, or Roche's purchase of Genentech. They're lured by disease-altering biologics that are less likely to face generic competition than traditional drugs. As a result, there's been increased demand for professionals who can navigate the complex world of biomanufacturing. Those with a background in upstream and downstream processes, large-scale protein purification, fermentation technology and bioengineering can make the transition to biomanufacturing.

Healthcare Information Technology

The rise of bioinformatics and genomics coupled with the push for electronic medical records has created jobs in healthcare information technology. Health informatics--the intersection of healthcare and IT--is ideal for people with expertise in genomics, bioinformatics or software that understand how to work with and manipulate large data sets and databases. The Obama administration has made EHRs a priority, and there's a need for software engineers and biologists who are comfortable working with medical information.

Medical Devices

"The medical devices industry has been experiencing explosive growth for the past decade," Mintz said. Regulatory hurdles in the medical device industry are much lower than they are for biologics or small molecules, making the industry a more stable alternative to biotech and pharma. The demand for devices, which address problems that can't be treated with medicine, will continue to grow as the population ages. Job seekers with strong backgrounds in bioinformatics, genomics, engineering and translational medicine are best suited to this field.

Medical Communications

Medical communications--which includes medical writing, editing, graphic design and science journalism--continues to boom. The demand for these jobs has risen because companies need a slew of communication materials to send to patients, physicians, researchers, investigators and the general public about their products and business.

Patent Law and Technology Transfer

Recent changes to U.S. patent laws have increased the demand for patent agents and patent attorneys in the life sciences field. Pharma's growing reliance on basic research from learning institutions means that there's a need for technology transfer experts. These experts manage the patent estate and intellectual property of universities and colleges that may engage in licensing deals with the industry. A law degree is a must to compete in this field.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!
 

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For the past several years, I have been trying to convince anyone who would listen that the reason for the dismal job prospects for most PhD-trained scientists is a simple supply and demand issue. To wit, there are too many PhDs and too few jobs for them! 

While I intuitively understood that this was the case, nobody had ever substantiated the veracity of the claim and consequently I was beginning to think I was wrong. Imagine my joy after reading William Deresiewicz’s piece in this month’s edition of the The Nation magazine. In an article entitled “Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education,” Deresiewicz elegantly and aptly sums up the situation facing today’s newly minted PhDs:

"At Yale, we were overjoyed if half our graduating students found positions. That’s right—half........You’d think departments would respond to the Somme-like conditions they’re sending out their newly minted PhDs to face by cutting down the size of their graduate programs. If demand drops, supply should drop to meet it. In fact, many departments are doing the opposite, the job market be damned. More important is maintaining the flow of labor to their domestic sweatshops, the pipeline of graduate students who staff discussion sections and teach introductory and service courses like freshman composition and first-year calculus. (Professors also need dissertations to direct, or how would they justify their own existence?)

Further, he asserts:

“......the PhD glut works well for departments at both ends, since it gives them the whip hand when it comes to hiring new professors. Graduate programs occupy a highly unusual, and advantageous, market position: they are both the producers and the consumers of academic labor, but as producers, they have no financial stake in whether their product “sells”—that is, whether their graduates get jobs. Yes, a program’s prestige is related, in part, to its placement rate, but only in relative terms. In a normal industry, if no firm sells more than half of what it produces, then either everyone goes out of business or the industry consolidates. But in academia, if no one does better than 50 percent, then 50 percent is great. Programs have every incentive to keep prices low by maintaining the oversupply.”

Finally he concludes with an eye-opening but sadly accurate observation:

“How professors square their Jekyll-and-Hyde roles in the process—devoted teachers of individual students, co-managers of a system that exploits them as a group—I do not know. Denial, no doubt, along with the rationale that this is just the way it is, so what can you do?”

I am glad that somebody else perceives the problem the way that I do. At least, I now know that I am on the right track! Do any BioJobBlog readers have any suggestions, ideas or insights into how to fix this obviously broken system? 

Let me know!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

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Ross Perlin has written a book entitled “Intern Nation How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy” that takes a critical look at the role of internships in today’s job market. Perlin, a former unpaid intern himself, contends that American companies are taking advantage of college students who believe that internships, paid or otherwise, are the only way to land a job in today’s economy. He estimates that each year 1 to 2 million persons take “resume burnishing” internships to increase the likelihood of downstream employment.

Recent estimates made by the College Employment Research Institutes suggest that as many as three quarters of approximately 10 million American students at four year colleges and universities will complete at least one internship before they graduate. Internships can be found almost everywhere a college student looks for them including; Fortune 500 companies to Disneyworld to Capital Hill to Silicon Valley to Main Street Experiences can range from fetching coffee to cleaning toilets to more substantive activities but almost always at little or no pay. Perlin noted that the number of internships that are “school-like, full-time dedicated training programs is vanishingly few.” Further, he astutely observes that the internship craze has taken on a life of its own and is supported by on-campus career centers, online middlemen and many employers looking for free entry-level workers.

While Perlin sees the value of structured and paid internships he rightfully excoriates academic career centers for offering unpaid internship opportunities to their students. To wit, he wrote: “An overwhelming majority of colleges and universities, as well as some high schools, endorse and promote unpaid internships without a second thought, provide lucrative academic credits that employers wishfully hope will indemnify their firms, and justify it all with high minded rhetoric about situated learning and experiential education” he wrote. Further, he is incredulous that some employers “require not only that their charges work for free, but that they also obtain academic credit, which usually means paying (tuition and fees) to work for free.”

There is no question that college internships once gave students who took advantage of them a “leg up” on the competition. However, the sheer number of available internships has relegated them to little more than a box to check on a job application. In other words, internships are quickly becoming a requirement rather than an option. Moreover, according to Perlin, prospective employers are becoming increasingly aware that “these experiences (internships) can mean just about anything: your parents are well connected, your school required it, your barely showed up at the office. ”That, if you were counting on your experience as an intern to make a difference between gainful employment or not, it may be time to rethink your strategy.”

Because the life sciences companies are almost always behind their non-scientific counterparts, most internships offered by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies continue to be paid, structured and training-minded. With this in mind, many of my former students (primarily those who were motivated and good at networking) were able to transform internship experiences into full-time employment. However, internships have unfortunately replaced many industrial postdoctoral training programs: which may be good for graduate students but not so good for PhDs looking for industrial postdocs to transition from academia to the private sector.

Despite the growing criticism and problems with internships, I still think they are a viable approach for students and postdocs to acquire the “prior industrial experience” that is now necessary for academic scientists seeking job opportunities in the life sciences industry. Needless to say, once the life sciences industry “catches on” to the ways that internships can be manipulated and leveraged to their advantage, they will no longer be the “tickets to employment” at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that they once were.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Keep the Faith!!!!!!!!!

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While I don’t advocate postdoctoral positions for individuals unless they plan on doing bench science for the rest of their lives, postdoctoral training is a fact of life for those interested in pursuing academic careers. To that end, The Scientist.com conducts an annual survey that ranks the best 40 places for postdoctoral associates to work. The survey ranks the strengths and weaknesses of individual training institutions based on funding, facilities and infrastructure, benefits, training and mentoring and family and personal life. Surprisingly, institutions are also ranked on networking, career development and mentoring and training and mentor and training that they offer to their postdoctoral trainees.

The institution that snagged the top spot on the 2010 list was the Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, NY. Nestled in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate NY, the not-for-profit Trudeau Institute has a deserved international reputation in immunology, infectious diseases and vaccinology. When I was a graduate students (back in the dark ages), some of the greatest minds in infectious diseases held positions at Trudeau. These days; not so much—but I bet the skiing is great! Interestingly, one of Trudeau’s strengths is networking opportunities (how much networking can take place at a secluded institute on a lake in the Adirondacks). Curiously, however, one of its major weaknesses is the lack of career development opportunities. Based on my life experiences, I always thought that networking was a crucial part of career development. But then again, what do I know?

The top 10 of the list featured a couple of Massachusetts-based institutions including the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (3) and the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research Institute in Cambridge (4) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, MA (9). Two national laboratories, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA (8) and Rocky Mountain Laboratory, NIH Hamilton, MT (6) cracked the top ten. By all accounts, the fly fishing is outstanding in Hamilton.

As usual, there were some surprises. These included Samuel Robert Noble Foundation (2) in Ardmore, OK, the University of Colorado, Denver (7) and the Mayo Clinic (10) in Rochester, MN (not exactly cities on my top ten list). Not surprisingly, there were only two life sciences companies that made the Top 40 list; Genentech (5) in South San Francisco and as mentioned above at number 3, the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research. Once a mainstay, industrial postdocs are becoming increasingly scare and difficult to land. In many cases, these positions are not advertised and generally filled by word-of-mouth recommendations to principal investigators who are looking for postdoctoral fellows.

A quick perusal of the list revealed, as expected, that most of the 40 institutions excelled in categories that included funding, facilities and infrastructure, benefits and family and personal life. In marked contrast, many of the institutions on the list were disappointingly weak in the areas of networking, career development and training and mentoring. Of the top 40, six got kudos for networking (15%), 11 for career development (28%) and only 6 for training and mentoring (15%). These abysmal statistics are somewhat shocking given that postdoctoral fellowships are mainly intended to train and prepare aspiring individuals for lifelong careers as scientists. The fact that only 25% of the nation’s best places to perform postdoctoral research offer career development training and support for postdoctoral trainees suggests that the future of the American life sciences industry may be in serious jeopardy!

Hat tip Ed at Pharmalot.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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While this isn’t a new topic, I wanted to raise the question again because I recently received a message  from a reader that greatly troubled me. The person who posted the comment has a PhD degree in biomedical engineering and is extremely angry with the existing system because of the lack of employment opportunities in her field. Put simply, she is so frustrated with the system that she no longer believes that it is ethical to advise young people to pursue careers in the life sciences. I know that she isn’t alone and that many of you share her anger and frustration with the lies (as she put it) about employment opportunities for life sciences PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows

From time to time, I am invited by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to talk about alternative careers in the life sciences. I try to remain upbeat and positive during my presentation but generally I can’t control myself by the Q&A session. Invariably, I rant and rave about how dysfunctional academia has become. Interestingly, I recently was uninvited by my former graduate department where I was slated to present a seminar on alternate career choices for life scientists. As the tenured faculty member (you know how I feel about tenure) who would have sponsored my visit told me “the seminars that we offer our students are scientific in nature and much different than many of the topics that I discuss on my very interesting blog.” Consequently, he informed me that I was no longer invited to give my talk (I was previously invited by the Department Chair who happened to be a former colleague of mine who decided to move to another institution before my visit). In an e-mail response to his un-invitation, I told him that I wanted to visit the Department and give the talk because I believe that my graduate education is what enabled me to maneuver the minefield that ultimately became my career path. Also, I told him that I wanted to share my insights and career experiences with current graduate students and postdoctoral fellows because I thought that many may benefit from them. Not surprisingly, I never heard back from him. 

The point that I am trying to make is that my message about alternative careers for PhD students is diametrically opposed to the mission of most PhD programs; which is to prepare 100% of their students for academic careers. Unfortunately, as I have stated many times in the past, only about 10% of those who receive life sciences PhD degrees land academic appointments. What are the remaining 90% of the folks who toiled long and hard for their PhD degrees suppose to do with their lives? In the past, as many as 50% or more of these students were able to garner jobs as research scientists at biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies or with government agencies like the CDC, FDA, EPA and others. Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry has laid off over 200,000 employees in the past 3 years, funding for biotech companies has hit an all time low and we are experiencing the worst recession in almost 70 years which is causing government agencies to stop hiring! This begs the question: what are graduate students pursuing PhD degrees and postdoctoral fellows suppose to do to put food on the table to feed their families and themselves? 

While I don’t have an easy answer to that question, I can tell you that getting angry and frustrated or dropping out of the system isn’t going to change anything. I will also tell you that the system isn’t going to change by itself! To that end, it may make sense for all of you angry and frustrated graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to band together and tell your advisors and mentors that “you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” To show them that you are serious, I highly recommend that your offer them a plan to address your concerns about finding gainful employment (not decade long postdoctoral fellowships) following completion of your PhD degrees. For example, you may suggest that they add alternate career certificate and degree programs to their existing curricula. Or, if new programs are too costly, suggest that they offer courses that showcase alternate career options like entrepreneurship, science writing or medical communications. Finally, at the very list, insist that they work with local companies and organization to create sponsored internship opportunities and get them to commit to supporting annual career development symposia or job fairs for graduate students and postdocs.

For the past decade or more, I have struggled to convince many of my academic colleagues to consider any and all of the above suggestions. Unfortunately, my pleas for creation of new courses and programs have fallen upon deaf ears! Given my current lack of success, I suspect that it is going to take more than one person (me) to induce the academic establishment to consider systemic change. That said anybody who may be interested in joining the “cause” to improve employment opportunities for PhD life scientists, please feel free to contact me!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Organizing!!!!!

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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 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 think that 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 that they are best suited for. I don’t think that it is too much to ask or very labor-intensive for PIs to learn about 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 have  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 must be overhauled to remain relevant. Unfortunately, systemic changes are unlikely because tenured faculty members can’t be forced or induced to change their 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!

To learn how to more effectively manage employees, please check out the 360 feedback solution.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

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Unlike others, life scientists have been slow to use social media to look for jobs or network to enhance career opportunities.  Many scientists  have  Facebook accounts but view it and other social media tools like Twitter simply as a means to stay in touch with family and friends.  However, social media can be a very powerful tool for scientists who are looking for jobs or the next big career move.

To that end, I presented a seminar at Experimental Biology this past weekend in New Orleans entitled "Social Media and Career Development for Life Sciences" that offer suggestions on how to use social media to land a job or jumpstart a career in the life sciences industry.  For those of you who may be interested, I posted the presentation below:

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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 blurb in breakingviews.com, Pfizer alone spent $8 billion last year which was greater than the sum spent by biotech’s top five companies. What this tells us is that pharmaceutical companies are grossly unproductive when it comes to drug discovery and development. This would explain why nearly three-quarters of all new medicines approved for sale in the US last year originated at biotechnology companies.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that biotechnology companies are much more efficient at R&D than pharmaceutical companies. More importantly this suggests that something must change so that pharma can continue receive adequate ROI on internal discovery programs. Perhaps big pharma ought to spend a greater portion of its R&D budget on biotech mergers and acquisitions rather than continuing to invest in inefficient and failing internal R&D programs. While biotechnologynology companies are exceptional in drug discovery, they are severely lacking when it comes to clinical development of new drugs. This is largely due the high costs of conducting human clinical trials (which are required for regulatory approval of all new medicines). Most biotechnology companies are strapped for cash and don’t have sufficient funds to conduct clinical trials on their own.

Not surprisingly, given the recent financial downturn, there has been a recent spate of deals in which pharma has been willing to pay large sums of money for clinical development rights to promising new biotechnology drugs. Moreover, a majority of the almost 160,000 employees layed off by pharma companies in the past few years have been R&D scientists. This suggests that pharma is beginning to realize that its money may be better spent doing deals or buying biotech companies rather than continuing to invest large sums of money into it’s own unproductive R&D programs. Unfortunately, this paradigm shift doesn’t bode well for doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows who are training in the life sciences. This is because many entry-level biotech positions, traditionally filled by newly-minted PhDs and postdoctoral fellows will likely be filled by experienced, pharmaceutical employees who lost their jobs in the recent rounds of layoffs. As much as I hate to say this, if I were a life sciences graduate student or postdoctoral fellow considering an R&D career in industry, I would begin to explore alternative career options.

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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