Alternate Careers for PhDs: So You Think You Want to Be a Consultant?
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 invited Susan Colilla, PhD, MPH, President of the consulting firm Integrative Epidemiology LLC describe her experiences about becoming a life sciences consultant so that BioJobBlog job readers (who may be considering this as a career option), might get an idea and appreciate what it takes to get into and be successful in this line of work.
My Life as a Life Sciences Management Consultant
by Susan Colilla
After doing a second postdoc at University of Pennsylvania as an Instructor (nebulous junior non-faculty type position) and becoming frustrated with all the extensive work requirements for a tenure-track position, I started searching for a job in pharmaceutical industry.
While searching for a position, a potential employer, who didn’t have an opening at the time, asked if I would be interested in consulting. As I was interested in this area, I started consulting for industry and realized that I enjoyed working on different projects in epidemiology and genetics, and loved that I could work from my home office and give up a commute.
The flexibility in consulting is great. I plan the work around my schedule, and the pay has been rewarding as well. Last year, I formally incorporated my business, Integrative Epidemiology, LLC. I offer services in literature reviews, study planning/design, data analysis and grant or manuscript writing in the areas of human genetics or epidemiology.
As I build my business, I have learned about how to run a business, bookkeeping/billing, taxes, legal issues/contracts, and marketing. Moving from academia to pharma/industry is tricky unless you have connections with those who hire in the industry. One of the biggest challenges for me as a self-employed consultant is dedicating a good proportion of my time to networking with others and marketing my services, rather than doing science-related work. It helps that I am very social by nature and enjoy meeting new people.
I am also fortunate to be married to someone who makes a good income and receives benefits as this helps support our family. There can be a sporadic flow of income with consulting, especially during a recession and new business slows down. I have also partnered up with another consulting group (Venebio, LLC, based in Richmond, VA) to expand the pool of potential clients and work with a group of scientists to offer a broader range of services.
For those of you who want to learn more about getting into the consultant business, Susan highly recommends an article that recently appeared in the Scientist. She shared with me that the article offers a great list of things to consider before starting a consultancy and that she “wished that she had seen it a couple years ago when I started out in this business!”
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!
I received a call today from GDS International, a UK-based b2b publishing company, alerting me to its annual, event called the (1).png)
e-Patients Connections 2009 
Whenever I do resume critiquing at scientific meetings, someone always asks about how to negotiate a job offer. Most of the people that ask the question aren't even close to receiving a job offer and I do my best to deflect the question. However, at a recent meeting, I spent 30 minutes with a PhD student who had received an offer advising him on how to get a better deal from his prospective new employer. This got me thinking and I invited Joe Tringali, a veteran recruiter with lots of negotiating experience to write a blog post about strategies and things to consider when negotiating a job offer..jpg)
An annual survey conducted by Science magazine and the American Association has identified the 
In a previous post I 
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NextLevel Pharma 
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I previously posted an 
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Lisa Roner, blogger and editor for EyeforPharma, recommends a podcast on social media that was created by Dr. Andree Bates, CEO at Eularis, a company that applies analytics to determine the sales impact of specific marketing programs..png)
During my recent trip to Vermont and Woodstock, NY I had several conversations about Twitter. Surprisingly, I was being asked to explain Twitter to my nephews, both of whom are in their early 20s and to family friends who are in their late 40s and beyond. Also, at several recent science career fairs that I attended many graduate students and postdocs had never heard of Twitter or it they had, they don’t use it. Initially, this was puzzling but after considering the most recent Twitterverse demographics –I think the average age of Twitter users is around 35 to 40—it made more sense to me.
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The “
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Back in the day—when the economy was sound and jobs were plentiful—an adequately written resume with a sprinkling of keywords and strategically-placed human resources clichés were sufficient to get your foot in the door at most companies. However, in today’s troubled economy where unemployment is rampant, there are certain buzz words and phrases that no longer resonate with hiring managers. According to Liz Ryan, an experienced corporate career advisor who writes for Yahoo Hot Jobs, the following phrases must never appear in a resume if you are a job seeker in today’s market. .jpg)
Amber Johnson at 
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The debate, if you can call it that, over whether or not interactive social media platforms like .jpg)
Mark Sendak, a social media enthusiast and author of the .jpg)
As many of you may know, I attend national science meetings where I offer resume critiquing services and give career development seminars on topics ranging from resume writing to alternate career opportunities for life scientists. Frequently, I critique the resumes of 
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Over the past three years, more than
Medtronics, the world's largest medical-device company, 
The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) kicked off its annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia today and shortly thereafter, issued a 
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We recently added a feature to BioCrowd called BioCrunch. Our goal for BioCrunch is to provide Bcrowd members with relevant, interesting and “fresh” content. Vincent and I are big fans of podcasts and PowerPoint presentations! That said, please 
In the February issue of 
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Vincent Racaniello
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
For the past five years, I have been giving career development seminars that offer graduate students and postdoctoral fellows alternate careers choices (instead of research) for life scientists. The intent of these seminars is to get students who may not be enamored with a possible life long career at the bench (I know that there a lot of you out there) to think about what they really want to do after they complete their graduate or postdoctoral training..jpg)
The other day I was chatting with .jpg)
I just returned from the 
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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. 
For the past 60 years, American science was second to none. However, the US is perilously close to losing that distinction. Put simply, American science, like its economy, is in free fall.
According to a survey of 1,800 American professors in the life sciences conducted by economists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 90% of life sicentiest hold only one or no patents. This means that remaining 10% hold more than one (and are probably weathier than the other guys). .jpg)
This is the first installment of 
I came across this excellent article written by .jpg)
I came across an interesting article in Forbes Magazine that 
