Clinical Reaearch Associate CRA salary for Pharm.D?

[last chance]

I don’t have residency, just pharm.d and B.S plus couple years of clinical experience. I’m really interested in applying for CRA position at a pretty well known CRO, but of course you gotta answer the “desired salary” question on your application. What’s the typical starting range for pharm.d?

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[Lnsean]

why would anyone hire a pharmd for this position? lol.

 

[Jbrl]

why would anyone hire a pharmd for this position? lol.

They have, and they do. Starting base for PharmDs is 60-70k from what I know. Not sure about the progression.

 

[Gofish18]

This position is below that of coordinator and usually pays ~$40k full time

 

[mokycat]

I made > $80K in the early to mid 2000’s as a CRA, and that was with a bachelor’s degree. I’ve been out of the field for 10 years but I think it’s safe to assume the going rate is higher now. Not sure if you could necessarily command more with a PharmD (many of my colleagues were RNs) but I don’t think asking for $100K would be unreasonable. Especially for a CRO where they will likely expect you to be on site 4 days a week (lots of time away from home).

 

[last chance]

Thanks everyone for their opinions. I happened to connect with a pharmacy alumni working at the particular CRO, and the starting salary was indeed much lower than what I could accept... Anyways I was contacted by their HR staff wanting to arrange a phone call for further discussion. I'm really interested in switching my direction from clinical to industrial, but at the same time not willing to take a drastic pay cut. We will see, if at all, my clinical experience means anything.

 

[azmiyu]

Thanks everyone for their opinions. I happened to connect with a pharmacy alumni working at the particular CRO, and the starting salary was indeed much lower than what I could accept... Anyways I was contacted by their HR staff wanting to arrange a phone call for further discussion. I'm really interested in switching my direction from clinical to industrial, but at the same time not willing to take a drastic pay cut. We will see, if at all, my clinical experience means anything.

Let us know how it goes. Why not considering becoming a MSL instead then if you have clinical experience? Higher pay and you actually get to use more of your education compared to a CRA.

 

[bacillus1]

Let us know how it goes. Why not considering becoming a MSL instead then if you have clinical experience? Higher pay and you actually get to use more of your education compared to a CRA.

MSL jobs seem super hard to get without prior fellowship or MSL experience. Seems like everyone wants these nowadays. Clinical experience alone doesn't seem to qualify one for these, unless it's a super small company with questionable job security.

 

[Dolfina]

MSL jobs seem super hard to get without prior fellowship or MSL experience. Seems like everyone wants these nowadays. Clinical experience alone doesn't seem to qualify one for these, unless it's a super small company with questionable job security.

This is probably be area dependent but I know two people who are pgy2 trained in hot topic areas who both went straight from pgy2 to professor and then to MSL with medium sized drug companies in the last 2 yrs. Openings are sparse though, other than the staffing company (Syneos, previously known as inventiv)

 

[Dolfina]

Still think it's weird that ppl with 1-2 years of residency become professors immediately

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Same but it's exceedingly common . One did their pgy2 with the school.

 

[DOOM N GLOOM]

Same but it's exceedingly common . One did their pgy2 with the school.

It’s really common now, and ESPECIALLY because of all the diploma mills popping up. You did a PGY-1 residency? Come be an assistant professor for the newest pharmacy school out there. And people actually bite at these academia jobs because they can’t find real jobs otherwise.

I believe someone did an analysis a few years back and predicted that there will be a lot more academia positions due to the uncapped number of schools opening up, so faculty positions are going to be very easy to get (good faculty positions at top schools are still extremely difficult to get though, not going to discount that). They argued that the profession of pharmacy is stagnating and will continue to stagnate because the new waves of residency-trained graduates, who are supposed to be the ones advancing the profession and paving new career paths for pharmacists, are being absorbed back into academia, so innovation in the field is just not there anymore (since we all know that academia is an artificial environment).

I wonder if someone can do an analysis of the number of pharmacist job openings vs. number of faculty position openings year over year for the last 5 years. Willing to bet that the statistics will be damning.