shammgod23 said:
Thank you for your post bluejay. The money isnt really an issue, and I guess I'm going to keep searching for an opportunity somewhere, do you recommend any specific internships at a specific company for next summer, like at genentech, or pfizer? or any of these opportunities are good experiences?
Sure, those are terrific companies to work for. You should decide if you want to work in industry, consulting, finance or another piece of the business world that intersects with health care.
For industry, the big split is pharma, biotech and med device. Each type of company has pros and cons tied to their products (i.e., pharma small molecules are cheap to produce, have a high margin and are vulnerable to generics whereas biotech products tend to be complex molecules like antibody fragments that are more process-intensive, commanding a higher price, with less competition and lower volume of sales; each has somewhat unique regulatory and competitive issues, etc).
Top Pharma companies include Pfizer, Merck, J&J, and AstraZeneca, among others. Their US headquarters tend to be located in the New Jersey/New York areas, so the most opportunities will be there.
Top Biotech companies include Genentech, Amgen and many others (many more niche or smaller players here). They tend to be located in California.
Med Device companies include Medtronic, J&J, Guidant, among others. They are more geographically distributed.
These companies may hire summer interns at the undergraduate level, but you have to ask yourself what skills you would bring to the table (not having an MD, MBA or extensive work experience may make this a tough sell). You need to think about where in these companies you want to work. Marketing? Sales Rep? R&D/Clinical trials? Business Development? You need to figure out your interests and then try to match them up with potential opportunities at these places. Search for any personal or academic connections to help get your foot in the door, as simply sending in your resume is unlikely to get much of a response.
Then you can look at consulting. There are the big management consulting firms (top firms are McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Booz, etc) and then there are health-care specific players. Consulting can be a nice experience if you have not worked much in the past, so I would look into it. These companies hire people after undergrad alone to be analysts, so it may be a good fit (they usually want you for a bit more than a year, usually 2-3, but it could still work).
Finance jobs include investment banking, private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and others. I have less experience with this type of job, but there is potential for more money here.
Anyway, you should try to focus on the industry that you are most interested in, and then the function within that industry that most appeals to you. Once you figure that out, decide if there are any geographic limitations to where you can work (do you have to stay put where you are now or can you go to any job in the US?). Then seach for contacts to get your foot in the door, have coffee with people, get your resume polished and circulated, start trying to get interviews and so on.
Good luck!
