Pharmaceutical Industry 101

[bobisnew]

In today's day and age, what's the best way for a new grad to get into industry or gov affairs? I'm very interested in these fields.

Take a significantly lower paying contractor role, gain exp, then move laterally to a major pharma company. It's not easy, nor guaranteed. There are more opportunities in NJ/PA/NY area.

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[LandyPharmD]

1. General Things to Consider

2. Sample Timeline for a Fellowship Applicant (complete with basic recommendations about ASHP Midyear Meeting)

3. Basic Qualities Required of a Fellowship Application

4. List of Fellowship Positions

5. Questions to Ask During Your Interview

6. Final Year Industry Clerkships

7. Industry Summer Internships for Pharm.D. Students

8. Onsite Interviews

9. Setting up a Rotation Within Pharmaceutical Industry

10. Do's and Don'ts on an Industry Rotation

11. The Current State of Pharmaceutical Industry

12. GPA's and Industry Fellowships

13. Writing a Letter of Intent

14. Requesting Letters of Recommendation

15. Salaries within pharmaceutical industry

16. Writing a CV for a Pharma fellowship

17. If you are not a P-4 anymore, but are considering a fellowship

18. Reasons to do a fellowship - or not (planned)

19. To MBA or not to MBA (planned)

To be continued... Remember, I have a full-time job and a house to take care of, so bear with me. The promised content will appear eventually.

Thank you for all of your posts, this information has helped me a great deal. I am a P3 preparing for rotations and I am interested in rotating in PhRMA, however my university (Florida A and M University) doesn't not have a lot of affiliations. Before reading your thread I did not know where to start with getting these rotations, but now I am working on some of the suggestions you mentioned. Thank you sooo much

 

[PharmBeee]

Would a nose piercing be considered unprofessional during PPS interviews? Is a very tiny nose stud OK? It would be something you could barely see, would look just like a teeny tiny dot on the nose.

 

[bastense]

1. General Things to Consider

2. Sample Timeline for a Fellowship Applicant (complete with basic recommendations about ASHP Midyear Meeting)

3. Basic Qualities Required of a Fellowship Application

4. List of Fellowship Positions

5. Questions to Ask During Your Interview

6. Final Year Industry Clerkships

7. Industry Summer Internships for Pharm.D. Students

8. Onsite Interviews

9. Setting up a Rotation Within Pharmaceutical Industry

10. Do's and Don'ts on an Industry Rotation

11. The Current State of Pharmaceutical Industry

12. GPA's and Industry Fellowships

13. Writing a Letter of Intent

14. Requesting Letters of Recommendation

15. Salaries within pharmaceutical industry

16. Writing a CV for a Pharma fellowship

17. If you are not a P-4 anymore, but are considering a fellowship

18. Reasons to do a fellowship - or not (planned)

19. To MBA or not to MBA (planned)

To be continued... Remember, I have a full-time job and a house to take care of, so bear with me. The promised content will appear eventually.

Holy cow. This is awesome, thank you for putting it together!

I'm not sure if you or anyone can help answer this...but as a PharmD in the pharmaceutical industry, does it generally matter where you went to get your degree? I'm deciding between 2 schools:

School A: In my hometown, but it is one of the newer, just-barely-been-accredited schools without a solid foundation of alumni or reputation yet.

School B: Would force me to move across the country, but has been around for years, very well-known and respected.

I would prefer to stay in my hometown (school A), but everyone is telling me to go to the school that's better-ranked and has better networking opportunities (school B). My goal is to find myself working in the industry. I have been told that if I wanted to work in a community or retail pharmacy, it generally wouldn't matter which school I go to. But would it matter for industry?

 

[asian pharm]

Take a significantly lower paying contractor role, gain exp, then move laterally to a major pharma company. It's not easy, nor guaranteed. There are more opportunities in NJ/PA/NY area.

This is exactly what I did.I started as a contractor, got offered a permanent position within a few months, and have now been working since 3 years! I will have to say tho that the pay is nowhere near retail, but the work is incredible and interesting!!! And i can sit down and work in an 8-5,M-F shift, which is awesome!!!

 

[y0ssarian87]

This is exactly what I did.I started as a contractor, got offered a permanent position within a few months, and have now been working since 3 years! I will have to say tho that the pay is nowhere near retail, but the work is incredible and interesting!!! And i can sit down and work in an 8-5,M-F shift, which is awesome!!!

What kind of role do you have in industry?


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[asian pharm]

What kind of role do you have in industry?


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I started in Pharmacovigilance, got promoted and now I am a drug safety scientist.

 

[asian pharm]

It very much depends on what you would like to do. If your ultimate goal is research, then combined PharmD/PhD would be a better option. It would be extremely difficult to advance your career on the research side with PharmD alone.

For anything else, be it working on the medical side (medical communication, safety, as an MSL, etc.) or commercial side (marketing, market research, etc.) a PhD would not benefit you. I would rather suggest a fellowship in the area of your interest (they last one or two years, and you do get a decent stipend - I think they average between $40,000 and $60,000).

I think that going to a private school for the combined program at a significant added cost to you would not be beneficial unless you definitely knew that you want to be a researcher, and a researcher in a particular area. To get the full benefit of a PhD program you really need to have an idea about what you want to research, what would be the topic of your dissertation. I would rather go for a PharmD now, and then if you need a PhD later to achieve your goals, you can always obtain it later. There are even part-time PhD programs out there for people who are already employed in their area of interest, and generally if you are employed within a pharmaceutical industry, your education which is related to your job, even marginally, is either completely covered or at least 50% covered.

If I have a Pharm.D alone, and currently work as drug Safety Scientist, but would like to switch roles to Regulatory Affairs Associate, do I have any chance with no experience in the regulatory department?

 

[bulldog1123]

1. General Things to Consider

2. Sample Timeline for a Fellowship Applicant (complete with basic recommendations about ASHP Midyear Meeting)

3. Basic Qualities Required of a Fellowship Application

4. List of Fellowship Positions

5. Questions to Ask During Your Interview

6. Final Year Industry Clerkships

7. Industry Summer Internships for Pharm.D. Students

8. Onsite Interviews

9. Setting up a Rotation Within Pharmaceutical Industry

10. Do's and Don'ts on an Industry Rotation

11. The Current State of Pharmaceutical Industry

12. GPA's and Industry Fellowships

13. Writing a Letter of Intent

14. Requesting Letters of Recommendation

15. Salaries within pharmaceutical industry

16. Writing a CV for a Pharma fellowship

17. If you are not a P-4 anymore, but are considering a fellowship

18. Reasons to do a fellowship - or not (planned)

19. To MBA or not to MBA (planned)

To be continued... Remember, I have a full-time job and a house to take care of, so bear with me. The promised content will appear eventually.

This was written 5 years ago. I wonder how applicable this is now with the current market. Is it enough?

 

[wazoodog]

If I have a Pharm.D alone, and currently work as drug Safety Scientist, but would like to switch roles to Regulatory Affairs Associate, do I have any chance with no experience in the regulatory department?

You have a chance but need a lucky break with timing and environment. Easiest way would be to transition within the company you're in. One thing to keep in mind is that departments generally have an unspoken rule against poaching another dept's resource, so it's up to you to build a good relationship with people in RA (preferably decision makers) and show interest when there's an opening. Also, you may have to consider the possibility of starting from the bottom - do you really want to end up in a Regulatory submissions operational role? Consider also that some RA roles are pigeonholes in themselves, and will be difficult to transition into strategic roles. It helps if you have experience in REMS, authoring periodic reports, and other activities that bring you in close contact with RA on a routine basis.

 

[asian pharm]

Does anyone here know more about the pharmacists role in Clinical SAS?
I know someone who is a pharmacist and works as a Clinical SAS programmer for Pfizer. I asked her if you are a pharmacist how-come your title is "Clinical SAS programmer".....are you a programmer then? She did not respond very well to that question but I know in general that as pharmacists, we can work in SAS and use our knowledge gained during pharmacy school to work towards creating SAS programs.
Can anyone here throw more light on this?

 

[cdpiano27]

Does anyone here know more about the pharmacists role in Clinical SAS?
I know someone who is a pharmacist and works as a Clinical SAS programmer for Pfizer. I asked her if you are a pharmacist how-come your title is "Clinical SAS programmer".....are you a programmer then? She did not respond very well to that question but I know in general that as pharmacists, we can work in SAS and use our knowledge gained during pharmacy school to work towards creating SAS programs.
Can anyone here throw more light on this?

You don't need a pharmacy degree to work as a SAS programmer at all. Most people working as SAS programmers in pharma industry have a masters in statistics, and the PhDs in statistics or biostatistics work as the statistician. Some even have bachelor or master degrees in computer science. This person is not using her pharmacy degree at all. She is basically writing SAS programs to produce tables, listings, and figures for data reported for various clinical trials. You basically need to know SAS, and the tricks of writing SAS macros, and being able to merge datasets together (which can be quite tricky), in addition to knowing some idea of the clinical aspects surrounding the trial. I know some other people who had PhD degrees in China where the area of study was difficult to find jobs, so they picked up SAS programming (took BASIC and Advanced certifications) and then searched for a job. There is even one SAS programming training course in Philadelphia here if anyone is interested at Thomas Jefferson University. I am not allowed to post links on this forum but one can easily search for it.