I can’t believe the position I’m in,” she fumed. It was apparent that our discussion had turned into more of a gripe session than a formal job interview. While I am used to diversions in the interviewing process due to the third-party nature of my job, this scientist seemed to be getting particularly emotional.

“My career decisions were made based on a solid analysis. Sure, I love both computers and biology, so bioinformatics was a natural for me. But I investigated three different areas that I could have specialized in, as there were many doors open for me at the time,” she said. As I read over her CV, I could see that she had made a diversion a couple of years ago. She had gone back to school for another two years, in order to add a Computer Science degree to her mix. Now, with several degrees under her belt and still without any company experience, she had found that the bioinformatics job market wasn’t as strong as she had been promised.

Rule #1: Filter All Media Advice Carefully

I spend a lot of time on airplanes reading newspapers, magazines and career articles written for the job-seeker. Sometimes the advice is right on target. Other times, an editor has assigned a piece to someone who does very little research, and who ends up painting too bright a picture for certain career choices. As frustrated as I get in reading that hype, I know that my situation won’t be changed much at all by the bad advice. The sad part is that someone else is reading the article and designing a career plan around it.

As an example of how things can get over-amped in the media, I read in a popular annualized directory of careers that the biotechnology industry is super-hot. In fact, if you are a biologist—BS, MS, or PhD—you will be welcomed with an average salary of $93,000. The salaries, benefits, and work hours were among the best shown for any career choice and in any industry, all of which put the biologist” category into the #1 slot for that year’s almanac.

After nearly twenty years of recruiting work in the biotech industry, I had no idea that today’s grads could walk into such a lucrative career with great pay and easy hours (sarcasm intended). I never found this to be the case; while some senior scientists can earn significantly over six figures for their special expertise, they are certainly not the majority. There are too many postdocs languishing in $27,000 academic posts and too many BS-degreed Research Associates running assays for $35,000 a year for these numbers to make sense. And the hours that biotech employees often work in pushing out a new product are legendary.

This same inaccurate reporting has occurred many times within various sub-categories of the industry. One of the most blatant in recent memory was the perception that many scientists received from the media about a bioinformatics career. Through magazine articles and glossy cover features, it appeared that bioinformatics would be the job of the century. It hasn’t gone that way, as evidenced by people such as the applicant mentioned in this article. There were just too many job-seekers who read those glowing forecasts of thousands of jobs and then refocused their career goals accordingly.

Please understand that I believe that bioinformatics is a critical piece of our life sciences future . . . It’s simply that the niche was overplayed by magazine articles and “career directories.” (It isn’t always the consumer magazines that make these kinds of claims. Often I have seen career articles supported by advertising revenue in the back of scientific journals that take the same hoopla to an even higher level.)

Rule #2: Be Cautious of Micro Trends while Watching the Macro Trends Carefully

Many career experts tell you to follow your dream, and to do something that you love to do. I agree with that advice. The woman that I introduced earlier will do well. Her love of the sciences, her love of computing . . . that’s a great combination. But she did make the mistake of believing that it would be a lot easier to find a job than it actually turned out to be. She’s read too many glossy articles about high-flying careers.

In looking at trends, it is very tough to predict where the hot career choices are going to be. A recruiter can wax on about how he or she has had some role in “all the hot careers” over their years, but for a person in the life sciences, that isn’t the case. You have to stake out a claim in some niche and go for it. Listening to all the talk about what the hot career will be in five years is not the way to choose your target. It’s almost impossible to land in that spot, because the nature of technology means that the goal is constantly moving.

Instead, watch and react to broad trends; big, fat trends moving through the world of the sciences like a Tsunami. Those you can see coming far enough away, and you just know that they are going to make a big impact. You can plan a career a lot easier around a macro trend than trying to land on the head of a pin.

As an example of one such macro trend . . . Today there are thousands of biotech companies who have found that they can’t get investor money any longer by simply doing cool research. Instead, they need products. So, we can all watch as this tidal wave of interest in jobs like Regulatory Affairs, Clinical Affairs, Quality Control, Quality Assurance, Manufacturing Operations and Process Development all start to loom as the major front of biopharma hiring in the next few years.

Will good solid research jobs go away? Of course not. Their focus may change, however, from basic research to something a bit more applied. Here’s how one hiring manager put it to me today:
"We need to identify candidates who have absolutely terrific skills in critical thinking and a track record of productive bench research, but we’re only going to hire those who can conceptualize what a drug target looks like.”

Doesn’t that statement lead you to believe that this particular trend – the focus on products – is one that will affect us all? If so, start incorporating it into your career plan today.


-Dave Jensen


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About the Author:

David G. Jensen is a consultant with twenty years experience in Human Resources and Recruitment in Biotechnology. His company, CareerTrax Inc. (Sedona, AZ) works closely with companies and regions all over the globe to help them develop their biotechnology infrastructure. Prior to founding CareerTrax, Jensen was the CEO of the executive search firm Search Masters International, which was sold to Kelly Services in 2001. Contact Dave Jensen at (928) 282-5366 or via email at dave@careertrax.com.


© CareerTrax Inc., Sedona, AZ 2004