What’s the best way to include your publications on an industry resume? What if they make your resume too long? What if they aren’t clinical trials, or in a different scientific area?
This episode provides an approach for creating a resume from your academic CV, specifically about whether and how to include publications. We’ll discuss how to determine whether they are relevant, and how they best showcase your skills.
We will discuss:
- Highlighting direct relevance for the selected publications
- Including the skills you gained from the process
- Curating and organizing your list, depending on the job you’re applying for
When you focus on strategically framing your publications, you can effectively communicate your expertise and transferable skills, ensuring your resume stands out without distracting the reader with irrelevant details.
In this Episode:
[3:45] Start strong by asking yourself these two questions
[4:30] How do they demonstrate your credibility as an expert?
[10:00] Different specialty? Different job? Different approach.
[12:30] Impact, Impact, Impact
Links and Resources:
Industry Insider – 12 hours of CME, learn exactly how to land a rewarding nonclinical career without a new degree, special connections, prior experience, or a pay cut
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 136 – Do Those Publications Belong on Your Industry Resume
Hey everybody, welcome back Today, we’re going to be talking about a really common question that I get asked frequently by students and by listeners, is what belongs on your industry resume? This is very common as people try to figure out how to transition their academic or clinical CV, which is often very, very comprehensive and chronological, you know, with sections that are dictated by your current academic institution or employer into something that is more industry friendly and likely to get them an interview help them to secure a job as part of their transition into pharmaceutical, medical device, biotech industry, and people will often ask me, does this particular thing belong on my resume?
Today we’re going to talk about whether or not individual publications belong on your resume. Many of my students have a handful of publications. Some have a lot of publications from academic work, and it’s not all clinical research in the way that that pharmaceutical clinical trials are conducted, right? Some of it might be medical education type research, implementation science research, some of it might be quality improvement type research, and it really doesn’t matter what it is, but, and some people have less of that, and that’s okay too, nonetheless, is a common question. Should you include it if you’ve been thinking about a career move into pharma or biotech, remember to check out my course Industry Insider from your resume and job search to interviews offers and compensation negotiations.
It’s a complete guide to getting your foot in the door and finally, landing the job you want. So stop putting it off. The link is in the show notes. I’m going to give you a framework for how to think about whether or not to include it. And of course, some of this depends upon what else is on your resume, right, the totality of your resume, and some of it depends upon what’s on the specific job description. So we can’t forget that you do need to tailor your resume, your application for each and every job that you are applying for, because it does need to match the skills and experiences that are emphasized in the job description. But for your sort of master industry resume, which you should have as a starting point to make this work easier, do you include those publications? So when you think about whether, whether to include a publication, you need to ask yourself sort of two questions. And one is, what is the purpose of including that on the resume right?
And that should have a very clear answer, which should be to to illustrate a skill or a requirement or a preference that is listed on the job description. So when they’re talking about your duties or what they’re looking for in a candidate, if you can illustrate an answer, sort of Yes, I have that by these publications in some way, that’s a good reason to include it. And the second question to ask yourself is, how relevant is this to the specific job that I’m applying for?
So let’s, let’s kind of break that down into a couple of steps. So when I think about how relevant is it, as we’ve talked about on this podcast, and in the course, it is absolutely not necessary in order for you to be successful, for you to be applying to roles that are in your same clinical specialty. I’ve talked about this a lot because I’m an anesthesiologist, and all of the areas in which I have worked in pharma are not anesthesiology related, and I have many students who have had similar experiences. Now, some are getting jobs in their specific specialty, which is also great and fine, but it’s not necessary.
So when you ask yourself and how relevant it are these specific publications, right, the topic of the research to the job that you are applying for, is it in the same specialty? Is it in the same disease area? Maybe it is in something that’s extremely closely related to the medicines that are in development by that company right now. Maybe the study is actually sponsored by that company, right so there could be any number of ways in which you’re very close to this. Some people do have pi experience in their academic institutions that are related to major clinical trials, that are pharmaceutical related, and some of you don’t have that. That’s okay. You don’t need it. But if the answer to all those questions is yes, right?
It’s the same specialty, it’s the same disease area, and it’s very highly relevant, meaning that the title of the publication is going to jump out to the hiring manager as while this is, this is a person who has exactly the kind of experience or expertise, or is an expert in this area as the work that we are doing here, super relevant, if that’s going to jump off the page based on the title. Model of the research or the subject matter of the research, then the answer to that, whether or not that belongs on your resume, I would say, is absolutely yes, and probably listing them in full, in the same way that you would on a CV, because it does demonstrate a couple of things. I mean, number one, it establishes your credibility as an expert, which is part of the reason that companies hire physicians so as a thought leader, as a clinical expert.
And it also demonstrates that you have participated in clinical trial research, and depending upon your involvement in that trial, that might be even more than participate, right? It might be that you let it, and you want to make sure that that’s reflected there, but that you are, you’ve done that kind of actual work, which is an experience of its of its own right, the execution of a trial or research project. And then the third part is, you’ve been successful in getting that published and going through the peer review process. So that is actually a piece of skill and experience in and of itself. So doing a research project is one thing, getting it published in a journal is another.
As any of you who have done that know, these are sort of two different things, and there’s a lot that goes into that. Because, you know, the scientific writing, the medical writing, is a project in and of itself, the interactions with the reviewers and the peer review process is an interaction in and of itself. And then there is some amount of thoughtfulness, or perhaps strategy about where you know which journal is your target journal, based upon who reads that journal, based upon the impact factor of that journal. And so all that is its own skill set and attribute. So again, if you have something that’s extremely highly relevant and it demonstrates all three of those things, then the answer is yes, that should stay on your industry resume.
Even though people will say your industry resume ought to be really short, that is a circumstance under which I would recommend that they all stay on, because that really underscores those three things, right? Your clinical expertise that highly relevant, participation in the execution of a trial and then the process of the publication, successful peer review and dissemination of that data. Okay? What if it is loosely related? For example, it’s still in cardiology, but in a very different type of, you know, aspect of the specialty, or it is something that will someone who is an expert in that area would recognize it as being related, but a lay person might not.
So then the answer is yes, but you might have it be a little bit more consolidated. Now, if you only have a handful, the answer here might be Yes, keep it, keep them all on, right? Keep all two of them on, or all three of them on. If you have a bunch and they’re loosely related, this is where you may want to group them, or just offer some select items that are most relevant, because, you know, this may not be the strongest part of your resume, and again, this has to all kind of fall in the balance. So if it’s loosely related, it’s important for the same three reasons that we just mentioned. When it’s very highly related, but it’s going to be less impactful, and you might have other things you want to emphasize even more. So it’s it would be important to include it, but you might include just a handful and then acknowledge that you have additional publications.
And then you can put a line in there that says your full bibliography is available upon request, for example. And here is where you maybe have some judgment around you know, if one of these publications is in a particularly noteworthy journal, right? That’s worthy of selecting, because that shows something in and of itself. And so you’ll, you’ll just have a you’ll make a little bit of a judgment call in terms of the total balance of your resume.
And also, there’s a judgment call here in terms of what type of role you are applying for, right if it’s clinical development, and the kind of work that you have done is also, you know, bench science or a clinical trial, then that would probably be important to include and let people know that if the kind of work that you’ve done is more on a quality improvement or medical education, that may feel less relevant to the role of clinical development, or maybe to the role of pharmacovigilance, and so it’s still important to communicate the three factors that we mentioned before, right your expertise in that area, you’re having done research, and your successful publication and dissemination of that research. But it may be less important to share the specifics of that research, because they are getting a little bit less relevant to the actual job at hand.
And then the third category, I would loosely say, is when you’re in a completely different specialty. This is the circumstance that I have been in quite often, and or this could be where the vast majority of your research is in a really sort of niche area. That does not feel relevant to the pharmaceutical company, work or subject matter area, but it’s nonetheless, is academic medical research, but it’s in a totally different specialty.
So I think this is something you do want on your resume, but I think you want to be actually pretty careful about how you portray it. The reason is you don’t really want to highlight how different it is from the subject matter or the specialty area, right? And so again, if this is, if it’s not clinical, and if it is something that is is going to just look very, very different, I think it is best to to not necessarily include these as individual items, but to include sort of summary statements, summary statements that focus on the number of publications that you have, that mention top journals or or other venues if you have them.
And it’s okay if you don’t, but you know, if you do, don’t let that get buried, based on my advice to not include them individually. Make sure that you do say that you have X number of publications in peer reviewed journals and that the bibliography is available upon request, and then make sure that you spell out that you have experience in whichever parts you have experience in which might be the study concept and design. It might be in the execution. It might be in overseeing a team. It may be in the data interpretation, the medical writing, all of the things that are typical author requirements, right that you want to be able to even if you’re not listing the title of your articles themselves, you do want to list and make sure that you include on here the types of skills that it demonstrates that you have.
And if there is an example where some of your work has had an impact, whether it’s locally or nationally, you want to include that as well. And by that I mean if it was a quality improvement project and it ended up being adopted locally as a best practice or clinical care pathway in your institution. That’s something worth mentioning, because that’s the kind that kind of thing does matter in in industry, that’s one of the reasons that they do studies, is with the hope of having that data be included in new guidelines right to continue to advance the standard of care. So if you can demonstrate that some of your work has had an impact like that and has changed the way in which things get done in your hospital or your clinical care environment, that’s pretty important. Even better, right? Even more.
And this is aspirational. Many of you won’t have it, so don’t worry about that. But if your work has been incorporated into well known guidelines and is now reflected in the current standard of care. I mean, that is absolutely something that you want to make sure comes through in your resume, even if it’s in a completely different subject matter area. And of course, even if it’s in a completely different subject matter area, if you’ve done work as a PI or any you know, as an investigator in clinical studies that were pharmaceutical related, and those studies supported an FDA approval of a medicine or a new indication for that medicine, or anything like that that is related to the pharmaceutical company and regulatory process that is Also something that you definitely want to highlight, even if the subject matter is totally different.
So again, whether or not you include each of those studies by their title is maybe less important here, because if the specialty is different, you want to make sure that the focus is on the impact. What does it say about the skills that you have, the experience that you have? What does it say about the impact of the work that you have been involved in?
That’s what you want to do. And so this definitely might be an area where you just say you’ve had X number of publications, and then you describe the sort of areas of that research in which you were highly active and the impact of that research, and then you offer it. The bibliography is available upon request, so someone can ask for that. This helps to ensure that what’s important, right? What is the point of including this on your resume is how it illustrates something that they want in the person that they want to hire for this role.
And they don’t want something that is unrelated from a specialty or subject matter point of view. But they do want someone who knows how research gets done, someone who knows how publications get from sort of idea to the journal. They do want that. So again asking yourself, Why am I including this, and what is the person who’s going to receive my resume going to be looking for, and especially if it’s in a different subject matter area, wanting to really highlight those skills and not the differences, because when someone sees a study title that seems totally unrelated from a subject matter point of view, they’re human.
Their brains do not automatically fill in the gap. That we’re talking about right now, which is to say, okay, even though it’s in a different subject matter, what that shows me about this candidate is that they have research experience. That’s not that’s not really how it works. They will focus in on, well, this is quite different than the kind of doctor that we are looking for today. And you don’t want that, right? So, so that is how you decide, depending upon the relevance to the subject matter area, and a little bit the relevance of the role, again, whether it’s in clinical development or medical affairs, pharmacovigilance and so forth, what is the purpose you are trying to achieve of having it on your resume based on the specific job that you are applying for? And that’s what people mean when they say, tailor your resume, right?
This will be different depending upon the company, depending upon the job, the role within the company. But you’re really asking yourself, How do I illustrate something that they are listing on their job description as a requirement or desired experience? How can I illustrate that with the research work that I have been involved in in the past, regardless of whether you have a lot of that or just a little bit of that, regardless of whether it is clinical research or totally different kind of research. That’s the the ultimate, you know, sort of question to be answered is, what is this going to illustrate? How is it going to match up? And how can I best position it so that it does match and does tell the story of the transferable skills and the relevant skills that you have, without distracting the reader about what’s different about you as compared to the requirements for the role that you’re applying for.
So that’s what’s meant, in this case, around publications, about tailoring your resume and whether or not to include individual publications on your industry resume. I hope this helps you think through really you know several different approaches, including listing all of them in full, all the way through to listing, really none of them in full, but describing that you have a bibliography describing sort of the size of it and emphasizing the specific skills that you feel it reflects. And again, those should match the job description, like that’s that should be something they’ve said they’re looking for, and you include it and you frame it in in that way.
So when you’re making your industry resume. Don’t lose all of the academic projects and research bits that you’ve done just because they are not related maybe to the job that you’re hosting, there’s still some value in them. So Don’t, don’t lose those, but do make sure that you know as you’re thinking about the job and you’re thinking about what else is on your resume and how else you are tailoring yourself to really match with the employer is looking for on balance that should help you think through whether or not you include these individually or you include them in some sort of a consolidated and more skill focused way. So I hope that helps you think through tailoring your resume specifically around publications and research experience. That’s all for today. Bye for now, that’s it for today. Bye for now, you.
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