Are you a physician or scientist currently working in a government agency like the FDA, NIH, or CDC? Have you wondered if your unique skills and experiences are transferable and valuable to the pharmaceutical or biotech industry?
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
- How federal health agency skills and experience may be aligned to physician roles in the pharmaceutical industry
- Job search strategies, current job market challenges, and how to stand out
- Potentially relevant federal agencies that employ physicians and scientists, and related transferrable skills
In this podcast episode, we delve into why physicians and scientists from agencies like the FDA, CDC, NIH, CMS, and even DoD/BARDA possess highly relevant expertise for roles within pharma, medical device, and biotech companies. I’ll share some insights and encouragement for those considering this specific career shift, emphasizing the significant value you bring and the actionable steps needed to navigate the move into industry.
In this Episode:
[03:20] Relevant government agencies for transferable skills
[8:00] The interplay between scientific communication and policy
[15:54] Start now, start with LinkedIn
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
Episode 86: Getting a Job in Pharma Without Prior Experience
Episode 87: How to Get Started Finding a Nonclinical Job in Pharma
Episode 88: What Physicians Do in Pharma: Drug Discovery and Development
Episode 89: Physician Jobs in Pharma: Medical Affairs
Episode 90: Physician Jobs in Pharma: Clinical Research and CROs
Episode 91: Physician Jobs in Pharma: Drug Safety and Pharmacovigilance
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 131 – From NIH, CDC, FDA to Pharma: Physician Job Transitions
Hey there. Welcome back. Today, we’re going to talk about transitioning not from clinical medicine, but from government, nonclinical jobs for physicians into the pharmaceutical industry. I have to say, with recent events, in just the past several months, there have been there’s been just an enormous increase in interest and in in DMS, to me, just personal experience, right of people asking questions about whether or not physicians or scientists who are working at the FDA or at NIH, for example, could be attractive candidates in the pharmaceutical industry, and I’ve gotten enough of those questions that I thought maybe a quick podcast episode would be the right thing to do.
So certainly, there are a lot I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on these government jobs. I’m certainly not, or I have never worked for any of these government agencies. So I’m going to be making some generalizations based upon you know, what I know from friends and colleagues, as well as just you know, sort of common knowledge and leave some of the details you know.
If this is you and you’re interested in this, I mean some of the details of your transferable skills and what your journey might look like are obviously unique to you, but I and I also don’t know anything about whether or not there are any contractual reasons why you might not be able to shift out of one of the roles that you’re in today and into another, such as A conflict of interest, type of restriction. So it’s always, of course, worth understanding your own terms of employment, right?
And as you think about whether or not this is a move that you’d like to make, but since there is so much interest, I’m going to at least speak to what I can you know,
in contrast to most of the students who take my course or the people who are listening to my podcast, I think most of those folks are people who are, you know, physicians or other types of clinicians who are working in clinical jobs, who are interested in non-clinical jobs, very often in pharma, but sometimes in other industries as well.
And a smaller subset of my folks are people who are clinical and staying clinical, but interested in just sort of these broader career principles for advancement that they’re using to get ahead in academics or in their hospital leadership and so forth. I really haven’t spent any time talking about government positions, again, something I don’t know that much about on a personal level, and it’s something that I think is perhaps less common, or at least has historically been less common.
I think that people who are working at the FDA, the CDC, the NIH, tend to have very long and rewarding careers at those places. So I guess I’m going to try to, in this podcast, address two main things. You know, one is sort of like, what kind of federal agencies or could be state agencies, I suppose our physicians working in today, and what kind of experiences do they have that would be attractive as a candidate in pharmaceutical, Medical Device, biotech, et cetera.
So I mean, the perhaps most obvious one that comes to mind is the FDA right, the Food and Drug Administration. Obviously, physicians and scientists who are working there are often involved in the evaluation of clinical trials, in the process of drug approvals and in regulatory policy at the CDC right, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
You’ve got experts in epidemiology, infectious disease, public health, and all of those are relevant as well. In industry. At the NIH you have researchers in all kinds of biomedical sciences, translational medicine, clinical trials, implementation science. None of these are necessarily exclusive these. This just sort of what comes to mind.
Even CMS right, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, while not necessarily directly related to clinical trials, is really relevant to the development of new medicines, because in order for them to be successfully commercializing and use right, it’s really important to understand reimbursement models, health care economics and real-world evidence, that is, you know, the kind of evidence. It’s not a randomized control trial, but is a sort of an observational trial from the from data that you get from people who are using these medicines when they’re already in market.
And then there is also, you know, potentially, physicians and scientists who are working within the Department of Defense, or possibly within BARDA, which is the biomedical and. Advanced Research and Development Authority working on medical countermeasures, pandemic preparedness, vaccine development, biodefense, and then even places like the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency or the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, there’s, I think still quite a bit of relevant science, epidemiology and occupational medicine, workplace safety and implementation science type work going on, I think, in these organizations.
So that is probably not a comprehensive list, but is. It’s a short list just to say that, like, yes indeed, there’s many federal agencies that have physicians and scientists working in them, doing work that’s highly relevant to the pharmaceutical and med tech industries.
What kinds of roles could these folks transition to? You know, again, in contrast to my usual audience, the usual audience is saying, All I have is clinical experience, and I don’t have experience with trials or with epidemiology or research design or with policy. And in this case, folks have actually quite a bit, and in fact, they may have a little bit of of the opposite. I won’t call it limitation, but oftentimes people have made, you know, their careers in government and have not been clinical in a very long time.
So although they do have, from their education point of view, a clinical specialty, they haven’t been active in it in a really long time. And for that reason, it is likely that they may have more success, or maybe a better alignment of their current skills, and from a transferable skill point of view within clinical development or drug safety, and maybe even into Regulatory Affairs, I usually don’t think of regulatory affairs as being really a physician area because very often it’s not a lot of times folks working in regulatory are not medical, sometimes they’re legal professionals, but, but this is a really great opportunity, potentially for somebody who has been working as a Physician or scientist in a regulatory capacity to potentially come and work in regulatory affairs in the pharmaceutical industry, medical affairs as a function, maybe less clearly aligned with some of these because, again, a lot of the skills that folks are coming from, from government, with the transferable skills are things like a deep understanding of clinical trials and of, you know, research design and of how those types of studies align and deliver against regulatory requirements, right?
So that that is sort of, it’s very development focused, then that is less in the purview of medical affairs. If you need a refresher, you can go back to my series somewhere in the middle of this podcast stream where I did a sort of a series on each of the major functions, pharmacovigilance, clinical development, medical affairs, it and kind of did a little breakdown of where and how each of the functions works.
But it doesn’t mean that somebody couldn’t be successful in a medical affairs role. It just means that the types of transferable skills that they have are like, very obviously and probably highly desirable, very obviously lined up with clinical development and Regulatory Affairs and Drug Safety types of roles, because the work is largely the same. The other thing, from a transferable skill point of view, is just sort of understanding scientific communication and how it inner intersects with policy. A lot of folks in a lot of these jobs may have a deeper working knowledge of statistical analysis, and again, that will be, you know, in pharma, that will be more heavily represented in the clinical development side.
But there are, there are statisticians right that that work in pharma, who are supporting the clinical development folks with that as their specialty within the regulatory and government agencies, it might be the same in that there’s, you know, statisticians there who really hold that expertise, but certainly the folks who are working on those kind of programs would have a lot of transferable skills, I think, in research design and statistical analysis and in understanding policy, and in understanding the payer landscape, right health care economics and how that all fits in.
So I guess I would summarize by saying I think especially the folks who are reaching out to me because they are physicians and scientists who are working in those agencies today, I think absolutely you have a really desirable background and skill set, and I think it is highly transferable.
And if you wanted to pursue something in industry, on the private side, think you would likely be very successful at doing so in the skills and experiences that you have would be really in demand. I will also say, because it this is true for everybody. The job market right now, it’s very, very tight. There are just dozens, if not hundreds, of applicants for every job that is posted almost right away. I mean, it’s just wild. So it’s tight. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
My students are still getting jobs. I still have, you know, every month, I have success stories of folks who have gotten their first job in industry without prior experience, certainly without most of the things that are listed on the job description. And it’s all just come from working the process that we lay out in my course Industry Insider, which are, if you’re interested, you could check out the show notes.
It is, it is a crowded market right now, and I think that with some of the policy changes and so much interest that I’m hearing right now from these physicians who are currently working at agencies, I think there’s the possibility that the market becomes even more crowded. And if you had asked me last year, you know, and in fact, some people have, you know, physicians have said, Oh, I’m coming from the FDA.
Would pharma be interested in that? I think the answer to that would immediately be yes, very much, right? People are very interested in that. I suppose there is a possibility that if there is a large number of applicants who are bringing these government agency experiences that that that, in and of itself, could sort of flood the market, and that you may not be as much of a differentiator soon as it has been historically. I really, of course, have no idea how all of this, these changes will shake out, I don’t know, and nor am I encouraging anybody one way or the other.
But since the question has come in so many times, people are thinking about a switch, I think the most important thing to know is most people who, who get there, you know, who get entry level jobs. And by that I mean, you know, listen to the whole podcast, but by that, I mean folks who are at a director level, or possibly an associate director level in pharma, often have no prior pharmaceutical experience. They may not need to have had research experience.
They may not necessarily have had, frankly, most of what’s listed in the job description, they are building their case based on transferable skills for the most part, and you would be as well. But your transferable skills, it might be easier to recognize, because you’ll see them sort of specifically in some of these job descriptions, particularly as it relates to things around trial design and interpretation or safety.
And of course, don’t forget about the there is pre clinical science in the vast majority of pharmaceutical companies. There’s a component of preclinical so that might be something. I don’t know what happens in the government space in that area, but that is another one.
And as you’re thinking about where you might look, don’t forget about crows, because it’s not just sponsor companies, but this is CROs, and possibly that you would have less direct experience between government and CRO because CRO usually work through the sponsor there, but the nature of the work would be the same.
And I would think that those transferable skills would probably be also just as attractive to CRO is as to as to major pharmaceutical companies or med tech companies, and some of the things specifically right, the physicians coming from clinical medicine may not have experience with but that you might, if you are one of these folks who’ve been emailing me about this question is, you know, understanding an FDA submission for for new drug application, or even understanding some of the international regulations, although you have worked in the US, you might understand how that’s similar or different from others. I don’t know. I’m putting it out there for you to think. About, and certainly would have a lot of familiarity with compliance and a lot of the guidance is that are issued right FDA guidance in particular, but potentially from other agencies as well.
And you would certainly have the same kind of collaborative skills, like of the types of skills in in teamwork, right, in understanding different cross functional roles, in understanding the types of problem solving that are industry relevant and you may, as a result of the work that you’ve been doing in government, have a fairly well-developed starting point for your network with industry professionals.
It has perhaps something you haven’t been thinking about during your career as something that you would want to develop and nurture and maintain. But it might be time now to begin to think about how you can map that out.
And LinkedIn is absolutely the best place to start with that finding folks that you know, either from training right, medical school residency, fellowship and so on, or from the work that you have been doing since that time, and connecting on LinkedIn and then beginning to have some conversations, you know, I if you’re listening to this episode, you’ve probably listened to other episodes, so I don’t want To, you know, sort of overstate the obvious, but you know, LinkedIn is a great place to find the folks that you’re connected with and to reach out to them and to have introductory conversations.
It don’t reach out to people and ask them if they’re hiring or ask them for a job, no, but that is just nuts. Like nobody’s you won’t get very far with that at all, but, but do reach out to people and ask them for for some time, to talk with them about the role that they have and what they think about it, and you know that’s or what their path has been. Sense since you last saw them, since med school, since residency, or whatever it is.
There are a lot of ways to have conversations that ultimately put you in a position to use that person as a referral for a job application. Which is one of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal when you are searching for a job is the recommendation of somebody, even if that person is not the hiring manager, but the weakest way to use that tool is just straight out, come out and ask for a job that will almost always get a no, and it will depend upon what kind of roles are.
Are active, right? Who’s hiring, and so you might be an absolute star of a candidate, but unless there’s a role that’s available that you are aware of that you’ve applied to rate does not does not just fall out of the sky. Same is true for my clinical folks.
But in any case, I this has been a different kind of episode, and it’s one where I do feel a little bit out of my depth, other than to say I feel very strongly and optimistic for folks who are coming from government roles, who are interested in moving into pharmaceutical medical device roles, that the skill sets that you built while you’ve been working there are going to be really viewed very, very favorably, and you’ll have to do essentially the same work as everybody else trying
To find their way into a new type of career, right, which is to really build out and optimize your resume, develop and prepare for this specific interview style that occurs within Pharma. And most, most, most importantly, to develop and nurture, reactivate, perhaps in your case, your network, so that you will have people at the companies where you see the job opportunities, so that you can not only, of course, get to know more about that job and maybe more about that team, but that you can get somebody to bring your resume to the top of the stack.
That’s what that’s really what you need is for the hiring manager to look at it, because otherwise there are dozens and potentially hundreds of applicants for every role that you see, and it is, it’s not even a person who does the sifting, right?
So, so to have a person is willing to put in a word on your behalf, even if it’s not a very it can be just sort of a like an acquaintance, type of word, like, I know This person, you should check out their resume that is enormously powerful as compared to just submitting an application. So don’t neglect that part of it.
And if you are looking to make a change, I wish you all the very best of luck with that. I hope this podcast has helped. I hope this episode helped. So I hope all of the previous episodes help, because the strategies absolutely apply today, and they apply to your set of circumstances, which is a little bit different from the lens in which I’ve been talking about most of these topics, but the core strategy is the same, so I know you can sort of do that translation in your head between what I’m referring to as clinical practice, and you’d be thinking of as your government career, but the skills are the same, the process is the same, and you’d be bringing so much to the table, it would be really valuable. So if that’s if that’s you, I hope that you do find what you’re looking for. That’s it for today. Bye for now.
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