Still attempting to pivot out of academia and into a pharma consulting, real-world evidence, outcomes research, medical writing or data science role
It's not a crisis right now, but the job I'm in won't last forever, it turns out
I'm actually hoping to get a job with a big pharma company, so if anyone here lives in that world or can help me get in, would appreciate very much
Also, 
no need to reply if you're going to tell me about how bad big pharma is
I've got enough applications and rejections that I can do a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis
Long-rank test p-value is 0.035, indicating that the curves are different overall
HR for rejection in applications to non-Medical Science Liaison (MSL) roles compared to MSL as baseline is 3.65 (95% CI 1.02 to 13.16, p=0.047), indicating faster rejection
Definitions:
- MSL: Field-based Medical Science Liaison roles focused on scientific exchange with healthcare professionals.
- RWE: Real-world evidence, HEOR, epidemiology, and safety surveillance research roles.
- Trials: Clinical research and CRO roles involved in study execution and trial coordination.
- Other: Roles that don't fit neatly elsewhere, including patient engagement, science communications, and medical education.
Job search milestone: sent out 50 applications as of today
(I started censoring applications at the 90-day mark, assuming that 90 days with no word is a quiet rejection)
65 applications sent out so far (the graph looks different now because I changed the graph's week bins to start on Monday. I had messed them up before and they were starting on Thursday or something.)
I have had 2 job interviews this week, and I'm feeling optimistic
The job application survival curves have progressed a bit
The MSL, Trials and Other curves look more or less the same
Medical Writer jobs is fresh, so there's no rejections yet
New is the RWE rejections, which seem to come a bit faster than the bulk of the rejections in the MSL curve
It's still the type of job that seems like the best fit for me
I just got rejected after the second round of interviews :/
Back to square one
Sent out a few more applications, up to 70 now
Playing the numbers game
I applied for a data sci job a month ago
Got an interview for it a week later
The interview was ~ 5 min and 1 question long:
Interviewer: Oh, you're in Montréal. Can you move to Ottawa? No? Pity.
So we parted ways
The job showed up in my Linkedin alerts today because it was posted again under "Greater Montreal Metropolitan Area"
Same company, same job, word-for-word
(Deepsigh)
Got a job interview
But not with a human
It's with some video AI thing
I hate this timeline so much
@researchfairy Yep. I ran into a few of those in recent weeks. Including one "What do you mean you can't commute from San Francisco to Los Angeles?'
Which, I kinda get. I made the same mistake (albeit very briefly) when I first moved here.
@researchfairy The analysis of your job hunting data. I have a rather large data set (about 271 jobs across seven months, last time I counted) and I was eventually going to do a blog post about it. But then I realized that I haven't had to do a data analysis like this since I finished my degree.
Probability and statistics classes.
@drwho Oohhhh
I can send you the R scripts I use and my own data set
It's a Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis, which is common enough in say cancer clinical trials, but not used often in other contexts
Private message me your email address and I'll send them over if you want :)
@bookandswordblog Oh there's lots of jobs out there, unfortunately it's still very competitive
I talked to a guy who works at a job similar to the kind I want, and he said he applied to ~200 jobs before he got the one he's at
Which is much better than looking for academic jobs
@researchfairy I'm kind of adjacent to that world. Feel free to ping me some questions and/or send me a LinkedIn invitation (link in my profile).
In the meantime, maybe this is of interest?
https://emwa.org/career/getting-into-medical-writing/
Just out of curiosity, do you also consider jobs in regulatory agencies?
(No idea where you are looking geographically, I guess FDA is not the most attractive employer currently)
In industry I heard quite pessimistic things about the job market in the short term but I guess this will pass.
Regulators of course don't pay as well as industry, but I really enjoy the work
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