By many measures, business is booming. The total drug pipeline has swelled by 15% a year over the past three years, compared to the usual annual rate of 10% to 12%. In 2004, pharma spent a record $38.8 billion on R&D, a 12% increase from 2003. And the industry is gradually shrinking the average time for clinical drug development, from 7.2 years in 1993-1995 to 5.9 years in 1996-1998. The biopharmaceutical industry employed 413,700 people in the United States in 2004--a number that's expected to grow to 536,000 in the next decade. The hottest job growth is expected in Massachusetts and Maryland, and the mid-Atlantic states. Other geographical pharma strongholds include Illinois, Indiana, and California, while Big Pharma is increasingly setting up shop in biotech hotspots such as Boston and in North Carolina's research triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill. But there are also fundamental shifts underway in how pharma does business. Unprecedented regulatory and economic pressures are changing drug discovery and development, pushing the industry to find low- or no-cost ways to boost innovation and productivity. Meanwhile, pharma is increasingly relying on lower-cost countries for clinical trials management, manufacturing, and other parts of the pipeline. This supplement on careers in the pharmaceutical industry is intended to help life scientists working in pharma - or hoping to - to understand what these types of shifts will mean for them. We've divided the supplement into three sections: the first, The Outlook, provides a detailed look at the forces at work in pharma and how they are expected to affect hiring. In Big Makeover for Big Pharma, we talk to analysts and industry insiders about what offshoring, outsourcing, the boom in biopharmaceuticals, the introduction of a Medicare drug benefit, and more will mean for life scientists in the industry. And in Measuring Up, we explore how scientists and managers feel about the introduction of performance management techniques into the drug discovery and development process. We've also interviewed eight life scientists working in pharma about what their jobs are like and the career paths that brought them there. These profiles, called The Pipeline, clearly demonstrate that despite, or maybe even because of, the seismic changes under way, the pharmaceutical industry remains a uniquely rewarding and satisfying place to spend your career. The third section, The Guide, includes practical information for the 21st century job hunt, from composing a resumé that looks good to computers as well as humans, to using job boards for an effective, round-the-clock job search. You Don't Need a PhD, is a look at the sunny job prospects for science types with master's or bachelor's degrees. And in But Do You Need an MBA?, we investigate what an MBA, or maybe just a little business training, can do for life scientists hoping to move forward in the industry. We close the supplement by looking to the future. In The View from the Top, four leaders in pharma R&D speak about their own career paths, and what they see on the horizon for their companies and the industry as a whole. We hope this supplement will provide job seekers at every level with a glimpse of the huge array of opportunities available to life scientists in pharma. Many thanks to the sponsor of this supplement, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, for their support. | |
These are interesting times for life scientists working in the pharmaceutical industry.