Career Profile: Pharmaceuticals
 The pharmaceutical industry consists of companies who develop and produce medicine. Over the past 30 years, it has become a billion dollar industry. For those who regularly read magazines or watch television you have probably seen the advertisements produced by pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharmaceutical companies are defined as those with revenues in excess of $3 billion dollars or expenditures of $500 million which includes companies such as Pfizer, Novartis, and AstraZeneca. These companies and others spend millions of dollars to research, license, and market the pharmaceuticals they develop. Although it is a painstakingly long process, on average it takes at least 15 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to have a drug reach approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable in business today.
Considering that pharmaceutical is a billion dollar industry, many career paths exist within the field. Everything from medical doctors to human resource managers are needed in the industry. Typically, Big Pharma companies will segment their company according to discovery, research, development, company operations, and medical affairs, a critical component of any pharmaceutical company. Medical service liaisons who are MDs and PhDs, introduce a company’s drug into the medical community in order to build interest in further research and ultimately influence medical professionals to consider using the drug with patients should it be approved.
The pharmaceutical industry is especially interested in those who possess scientific backgrounds in chemistry and medicine. However, for those looking to get into the industry other opportunities are available that do not require an MD. Perhaps one of the more popular sales occupations is pharmaceutical sales, where sales representative’s visit with physicians to introduce them to the latest drug for a particular ailment and encourage the doctor to market it to his patients. Once a booming field, pharmaceutical sales in recent years has taken a bit of a hit and reduced some of its sales force to meet cost-cutting efforts, despite the high profitability of the industry. Primarily because their have been too many sales reps competing for doctor’s attention. Plain and simple: the number of pharmaceutical reps has vastly outnumbered practicing physicians.
Aside from sales, the industry has research jobs such as a research scientist who conducts experiments and publishes the results, clinical research physicians are charged with directing how experimental drugs will be tested and under what conditions, to business development executives who, similar to other business development professionals, identify and target new business that is aligned with the company’s interests.
The job market for the pharmaceutical industry remains unclear as many of the Big Pharma companies have started lowering their costs by outsourcing functions previously performed in-house. Nevertheless, those with a scientific background, even for those wanting a career in pharmaceutical sales, may find it is an edge over an ever increasing competitive market.
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