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What are the career options for life science-related majors? After graduating from university, some students may find it difficult to find a suitable job with a good pay, probably because industries related to life sciences are not that well developed to absorb all the graduates. With the continuous development and expansion of life sciences industries, more career options are emerging in recent years. The outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020 resulted in rising public health awareness and further promoted the development of healthcare industry. According to the "Report on the Employability of Chinese College Students in 2020" by the China Institute of Employment Research (CIER) at Renmin University of China, the biology/pharmaceutical/medical device job market in 2020 was under better conditions, and ranked the 5th among all college majors.
“Report on the Employability of Chinese College Students in 2020" by the China Institute of Employment Research at Renmin University of China.
Translated by HKLSS.
Here are some detailed career paths that we think you might be interested to explore:
Academia
Generally, it refers to working in a life science-related departments in universities or scientific research institutes. Major tasks involve lab work, research, publications and making scientific progress. Representative careers include:
Professor or Researcher at Research Institutes
After graduation with a life science-related degree, if you choose to enter academia and become a university professor or a senior researcher at a research institute, you would need to continue your postgraduate studies, obtain a doctoral degree, and even receive postdoctoral trainings before you can land in a position in life sciences departments at a higher education institute or research institute. The career paths would be:
1) Undergraduate→PhD→Postdoc→Assistant Professor→Associate Professor→Professor; or
2) Undergraduate→PhD→Postdoc/Researcher→Assistant Researcher→Associate Researcher→Senior Researcher
Technician in a Life Science Laboratory
A college or a graduate degree with a life science related major would qualify for a lab technician in universities and research institutes, but the job openings might be limited as often laboratories or research teams with sufficient scientific research funds will hire lab technicians.
Industry
It refers to working in private or public for-profit companies in the fields that related to life sciences, such as pharmaceutical, health services, biotechnology, agriculture, food and beverage or cosmetics. These careers can be grouped according to job functions, for example:
Sales Representatives
Take the sales representative position of a pharmaceutical company as an example, the main stakeholders of these jobs are healthcare professionals in hospitals. Sales reps need to engage new clients to increase product sales, and accomplish sales goals according to company sales plan. They also need to analyze and understand market conditions, especially the regions they cover and are responsible for maintaining customer relations, or involved in educating and influencing healthcare professionals on the product benefits. Sales positions generally require a college degree, majoring in biomedicine or related fields. Multinational pharmaceutical companies and leading domestic pharmaceutical companies might have relatively higher requirements.
Medical Science Liaison (MSL)
The responsibilities of MSL include providing in-depth disease knowledge and product information to physicians and medical researchers. MSL should establish professional relationships with healthcare professionals and key opinion leaders. By providing information to researchers, clinicians, and other key opinion leaders, the MSL accelerates the development, listing, and commercialization of healthcare products. MSLs generally have a doctorate degree in medicine or life sciences with very good communication skills.
Marketing Officers
Working in a marketing department of a healthcare company is responsible for formulating and implementing product brand strategy, marketing plans and management plans. The main duties of the marketing department are to collect industry information, track the latest market trends of the targeted areas, and collect competitor information according to sales requirements and brand strategies. They also conduct product positioning plan and implement marketing plans to shape overall brand images for target audience, as well as cooperate with other departments in product promotion.
Researchers in Research & Development (R&D) Departments
These jobs require working in the R&D department, and are responsible for new product development. In the R&D department of a pharmaceutical company, jobs can be further assigned into pre-clinical and clinical departments. Different R&D stages have different professional requirements and job descriptions. For example, researchers in pre-clinical department and drug discovery stages would spend most of their time in the laboratory; while CRC (Clinical Research Coordinator) and CRA (Clinical Research Associate) participating in clinical trials need to cooperate with clinical trial sites and clinical trial investigators to ensure smooth progress of clinical trials. They also need to conduct data analysis and write reports.
Others
Other career paths are positions that are not directly related to biomedicine or are interdisciplinary, and require certain professional knowledge and skills related to life sciences.
Sciences and Medical Communications
Working in this path often need to keep track of latest scientific findings in life sciences and healthcare fields, and collect information to generate content for science articles, books or create videos. With different types of target audience, they need to adjust their writing styles so that they are able to write scientific reviews for a science journal, or write popular science stories for children and teenagers, or report on biomedicine industry trends for pharma executives or investors.
Biomedical Intellectual Property Agent
Intellectual property attorneys are patent agents who generally work in law firms and provide clients with patent services in the biomedical industry. Their general tasks include drafting patent application documents, translating and proofreading, responding to official review opinions, searching relevant patent cases, conducting application and infringement analysis, managing customer services and consulting inquiries. The position of biomedical patent attorney requires a strong academic background with careful and rigorous professional qualities.
Management Consultants
Management consultants provide solutions to problems for companies or organizations, and formulate development strategies and business strategies. Companies in the pharmaceutical industry need management consulting services. Majoring in the life sciences fields may have certain professional advantages when serving pharmaceutical companies or biotechnology companies, but professional knowledge is not the only required essentials. In addition to excellent academic background, consultants also need to have strong communication skills, data analysis and critical thinking mindset, with ability to handle stress and be a fast learner.
Analyst for Biomedical Investment
The biomedical industry has always been one of the hottest industries in equity securities investment. The industry analysts need to study macro-market dynamics, follow the trends of the biomedical industry, analyze the financial documents, R&D pipelines and business strategies of public companies, and have the expertise and knowledge of the cutting-edge progress of the industry and science fields. They also need to conduct due diligence and build valuation models to provide insights for investment decisions.
The aforementioned are just some of the common life sciences-related career paths. With the further development of the life sciences field, the increase of public health needs and affordability, and the national "2030 Healthy China" roadmap to promote progress of the biomedicine sectors, we believe that there will be more and more job opportunities, such as genetic counselors, birth defect prevention and control counselors and other new professions that have emerged in recent years.