You have a science background and are interested in 'the business side of science'. 

What options do you have?

Here are the main options I was considering when making the transition from the PhD into the business side of science, what I knew then, and what I have learned since. The commentary is of course all from my perspective, so please consider that your pros and cons may differ!

Industry scientist position: stay at the bench, but move into industry with the goal of working your way over to the business side.

• Scientist

Pro: most immediately relevant role, given your background. You will start being exposed tangentially to corporate processes depending on the size of the company

Con: it can be difficult to successfully move from a scientist role to a business role internally and is not a common path. That being said, if you are willing to wait until later in your career, these roles eventually have some business considerations included in the work!

The more school options: leverage additional educational opportunities or training to build the skill set necessary to land a job away from the bench. 

• MBA 

Pro: clearest training in business skills and acumen. These programs typically prioritize expanding your network, internships, and job placement

Con: more school and investment

• Law School

Pro: for those who brave it, the combination of a PhD and law degree can be extremely attractive for roles such as intellectual property (IP) lawyer or in venture capital 

Con: so much more school and investment

• Post Doc

Con: while it may be necessary to buy time, those reviewing your resume from the business side often do not value the post doc. The question becomes, "If you wanted to go into the business side, why did you waste time doing more science?" The only caveat would be if you are working on starting a company during this time, which can be a very helpful experience in looking for your next non-science role

Find a job that will train you: take an entry-level position at an organization that will give you your first business experience.

• Consulting

Pro: broadest range of experience and skills learned in the shortest amount of time all with decent pay

Con: no work-life balance with the high stress and pace of the consulting firms trying to fit in as many projects as possible with as few people as they can manage to maximize profits

• Venture Capital (VC)/ Venture Creation

Pro: commonly hire associates who have a science background, but very little or no experience (although some demonstrated interest) in the business side. Can involve staying close to exciting new science, passionate entrepreneurs, and successful company creators. The pay is typically pretty good

Con: it varies, but I have seen that the schedule can be busy for some VC firms. For me, everything being very early stage did not satisfy my desire to bring solutions to patients in the near term. The business acumen and training you get can be very practical (e.g., how to get a company up and running, identify what ideas have market potential, and investment strategy), but doesn't typically give you insight into how larger companies operate

• Technology Transfer

Pro: starts to get you thinking about what it takes to translate science into solutions for customers, how intellectual property is valued, and basic contracting

Con: this is more something you can do while you are still in school to get experience on your resume. If you do want to go into Tech Transfer as a career, you may need additional training or experience before you would be eligible for the role. The business skills you learn here are also not as complete as the training you would get in some of the other roles

• Medical Science Liason (MSL) or Medical Affairs

Pro: if you enjoy communicating clinically relevant data to physicians, then this can be a great way to dip your toe into the world of industry away from the bench while still heavily leveraging your scientific acumen 

Con: these roles do not give you direct training in common business skills such as forecasting, building business cases, market research, strategy, etc. Though it is easier to transition into those more classic business roles than it would be from a pure scientist role

Which one would you go for?

Michaela Tolman, PhD

Crucial step! Over 50% of roles are filled through personal connections.

What is an informational interview?

Think of yourself as a reporter. Your goal in an informational interview is just to learn through a conversation.

If you don't reach out, you will be behind on your goals and make less-informed decisions. 

If you do reach out, here are some potential benefits:

• Opened doors to new ideas or opportunities

• Added person in your network to reconnect with at a later date

• Confirm, add, or eliminate assumptions you had for your path forward

The worst thing that could happen is that the person does not reply or says no - both of which are fine!

See the 'Resources' page for a networking tracking template

Be sure to...

• Respond promptly to all communication

• Be respectful of their time

• Research them ahead of time

• Ask if there is anyone else they would recommend you connect with

• Send a thank you note!

Inspiration for how to approach the conversation:

About you (concise) 

• • Quick overview of your experience

  • Current situation --> exploring your options

  • Interested in learning about the path they took

About them (most of the time)

• • What options were they considering when making the jump from research to non-research role? Pros and cons they discovered for the different options? How did they learn about the options?

  • What was most helpful in preparing for that first non-research role? Anything they wish they had done?

  • What are the key things they are responsible for in their current role? Is that true for most people in that role? Any variation within or among companies?

  • What is the schedule like? Skills required? 

  • What are the cons of the role? Any types of people that wouldn't do well in that role?

  • What are you thinking about next (if they are willing to share) or where have others gone from this type of role?

  • Are there options to work remotely in this role?

  • (If it isn't redundant) what advice would they give you at this point?

Next steps

• • Anyone they recommend you connect with?

  • Any roles that come to mind, feel free to share

  • (if you want) Would they be willing to look over your resume and give you comments?

Michaela Tolman, PhD

What are the pros and cons of small, medium, and large companies? Which is right for me now?

Small (<100 employees)

Pros

• • Breadth of experience - With fewer people in the company, each role often encompasses a broader range of tasks. This can be a great opportunity to try out and gain experience across functions.

  • Accessibility - From what I have seen, it is somewhat easier to find an opportunity at a smaller company. There are many small companies and startups. In some cases, they may also be willing to take you on with less experience. 

Cons

• • Level of expertise - There are brilliant, very experienced individuals in small companies. That being said, with fewer people, it can be hard to have experts in every function and therefore to access hands-on mentoring when you need it.

  • Stability - With less financial cushion, the future of a small company is relatively less certain.

  • Workload - This can vary, but often roles at small companies include a lot of responsibilities and require quick turn around for important company milestones, which can result in long hours. 

Medium (100-1,000 employees)

Pros

• • Stability - Typically more established runway and les likely that the whole company will restructure or close down. 

Cons

• • Level of mobility - Though the company may still be growing, there is usually not enough mobility where employees can change functions internally at a regular cadence. You may have to wait for openings to make career development moves internally. 

Large (1,000+ employees)

Pros

• • Level of expertise - Well-established companies often hire and retain leaders with a lot of experience.

  • Stability - While some events trigger restructuring (e.g., loss of patents or negative data readouts), it is less likely that the whole company will falter. 

  • Mobility - With many functions and a broad infrastructure, there is a higher chance you can be exposed to, rotate in, or switch into different roles at the same company. 

  • Workload - The workload per employee is typically more manageable at larger companies.

  • Name recognition - a well-known company can add credibility to your resume 

Cons

• • Breadth of experience - Each role in a larger company typically becomes more specialized. This means that the range of responsibilities you may have is likely more narrow than in a smaller company. 

  • Accessibility - Entry level at a larger company can have a higher bar or require more specialized experience than at a smaller company. 

Michaela Tolman, PhD

What are the typical departments within a company? 

This varies greatly by the size of the company and stage of their products! Outlined below are the departments you would find in a larger commercial-stage company. Even then, these functions can be found in various different combinations. The smaller or earlier stage the company is, not all of these are needed and the more roles span a few of these functions. 

In no particular order:

Corporate strategy - the team working on cross-functional strategic problems, processes, and setting the long-term goals for the company

Business development (BD) - the group responsible for handling licensing deals, company mergers and acquisitions

External Innovation (EI) - sometimes a part of business development, but if separate, this group focuses on scouring the world for any interesting new science to leverage

Legal - apart from handling any lawsuits, the legal team plays a key role in mitigating risk for the company. It can also include a separate intellectual property (IP) team focused on patents and topics around marketing exclusivity 

Finance - the finance team is pretty self-explanatory. They manage all of the money coming in, going out, and associated taxes and reporting requirements

Research and Development (R&D) - this is where the scientists live. Anything still in the screening, validation, or exploration phases would be here

Clinical Development - once a product is being tested in humans (in the clinic) through the clinical trial process, the clinical development team comes in to write the trial protocols and engage with hospitals and regulators

Medical - the medical team is responsible for educating and engaging the healthcare community. At the global level, they can help plan what data we need to generate to support the product and advocate for inclusion in medical guidelines. At the local level, medical sales liaisons (MSLs) engage directly with potential customers

Regulatory - simply having a product and completing clinical trials is not enough. You also need to engage with the regulatory agencies (e.g., FDA, EMA, etc.) that approve new products or therapies. This group leads those interactions 

Value and Acces (V&A) - sometimes also called market access, this team is crucial for setting the price of the product and engaging with payers (insurance companies) to ensure that the product is readily available and affordable to your future customers. This function also may have a global team and separate local teams responsible for each country or region

Pharmaceutical Operations and Technology (PO&T) - there are no clinical trials or sales without the product itself. The operations team is crucial for ensuring the production and distribution of the product

Commercial - this is the team that markets and sells the product. Depending on the size of the company, there can be a global function and separate regional or local commercial teams that ultimately ladder down to the sales representatives contacting customers

Forecasting - this team is responsible for plugging in all of the key program or company assumptions into excel and projecting the associated financial implications or calculating the financial impact of different scenarios

Insights - to make sound strategic decisions, you need to understand your customers and the marketplace. The insights team typically works with agencies to perform market research, track trends, monitor competitors, and synthesize implications for the company

Portfolio Management - with multiple products, it becomes important to prioritize across your investments. The portfolio management team works to align spending and effort with the company's overall strategy

Program Management - with all of the functions mentioned so far...hopefully it is clear that someone needs to keep us all on track. Program managers set schedules, timelines, faciliate, and generally manage everything going on in cross-functional teams

Product Team - this is called a number of things (product development team, lifecycle team, etc.) and is basically a small company within the company focused on advancing a single product. Most members report into their various functions, but spend the majority of their time working with others to advance their product of focus

Chief of Staff - many corporate leaders have a 'right hand' person who can help triage information and stand in for him/her in various forums

Human Resources - also known as the 'People Team', HR works to monitor and improve the company culture, resources for development, optimizing compensation among other things

Michaela Tolman, PhD

What are the different levels for each role? Where would should I be, given my experience?

This is a tricky one. I have outlined the most common levels I have seen below, but it should be noted that titles differ widely between and even within companies. The amount of experience needed for a manager role at a start up is not the same as the amount of experience needed at a large company (the bar is often higher at larger organizations) or even the same from one team to another within the same company. 

From least to most experience required:

• Associate/Analyst - coming from school with limited business experience, you would likely be here

• Senior Associate/Analyst 

• Manager - for those with some experience in the industry or consulting, you could start at the manager or senior manager level. Contrary to the name, it is unlikely that you have direct reports or are managing people at this stage. In Boston around 2019 I would expect a manager's salary to be around $130k plus 15-20% bonus and stock options (if applicable)

• Senior Manager

• Associate Director - at this level and above, you are more likely to have direct reports though you are still contributing content yourself. This level typically requires 4-6 years of industry experience

• Director 

• Senior Director - at the director and senior director levels, you are likely contributing less original content and spending more time reviewing/guiding your team members and direct reports

• Executive Director

• Vice President - at the VP level you may be managing multiple teams and/or teams of leaders rather than a single team

• Senior Vice President

• President

• Chief - the 'C suite' makes up the executive team and includes the chief executive officer (CEO) and some combination of other functions depending on the company: chief medical officer (CMO), chief business officer (CBO), chief financial officer (CFO), general counsel or head of legal, chief people officer (head of HR), chief commercial officer (CCO), chief scientific officer (CSO) and chief strategy officer (also CSO)

• The Board - a group of seasoned executives hired to guide the company at key decision or inflection points

Michaela Tolman, PhD

Well-established companies work on annual cycles. These cycles are punctuated by universal planning processes. Becoming familiar with these now will help you get up to speed quickly in your first industry position, better partner with client companies, or elevate the level of planning in your current organization. 

Common corporate processes typically focus on either financials or strategy:

Financial Processes

• LRP

Long range planning focuses on the 3-5 years from now timeframe (though many companies like to keep an even longer high-level view out to 10 or 15 years). Each product and function need to estimate how much money it will bring in (revenue) and how much money it will need (costs). Summing all the revenues and costs across the company allows for a corporate outlook and helps inform prioritization and strategy decisions. LRPs are typically re-calibrated or set in the first half of the year.

• AOP

Annual operating plans focus on the next 1 year timeframe. They include a detailed view of the costs required to accomplish each function's tasks in the following year. These are typically submitted in the second half of the year and approved late that same year or early the following year to allow for unlocking of funds and kicking off of workstreams and hiring in the new year.

• Earnings reports

For public companies, financial reports are owed to shareholders and the public at the close of each quarter of the year (Q1 in April, Q2 in July, Q3 in October, and Q4 in January). These are typically standard readouts led by the finance team where the company announces how much cash, debt, costs, and income they have had in the previous three months. 

Strategic Processes

• Brand or product planning

Depending on the product or business unit's stage, each year they are typically asked to create or refresh their plan or strategy. This process can be called brand planning, integrated customer planning, or some variation thereof and usually happens in the first part of the year prior to the broader disease or therapeutic area planning. 

The general steps are as follows:

• • • • • Situational assessment - what do we know about the market, competitors, our position, etc so that we can determine our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)

        • Where to play - determine which points along the journey of your customers can have the most impact with the least amount of investment to increase uptake of your product

        • How to win - once you know what behaviors you want to influence, determine how they are most effectively changed to your desired future behaviors (e.g., buying your product instead of your competitor's). This gives you your strategic imperatives or critical success factors - things you must achieve to meet your goals

        • Tactical planning - once you know what you need to achieve, you can map out the tactics or activities that you plan to do in order to make those goals a reality

• Disease or therapeutic area planning

If you focus solely on the plan for each product in isolation, you may miss synergies or opportunities to maximize your potential in the disease or therapeutic area as a whole. For example, you are selling apples in the fall and your apple strategy is to buy all the crates, stands, signs etc. and to then throw them out at the end of the season, because it is cheaper to do so than to pay for storage. You are also selling oranges in the winter. Your orange strategy also requires buying crates, stands, signs, etc. and throwing them away at the end of the season. If you look across your whole fruit strategy, you can see that there are cost savings by using the same crates, stands, signs etc for your apple season and your orange season. It may require some re-painting, but on the whole, you are maximizing your resources. 

Michaela Tolman, PhD

Slide creation is an art more than a science, but there are a few key tips that will help you elevate your game. 

Content

• Only make one point per slide

• Make sure your title tells the conclusion of the slide

• Always site references and spell out abbreviations at the bottom

Formatting

• Make sure all font in a similar format is the same color, font and size

• Don't use font smaller than 12, if you are intending it to be read

• Align shapes and text

• Add a shaddow to a shape for emphasis

• Avoid white text 

• Avoid red and green together for those who are red/green color blind

Tools

• Add common functions to your quick links toolbar (File, Options, Quick Access Toolbar). I have the eyedropper, format painter, new shape, and automatic alignment/distribution buttons

• ThinkCell (see 'Resources' page)

• Grammarly plugin (see 'Resources' page)

• Learn Microsoft keyboard shortcuts (see 'Resources' page) 

Until these become automatic, I used to keep many of these as a checklist or sticky notes on my computer to reference before sending a presentation

Michaela Tolman, PhD

In very few settings can you do everything. Even if you can do everything, you probably don't need to/shouldn't and will be asked to prioritize or rank the importance of each opportunity/thing you want to do.

There are many ways to prioritize your efforts. For making any trade-off decision, you should weigh the pros and cons - also known as a cost/benefit analysis or 'business case'. Here are a few common metrics for consideration:

Cost

• • How much money will it take?

  • How much time will it take?

  • How many people will it take?

  • Is there an opportunity cost (e.g., losing out on doing something else)?

  • Is it increasing risk or uncertainty?

Benefit

• • How much money will it make?

  • How much time will it take to make that money (money promised in 10 years is not as valuable as money promised in 2 years)?

  • What advantages will it bring us in the marketplace?

  • Is it aligned with our broader strategy?

  • Are there intangible benefits (e.g., corporate image)?

  • Does it decrease our risk or uncertainty?

In general, you want to maximize what you get out (benefit) for what you put in (cost).  To summarize all of these considerations, it can be helpful to create a heat map in table format, a 2x2 graph plotting different options along the axes of cost and benefit, and/or put financial numbers to the different options with an NPV (net present value) assessment. 

Michaela Tolman, PhD

How can I increase awareness of my own working style and help my team work better together?

(See examples on the 'Resource' page)

• Strengths Finder - Strengths assessment can be used to maximize your impact and better engage with your teams

• DiSC - Personality quiz and framework used to help increase self-awareness and team dynamics

• Lifelines - Jumpstart the 'get to know you' phase by sharing a one-slide life story

• Manus Tria - Means 'band of three' in Latin. For larger teams needing to connect across levels and groups, set up mini mentoring groups that regularly meet, align on topics for discussion, share learnings, and support each other

Michaela Tolman, PhD

What consulting firms are out there?

So many!

Here are two types of consulting firms generally open to those of us coming from a science background:

The 'Big 3' and Generalist Consulting Firms: These are firms that work on generally a wide range of project types and across many different types of industries. 

Pros

• • They generally are big names and well respected on your resume when later looking for a job outside of consulting

  • The pay is generally higher than smaller consulting firms

  • The broader range of experience you get in these firms can keep your options open if you haven't yet decided what industry you want to go into after consulting

  • The support for slide building, administrative tasks, and education can be better than smaller firms

Cons

• Pre-COVID and, from what I hear, still somewhat now, these firms typically work via an on-site model where you travel to the customer's location 3-5 days out of the week

• The acceptance rate can be lower for these firms since they are well-known and attract top clients and talent across all industries

• If you know that you want to specialize in one industry (e.g., life sciences), they can't guarantee that all of your projects will have this focus

Examples

• The 'Big 3' or 'MBB' are McKinsey, Bain, and BCG

• Others include Accenture and LEK

Boutique Life Sciences Consulting Firms: smaller firms focused on biotech and healthcare exclusively. They may be part of a larger organization or stand alone and there are many!

Pros

• Get to work exclusively on projects for healthcare, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies

• Typically a centralized working model where you only travel to the client site for key meetings

• Still gives you that bootcamp in business skills and accumen

• Still pays fairly well

• May have science background-specific track and or training for those with PhDs or post docs

Con

• Doesn't open as many doors or have quite as high pay as the larger generalist consulting firms (especially when compared to the MBB)

• Somewhat less support for more administrative or basic consulting tasks, so those fall to the newest person on the team

Examples

• Well-known names include: Trinity, Putnam, ClearView, Clarion, Health Advances, Charles River Associates, ZS, etc.

• There are many, many more smaller shops and those that focus on specific types of projects (e.g., Deallus for competitive intelligence)

Michaela Tolman, PhD

When is the best time to apply to consulting firms? 

These days, consulting firms are almost always looking for new talent. That being said, there are typical recruiting cycles that you should be aware of. 

If you are coming from the PhD path, often consulting firms will hire you a year in advance of your start date, because they know that you need some time to wrap up your research and defend. Another reason to start preparing and thinking about your path early! 

First: Applications open to PhD and post doc-focused summer programs in the spring each year

Second: Many of these summer or 3-day introduction programs then feed into the yearly recruiting pool, which is most active late summer and early fall

An easy way to open a dialogue with a consulting firm is to reach out to their talent acquisition person or general contact email, let them know that you are interested, and ask to confirm their recruitment timelines for someone with your background. 

Michaela Tolman, PhD