![]() I cannot stress this enough, the hiring manager who is going to “read” your application is most likely going to set aside 1 hour of their day to go through 100 applications. It is likely that you will be doing rounds of applications, that second favorite position you have can wait until you do a second round. ![]() ![]() Pick one job per company you are interested in and prepare to apply for those positions, do not apply for more than one position at a company. If you don’t have recommended or desirable skills that is fine, those are more bonus points, but if you do have those as well then those are the jobs you will want to apply to first. If you don’t have the required skills or anything approximating the required skills then bin them and move on…”I don’t know X but I’m a really good learner!” is not going to fly. Next, scan the job postings for the skills they are looking for…typically they will split them into “required” skills and “recommended” or “desirable” skills. Step 2: Find jobs to apply forFor the companies you selected, start reading through the job listings in detail, quickly triage out the ones that are at or near your level and create a stack to read through in more detail once you have completed the triage. Pick a handful that really excite you to start with. Dig into what they actually do, read through their website, Google them and look up relevant articles, look at prominent members of their staff and see what they have done. If you did not do Step 0 then just start by looking at job listings in biotech in the areas you are willing to move and look to see what companies are actively hiring. If you did Step 0 time to reflect back on the places you looked at that you wanted to work and to reconnect with people who know who are connected to those places. Time to do some soul searching about whether you want to stay in your current locality or if you are willing to look anywhere in your country or even anywhere in the world. Okay so you are close to graduating or wanting to move on from your current employment. Actively attempt to work with, collaborate with or at least speak with those people as you prepare for your career. Look into the local biotech community, see how it interfaces with either your current employer or your University, and seek out people who are connected to the industry you are interested in. Do NOT just assume that your schools program will automatically give you the skills you will need to work in the industry you are interested in. Armed with that knowledge actively seek out opportunities to acquire those skills…be proactive. This can be done by perusing their career page or hiring board and looking at the job listings. If it is not already to late for this while you are still in school or still in another position,years before you are going to be looking for a job in biotech, think hard about where you would want to work and look NOW at what those biotech companies actually do, what positions they are hiring and specifically what skill sets they are looking for. This advice assumes you are still early in your education/graduate program or at another job you don’t plan on leaving immediately. This step is for years before you actually are applying for jobs. Step 0: Pick an industry and proactively develop relevant skills To make it more digestable, I will attempt to break it down in a step by step process and provide bold-italics for the TLDR version. This is likely going to be a long post, but hopefully you find it useful. For the purpose of this post I am going to speak from the position of a hiring manager and what I would and would not want to see in an application for an entry level position. I have been on all three sides of the process, as an applicant myself…as a potential colleague to an applicant asked by a hiring manager to review an application and as a hiring manager myself. I thought there might be some interest in hearing some advice on applications to biotech directly from a hiring manager in biotech.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |