Optimizing the Next Step

Optimize your professional journey to landing future opportunities with the following tips:

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Maintain Professional Readiness: Your resume/CV should always be up to date. Don’t have professional interactions via conferences or informational interviews only to scramble when your resume is requested. Similarly, interesting opportunities pop up at unexpected times and you want to be ready to engage. Have your resume/CV reviewed/critiqued by experienced individuals who can coach you on how best to optimize the document for maximum impact.

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Seize the moment to establish connections when you are introduced to other professionals and don’t be shy about making the request for a follow-up discussion. You won’t always get a yes, but you will never know unless you try. Most individuals try to be accommodating, particularly if they determine that your interest is genuine.

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Do Your Homework: Understand the job market and your target organizations in terms of business trends and corporate strategy by leveraging publicly available information (company websites, press releases, job postings). Contact individuals at those same organizations, request informational interviews and be prepared to share the insights from your research. People notice when you have bothered to do some work in advance.

For start-ups, learn as much as you can about the science of the team but also about elements of their business. Rounds of financing, who is participating in those rounds, significant partnerships, cash on hand and burn rate. Do they have corporate partners and if so, are those partners renewing, growing, decreasing, or stopping those relationships? Are they announcing bona fide progress of their pipeline? Note: don’t be the person who joins an organization only to be laid off after 6 months due to them running low on money. Do your diligence up front.

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For larger players with established product lines, learn how their products have fared over time. Declining, stable or growing? Is one sector of their business outperforming the marketplace? How well balanced is their portfolio and how well is it progressing? How are strategic investments (internal expansions, partnerships, acquisitions) playing out over time?

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Pay particular attention to hiring trends. Is research growing faster than development or vice versa? Is their manufacturing footprint growing (good sign of company confidence in their pipeline) or contracting? What are outside voices, especially analysts, saying about these companies? These insights can be leveraged to understand whether you are seeing an organization in expansion mode with good career prospects or one where they will likely undergo contraction over time with fewer opportunities and potentially workforce reductions.

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Similar guidance applies to client service organizations (CRO/CMO as examples) where client stability or organization growth trends can be informative. Keep in mind though that those sectors will flex in alignment with their customer base so a decrease in work from a given client may be reflective of that other team as opposed to always suggesting dissatisfaction with the service organization’s work.

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Learn about and track the journeys of early career professionals in those organizations. Movement within an organization suggests a culture of mentoring, sponsorship and focus on career development. Lack thereof may suggest the opposite.

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Tell Your Story: Create a concise narrative that highlights your key skills and interests. Hiring managers will respond better to a well-crafted message as opposed to a meandering story. You should be able to relate a narrative (< 5 minutes) of your past journey, what you have learned/experienced and where you hope to go in the future. Help people understand your ‘WHY’ in a way that makes you a desirable candidate. Ensure that you are emphasizing your strengths with a growth mindset and an open mind about possibilities.

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Remember The Extra Details: Highlight important additional details about yourself in addition to your technical training. Examples could be the ability to speak more than one language, internships/co-ops/work experience(s), leadership roles in organizations including volunteer work. Are you a strong problem solver? Have examples of strong learning agility? Amplify how those elements strengthen your ability to perform in a professional setting. Help people see you as a well-rounded talent as opposed to someone with a narrow set of technical skills.

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Be Visible as a Professional: Utilize vehicles like LinkedIn to broaden your exposure to other professionals. Ensure that your profile has relevant content and is up to date. Nothing is more puzzling than seeing someone on LinkedIn with 500+ connections, virtually nothing in their profile and zero updates. People pay close attention to the content in profiles. Similarly, don’t be shy about posting on professional milestones, accomplishments, and awards. They allow those who already know you to keep track of your development and on occasion will cause someone to reach out to you.

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Engage Early and Consistently: One of the bits of advice that some students receive is that they should wait until they are close to graduation to engage in job hunting. This is TERRIBLE ADVICE. While it is true that many roles have time sensitivity, the failure to engage early on shortens your time to grow your professional network, limits your ability to engage individuals/teams who might be interested in you for future opportunities, decreases your insights into those organizations and reduces your ability to gain confidence in professional interactions. You want to practice your interview approaches long before the real thing.

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As an example, I did close to 250 informational interviews with external colleagues – mostly students but also some early career professionals in 2023. Only a portion of those interviews were with individuals who were actively in the job hunt. But I now have a group of individuals who are 1-3 years out from being in the job hunt that I’m keeping a close eye on for the future. In addition to highlighting their talents, they are also showing me initiative and professional instincts on how to get ahead of the curve.

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Consistency in contact once that initial connection has been made is critical. I see many individuals who make a connection, go radio silent for 2 or more years and then emerge looking to reengage. Not the end of the world but they have missed the opportunity to build a stronger relationship over time where they provide updates and seek advice. Particularly in those cases where individuals or teams could be crucial conduits to professional opportunities, those more frequent touch points keep you fresh in their minds. Plus, you gain the benefit of insights into the evolution in strategy, opportunities and hiring patterns of those teams.

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Similarly, while many organizations hire year round, there can be cycles in their business where windows open and close. Insights into timing around recruiting seasons for internships, fellowships and campus hiring are essential elements if you don’t want to miss the wave. As an example, campus hires showing up at Lilly in Summer 2024 were identified starting in Spring of 2023 and extending through Fall of the same year. Similarly, internship selections for Spring/Summer/Fall 2024 were completed by the end of 2023 with many roles locked up much earlier. Knowing these business cycles is crucial for your interests. Every organization has a different cadence and it is in your best interest to know their approach.

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Avoid narrowing the conversation (and your options) prematurely: Time and time again, I see individuals who want to quickly focus the conversation on one or two areas of interest (Regulatory, Project Management, Medical Affairs seem like popular areas). But this immediately drives the discussion into a narrow direction and potentially precludes other options. Particularly early in your career, you don’t know what you don’t know about industry, professional paths and the like. Obviously, if you are interviewing for a particular role, that focus is key.

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But if the situation is more of an informational interview or one of seeking mentorship, start instead by establishing your professional credentials, relate your work experiences if relevant and then turn to a conversation of your longer-term interests. Unless you have an established track record in a particular space, begin the exploration in a broad way about opportunities for someone with your training and experiences and then step through subsequent questions that can be more focused about specific areas. Be careful to avoid leaving the impression that you are closed to other opportunities – don’t give the impression of being inflexible.

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Keep in mind that many hiring managers and teams will view your credentials through the lens of your technical training. Learn how to use this to your advantage even if those spaces are not your long-term goal. The professional world is quite different from academia, even in the laboratory-based groups where collaboration and teamwork are the norm. That next step could be the steppingstone to your destination, you will gain useful experience and you might surprise yourself through a reevaluation of your priorities based on those experiences.

All journeys begin with a first step and your experiences will guide and shape your future decisions. Speaking as someone who joined industry with 1) strong focus on lab-based work in early discovery, 2) absolute rejection of the management track and 3) not seeing Lilly as a long-term home, I will note that things have changed a bit over the years. In truth, I am fortunate that the organization was willing to invest in me and I was at least open to the possibilities. Given how strongly I felt about all three of those elements at the start of my career, I am somewhat bemused as to how the journey played out.

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Everyone will have a distinct experience, different goals, and a different path. Your best bet is to be well prepared for the journey but keep an open mind along the way.

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Best wishes to all.