You'll find Consultant Writers in specialist market access, real-world evidence and patient-centred outcomes consultancy, which works with clients to understand, demonstrate and communicate value of their innovations. But how does the Consultant Writer role fit into all this?

What does a Consultant Writer do?

Consultant Writers are responsible for writing market access, health economics and outcomes research deliverables across a variety of specialisms.

These can take many forms such as health technology assessment (HTA) submissions to bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Medicines Consortium, real-world evidence/epidemiological study protocols, systematic and targeted literature reviews, slide decks, study reports, value propositions, value dossiers, objection handlers, journal manuscripts, and conference abstracts and posters.

Consultant Writers tend to work within project teams to ensure the written deliverables are in line with the client’s overall needs and are appropriate for the intended audience. It is also the responsibility of the Consultant Writer to ensure that the deliverables present data accurately, that they are technically and scientifically robust and that they are produced in alignment with internal and external standards and requirements.

How does this differ from a typical medical writer role?

While there is definitely some overlap of skills, the Consultant Writer role will be particularly attractive to people who have an interest and experience in applying their writing skills and knowledge within a market access and/or outcomes research capacity.

What sort of work will I be doing on a day-to-day basis?

The work is generally very varied, and a Consultant Writer will typically be working on a number of projects for different clients at any one point in time. This may include working with our real world evidence and patient-centred outcomes team to write a protocol for a non-interventional study, or interpreting and communicating the results from one of our studies via a study report or manuscript. As a consultancy with specialist market access expertise, our writers also regularly work with our clients to communicate the value of their products via value propositions or value dossiers. They also play a hands-on role in producing the HTA submission documents and objection handlers that are needed by our clients to ensure funding and uptake of their products.

Why should I be a Consultant Writer?

The Consultant Writer role involves a lot of variety and there are countless opportunities to learn and develop your skills on a daily basis: you could very quickly become a subject matter expert across a number of different areas! Consultant Writers play a vital role in communicating the value of treatments and services to a variety of stakeholders within what is currently a thriving and sought-after part of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. Often, the work they do could be the deciding factor in important payer decisions; for example, by effectively communicating key information and evidence our writers could help influence the NICE to recommend an innovative treatment for use in the NHS, thereby making a genuine difference to the lives of patients.

If you are interested in working for an energetic, fun and fast-paced agency I recommend messaging Daniel Laghaney on LinkedIn for a conversation.

#pharmajobs #ismpp #isth #fmj #ncbi #gpp3 #imedhsc #medicalwriter #HTA #realworldeveidence #medicalwriting #medicalwriter #marketaccess 

Back to growth – Re-growth and Support for Life Science Technology     

The last few months have been unprecedented. Business continuity planning (BCP) and worker safety has been the key thoughts on everyone’s mind.

We’ve been working extensively on BCP for a number of companies and we’ve also been supporting on COVID-19 business messaging, including supporting sales team.

Maintaining and Developing Sales

We’ve got a great network of interims who are working and have availability to work on COVID -19 projects.  This includes marketing and sales people who can help with messaging and opportunities, if you are positioned to support this. We do have product managers, business analysts who can help with any fast product development you might need around this.

When you’re ready to get back on track, we have interim and permanent candidates who would be ready to join your business to get the sales back up. This includes new market sales leadership experts such as leaders to help you grow in the US market, APAC or EMEA and the UK.

We offer expert psychometric testing for sales candidates too. We’ve found this to be a huge help. It helps identify the right candidates for your sales roles. It also really helps with onboarding and having a common management language to train and develop your sales teams with.

We are working on our lead generation model too. We’d love to hear more about how this could work best for your business. Outsource it on lead deliverables or get interims in that can convert temp: perm?

Product Development

This is an area we have been developing over the last few months to respond more quickly to our client’s needs both contract and permanent. Our product, business analysis, UI and UX developers tend to have life science technology experience including ICH GCP and data standards for healthcare and clinical trial’s data.

If you do need to fast track COVID- 19 related products, these interims could be perfect for you.

Fast track – team ramp ups

Beyond sales and marketing, we have got great delivery candidates. These include product development, client account and project management teams, application specialists HR and recruitment, software development, testers, Agile experts. We have a strong background in clinical trials and Market Access, so we have operational experts in clinical data management, imaging, eCOA ePRO and other areas. Contact us if you do need help.

Interims:

We are able to offer all roles from software development, product development and your account and project management teams as interims, so you have extra hands to get back on track. We still recommend use of PAYE workers, but IR35 regulation has been deferred until 6^th April 2021.

Supporting with Furloughing and Managing People out of the Business 

With uncertain times, sadly, we know it’s also about some inevitable redundancy or furloughing of resources.

We can work to help find people leaving the business their next career step. From writing CVs to interview practise, we can support people leaving your business to find their next role.

We also have roles with other  Pharma, CRO and life science technology companies. Join our collaboration to pool resources with other companies, rather than lose them. We may be able place workers as interims as non-competing companies.

Psychometric Testing

One of the hardest things to do as a business is hire and onboard effectively. We are delighted to be partnering with Sarah de Corday-Long at Talent Room.

As well as providing testing for  hiring at the executive level, we have a second model to help with leadership team collaboration.

Pyschometric results provide a great way to communicate on the complexity of management styles. We believe in them as a way to support hiring excellence and to help with excellence in team collaboration too 

Mental and Physical Wellbeing

Staying mentally and physically fit are critical during these times. We partner with Fresh Fit London and Tandem Welllbeing to help provide corporate and individual solutions.

Sharing Risk 

We understand that these are difficult times at the moment. We are thinking of a more innovative pricing model for our clients. Please call us to discuss:

-       Fixed price recruitment (rather than % fees)

-       Split payment of hiring fees on start date and then at 3 months from start date

-       Subscription models entitling you to heavily reduced fees and where we can manage your vacancies

-       Recruitment process outsourcing, where we are your inhouse recruitment team and help set up strong recruitment practises, as well as deliver your recruitment needs 

If you would like to talk more about our services and your requirements, please let us know. We hope this is a time to innovate together to help develop a strong recovery model for your business.

info@pop-science.co.uk

Whether you’re applying to be a clinical researcher, or looking for roles working in research technology and medical device development, your CV needs to engage your potential employer(s), proving you’re the right candidate for the job.

Fit your CV for the purpose

It’s never OK to send a generic CV for scientific roles – make sure you re-write or adapt your CV for each specific role you apply for. To make yours stand out:

• Keep it succinct – 2 pages is usually enough for a graduate CV; more will be required for post-doctorates to include a summary of papers, conferences etc.

• Reverse chronological formats are the easiest for review by recruiters and hiring managers. These are lots of good formats available online or in templates.

• Ensure you forefront your technical experience / specific skills set to match those required in the job description.

• Present yourself professionally – spell-check the CV every time you adapt it, use proper formatting with a consistent, easy-to-read font (e.g. a sans-serif font at 11pt size minimum) and make use of headings and sub-sections.

Make your personal information clear

Use your name in large font as a header, to help identify the CV in a pile, and ensure your email address sounds professional. Make sure you have your professional contact details on your CV - you’d be amazed at some of the email addresses we’ve seen and the number of CVs without contact details.

Consider using a short (max. 2-3 line) ‘Personal profile/statement’ or ‘Career objective’: your CV is not just about your scientific experience details, it should convey something of your personality too.

Remember to frame work experience as bullet-points of useful transferrable applications to the current role in hand.

Highlight your strengths and key achievements for the role that you are applying for

For each role you have worked in, think about highlighting your strengths and key achievements that are most relevant to the role you are applying for:

• ‘Key achievements’ is the most important section. In 2-3 bullets quantify and qualify the skills, achievements and things you did that you are most proud of in that role.

• e.g. Achievements in projects e.g. how many projects you’ve managed, value, your role in a team, your performance

• e.g. ‘Research interests’: for a research-based job, lead with features of the scientific content of projects or research you’ve completed.

• e.g. ‘Technical skills’: for technical roles, emphasise the project-related skills you have acquired, and practical tasks you’ve undertaken.

You’re featuring your strengths, so frame each bullet point around what you achieved, improved or gained from the task or project. Many recruiters will look through CV’s for specific keywords, and some employers will use software to help them filter, so ensure that you’re using a broad range of keywords (for example you could use CRO in one section, and Clinical Research Organisation in another.

Finish up with the more standard CV sections: academic qualifications, hobbies and interests and referee details.

Here at Pop Science, we understand that your strength is doing your job, and that writing a CV is something you might not do too often, so we’re happy to give you feedback to help you improve and give you the best possible chance of landing that dream job. If you’d like some CV advice, or don’t know where to start your job search, please do send us your CV via our homepage and we’ll be happy to advise.

How to get ahead with your project management skills in clinical technology

Patient diagnosis, treatment, and clinical research use an ever-increasing range of cutting-edge, specialised software and equipment. There is a huge increase in the demand for Project managers in this area.

If you’re interested in exploring project management jobs in clinical technology, here’s a quick summary to help you match your skills to relevant roles and shape a career plan.

Key clinical technology jobs overview

Clinical Project Manager / Clinical Trial Manager: project managing clinical teams including research trials. Responsibilities include full operational oversight, site visits and protocol compliance checks, liaising with coordinators and sponsors, reviewing of reports and trial subjects’ well-being.

• Requirements: Bachelor’s life-science degree for entry level, advanced degree often desirable; knowledge of clinical practice, applicable regulations; proven study management experience.

• Considerations: Experience can affect salary. High accountability, to both management and sponsors, can make this a demanding role.

Clinical Technology Project Manager: project managing client’s expectations and delivery of their software or equipment for their clinical trials. This involves an in-depth knowledge of Clinical Trials and robust Project Management skills. There are frequent challenges around explaining new concepts or complex technology to your stakeholders. Responsibilities include full operational oversight, risk management, client and protocol compliance checks, liaising with users and sponsors, reviewing of status reports and input into product roadmaps.

• Requirements: Bachelor’s life-science or computing degree for entry level, advanced degree often desirable; knowledge of clinical practice, technology, applicable regulations; proven study management experience.

• Considerations: Experience can affect salary. High accountability, strong communication, negotiation and technical understanding, can make this a demanding role.

Getting ahead in clinical technology roles

Becoming a Clinical Project Manager: a first step may be a clinical research associate role (these roles are often directly managed by a CPM).

Progression: Clinical Project Managers may progress to Regional Manager roles or similar, responsible for numerous Contract Research Organisations.

Becoming a Clinical Technology Project Manager: a potential initial role could be as a clinical technologist, maintaining and servicing cutting-edge diagnostic and treatment equipment. Clinical Project Managers and Data Managers are often ideal for this.

Progression: Project Managers can move into technology programme management, software development learning SDLC and AGILE/ SCRUM techniques, sales and consulting roles.

How to seek clinical technology jobs

Pop Science works closely with our clients to provide truly bespoke recruitment, matching candidates expertly using our industry knowledge and passion for medical science. See what relevant roles are available now on our website, or feel free to contact our friendly, experienced team to arrange some in-person time to discuss your needs.

No matter how many interviews you’ve had, there's always room for improvement. Below are 6 tips from our recruiters on dos and don’ts for that all-important interview.

1. Make sure you have done your research!

Read up on the company, the role you’re applying for, any newsfeeds and your interviewers can really help. Google searches, Linkedin etc. can help with this. You’d be amazed how many candidates fail because they’ve not done their research.

2. Make sure you always have solid answers for these types of questions:

• Motivations to work for the company - take note on how the company positions themselves and describes their workforce – you need to explain what is good about them and why you want to work there
• Motivations to undertake the role, how your skills fit into the role, and why your experience is relevant.
• General competency based questions – examples include

- Describe a time when you were going to miss a deadline, and what your actions were.

- Give an example of an occasion when your idea benefited the business.

- Describe a time when you worked in a team, and what your specific role was.

Practise these questions with someone (or by yourself!) so you feel comfortable talking about them.

3) Use the STAR approach to structure your examples.

STAR stands for: Situation, Task, Action and Result. This will help your answer stay focused and ensure that you describe each example comprehensively. For more information, here is a really good article about star technique

4) Don’t fall into the trap of saying that you use a particular skill regularly without giving a specific example.

Try to avoid saying things like “I use my prioritisation skills every day in my job.” Instead, identify a specific set of tasks and time pressures that you faced at work and describe how and why you prioritised them.

5) Prepare multiple examples for the interview - bring out all your strengths.

It's worth taking time to sit down and work out as many examples as you can that bring out your various strengths. It could also be good to talk through various examples, or write them down; as this can help you pinpoint achievements or strengths that you may not have noticed previously.

Areas you might take examples from may be:

• Leadership/ mentoring
• Time management
• Team work – make sure you differentiate between what the team achieved and what you personally achieved
• Business ideas you have developed
• Project work
• Managing difficult situations or people to a successful outcome

6) Lastly, don’t forget to be yourself!

Most of the time, you’ll be working with the people interviewing you, so honesty and friendliness will always help.

Best of luck from the Pop Science team!