Just graduated! Ready for a career in the pharmaceutical industry?

After a message from Inge on LinkedIn, a few pleasant conversations followed, and I decided to join Farma Consulting & Partners as a consultant in the pharmaceutical and medical devices industry. I was welcomed with open arms, and within a few weeks, I started my first project with a smaller distributor of medical devices. I now work for one of the major players in the pharmaceutical industry, which shows that Farma Consulting gives you the opportunity to explore various fields and further develop your interests.

After working there for a few months, I can summarize …

…what you do learn in college:

• Broad background knowledge, including the basics of quality management, the steps drugs go through before they reach the market, what pharmacovigilance entails, research techniques, biochemistry, etc.;
• Critical thinking;
• Collaboration;
• Planning and meeting deadlines;
• Presenting;
• Processing large amounts of material and, therefore, quickly acquiring new knowledge.

…what your degree doesn’t prepare you for:

• Knowledge of the organizational structures of pharmaceutical companies, e.g., which departments and roles are involved;
• What a quality system actually entails;
• What a quality system might look like, e.g., what software is used to manage documents;
• Industry-specific terms and abbreviations;
• Project planning in collaboration with a client.

Of course, a degree can never fully prepare you for the real-world work environment; it’s more of a ticket to get you started. When you begin your career, you’ll always need to keep learning and familiarize yourself with specific areas of work.

Fortunately, Farma Consulting & Partners is a company where this is possible! In my third week, I already had the opportunity to take Allanta’s ISO 13485:2016 training, focused on quality management systems in the medical device industry. But you can also always turn to your colleagues and Olivier for explanations or examples, which allows you to learn even more on the job.

So, if you’d also like to work in the pharmaceutical or medical device sector, at a growing company where you’ll have plenty of opportunities, don’t hesitate any longer—get in touch with someone on our team!