Can you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background, focusing on your journey from completing a PhD to working in the pharmaceutical industry?

My name is Eef Dirksen. After obtaining my PhD in Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), I was looking to apply the knowledge I obtained in an industry setting. Just then, I was offered a post-doc position in Utrecht involving a project in collaboration with Organon. Although I hoped this would culminate in a position at Organon afterwards, no suitable position was available in the end.

Luckily, I was able to land an interesting job at Philips Research in Eindhoven. After working there as a Biomolecular Engineer for 3 years, I moved to the pharmaceutical industry and went to work for Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD, formerly Organon) in Oss.

Since 2015, I’ve been working for Byondis, a Dutch pharmaceutical company in Nijmegen, where I’m heading an analytical development group responsible for the biochemical and biophysical characterization of our small and large molecules. Over the years, I’ve been expanding my knowledge and expertise on mass spectrometric characterization of proteins with the biophysical analysis of protein higher order structure and the characterization of small(er) molecules, such as the linker-drugs that are used to develop antibody-drug conjugates.

Based on your experience, what are, in your opinion, some of the biggest adjustments PhD graduates need to make when pursuing a career in the pharmaceutical industry after their PhD? Do you see common misconceptions that PhDs seem to have?

It’s not so much about misconceptions, I guess, but coming from an academic environment where you and your research are at the center of attention and moving into an arena where you’ll be part of a large team working on a common goal, requires some adaptation.

From my own experience and that of some PhDs I’ve worked with in the pharmaceutical industry, I can say that a transition from academia to industry requires a change in your way of thinking. The knowledge and skills PhDs have acquired in academia – that they themselves might consider trivial – are often of great value when applied to challenges that arise in industrial projects and processes. Instead of digging deeper (vertically) into a niche, they should start broadening their scope (horizontally) to identify opportunities to apply their knowledge and skills. Science is not the goal as such, but a means to accomplish a goal.

At the same time, things tend to be much more regulated in the pharmaceutical industry, so be prepared to read a lot of procedures about internal processes and ways of working before you can actually enter a lab and start ‘working’. Of course, it depends on what company you end up with: is it, for example, a large, international company, or a small start-up? In a large company, chances are higher that you’ll be working in a more specialized role (more like an academic position), while in a small company, it’s probably expected that you take on a broader role.

Similarly: are you working in Research, or in Development? The transition to a position in Research might be smoother than when starting in a position at Development.

Generally speaking, when starting in the pharmaceutical industry, a fresh PhD is expected to familiarize with other disciplines (such as upstream or downstream processing, formulation development, operations, clinical or regulatory, that also all tend to harbor PhDs). That means getting out there to get acquainted with your colleagues and making sure they know who you are!

How can PhDs effectively pivot their academic skills to meet the demands and expectations of the pharmaceutical industry?

Many ‘academic’ skills are also very valuable in the pharmaceutical industry, such as writing clear and concise project plans and reporting progress, both in presentations, as well as in notebooks and reports: documentation is very important!

Just like conducting experiments, focusing on priorities and maximizing chances of success. Carefully interpreting results and designing follow-up experiments, but also recognizing when it’s not worthwhile pursuing something if the added value is low. Experiments that seem most interesting from a scientific point of view do not always add value from a business perspective.

If you aspire to a career in industry, it is advisable to start exploring how the skills you’ve developed are applied in the industry. For example, by keeping an eye on certain scientific journals, or looking for information presented at conferences where your future industry colleagues meet to discuss their work. In this way, people can get an idea of the current trends in, let’s say, cancer research, or in the application of analytical methodologies in pharmaceutical development.

PhDs often bring fresh knowledge from academia. How can this be an advantage in the industry, and what steps should they take to ensure their expertise is effectively used?

When moving to industry, PhDs provide a unique view of the current scientific developments in the field to their new employer, which is very interesting and valuable. Usually, it takes a while (lag time) before scientific developments from academia are translated into industrial applications, for example, due to the fact that certain high-end equipment is not readily available in the industry. However, a PhD should be able to assess what recent developments can be implemented and, therefore, have an immediate positive impact. And that can be surprising to PhDs: they should realize that skills they consider ‘common’ or ‘outdated’, are often deemed innovative in an industrial setting.

After presenting at a meeting while I was working at Philips for example, one of the attendees suggested to patent the proteolytic digestion of proteins into peptides, that is often done to aid their analysis by mass spectrometry, while this is broadly used and therefore considered common knowledge for any academic working on protein analysis (and hence not patentable..). It can provide a lot of confidence when realizing that things you know, or skills you master, help address the challenges that exist in a company!

Beyond technical expertise, what soft skills or competencies do you see as increasingly important for PhDs entering the industry? Do you have some examples to illustrate them?

Being a specialist in a certain field who is expected to work in multidisciplinary teams requires you to collaborate with a variety of people from different backgrounds. Therefore, being able to talk about your specialty in layman’s terms, without understating its importance, is key. In this way, colleagues will be able to grasp your contributions to the team and will be inclined to talk to you to determine whether you could be of help in other challenges they’re facing. When I joined Byondis a while back, I was asked to present about the mass spectrometry work I had been doing for an antibody-drug conjugate. I quickly learned that the entry level I chose for the introduction did not meet that of the audience, as I noted colleagues were dropping out. This was a valuable experience that taught me to better adapt my presentations to the (internal) audience.

The other way round is also important: meeting up with colleagues from other disciplines to get to know and understand their work and the challenges they face. During the first months at a company, alternate reading information about the company and its procedures with talking to new colleagues. Not just those in your direct environment, but across the company, to get broadly familiarized and provide your new colleagues with the opportunity to get to know you.

What advice do you have for maintaining a healthy work-life balance when starting in the pharmaceutical industry? Is your work-life balance in industry different than it was during your PhD?

The workforce in a company differs quite substantially from that in an academic group: it is probably much more diverse, both from an educational background, as well as from an age and experience perspective. There is less competition, and you could be working with people that have different personal priorities and ambitions than yourself.

It is very important to take sufficient time off and circumvent working long hours if that prevents you from unwinding and focusing on your personal life. A good thing that will help maintaining a healthy balance is working part-time: I have one day a week extra to spend on the things I like, such as mountain biking and enjoying time with my kids.

Working in the pharmaceutical industry means that there can be very busy periods with long working weeks and working weekends. If you feel you’re overwhelmed, your manager can help set new priorities to ensure a manageable workload.

Since my personal life has changed a lot since my PhD (with kids, etc.), my work-life balance is different than during my PhD. I’ve enjoyed the time in my life when my job was one of my main priorities though, as this coincided with the opportunity to work on the development of a life-changing drug. Seeing that hectic period of hard work result in approval for that drug and the huge positive impact this has on patients has been one of the most fulfilling things I’ve experienced in my professional career to date.

Can you share insights on how PhDs can continue to grow professionally and make significant contributions within the pharmaceutical industry?

There are several options for PhDs in the pharmaceutical industry. Usually, PhDs get hired because of their knowledge and technical skills in a particular area. While learning how to best apply these in the context of pharmaceutical research or development, they will interact in multidisciplinary teams and come across roles and positions that they might like to develop towards, such as working in other scientific disciplines, or in project management.

Another opportunity lies in the development towards a line management role, in which you are responsible for a group of people, which requires you to develop other (soft) skills. For me, this step in my professional career has been a very valuable one that taught me a lot, due to the (personal) interactions with many different people.

Obviously, more development opportunities arise in larger companies than in smaller companies, but then it is always possible to switch from one company to another. The nice thing about working in the pharmaceutical industry is that everyone’s contributions are needed to be able to translate a promising scientific idea to a stable drug that eventually can be used for patients. By understanding this complex process – that can span a decade – and the work others are doing to achieve it, you can optimize your contributions to that trajectory that, when successful, is very rewarding.

Lastly, what advice would you give PhD students or recent graduates contemplating a career in the pharmaceutical industry?

Go for it! It is a good way to valorize your knowledge and skills and contribute to the development of new products that will be of benefit to patients.

Reach out to people you know, or that you come across on LinkedIn or during conferences, that already made the transition and that can paint a picture of their journey so you can decide for yourself if that’s the path you’d like to travel. People are often more than willing to talk to you about their work.

This means that a PhD not only affects your immediate financial situation but also reduces the growth potential of your retirement savings.

Personally, I find meetings organized by CASSS (a not-for-profit professional scientific society comprising over 7,000 industry, academic, and regulatory professionals) very useful and informative as these tend to provide excellent opportunities to discuss scientific challenges not only with colleagues from the field and from academia, but also with people from regulatory agencies that eventually decide whether biotherapeutic drugs can be investigated in the clinic or brought to the market to treat patients. The CASSS website contains a repository of presentations held at various meetings that provides insight into the current ‘hot’ scientific topics in the pharmaceutical industry.

Based on the information in a vacancy, it can be difficult to assess what is actually asked from potential candidates. So, if you’re interested in a certain position, get in touch with the company and the person posting the vacancy to ask questions and find out if that position could suit you. Don’t try to be, or assume that you have to be, the perfect match for a company (based on a vacancy), as you’ll probably be growing into a position in industry anyway. By looking for a PhD to fill a certain position, a company is basically trying to find someone a) with up-to-date knowledge in a specific area and b) that has shown to be able not only to manage his/her projects but also their colleagues/collaborators, as demonstrated by finalizing their PhD successfully.

I feel doing a post-doc does not necessarily increase your possibilities in the industry, unless it focuses on something of specific interest to the pharmaceutical industry (or in a collaborative effort with a pharmaceutical company).

Carefully consider what you would like to do in a company and what you’re expecting from that: there are PhDs working all across a pharmaceutical company. How your career in industry will develop greatly depends on your own interests and capabilities and can vary anywhere from continuing performing scientific experiments to managing people in a certain discipline to managing a project across disciplines.

You decide!