The following blog post was written after attending the iJOBS Career Panel: Product Development, Tech and Sales Support in Life Sciences Companies on October 3, 2017. Do you like communicating with other scientists about their projects? Do you enjoy being an expert in a particular method and explaining that method to non-experts? Do you enjoy meeting new people? Then boy, do I have a job for you! If you have overlooked sales and tech support as a job opportunity, you may be missing out on a rewarding, meaningful, fun, and interesting career choice. The iJOBS program was fortunate enough to have several different PhD level employees from local life sciences companies share with us their experiences in the industry and their career advice. During the panel, some interesting quotes led to lively discussions about professionalism, career choice, having a PhD in sales, career development, and finding purpose in your career. I picked some of the key quotes and listed them here:
- “Advance quickly through the ranks”
Everyone loves to be promoted into higher paying and more responsible jobs. Many of the panelists had had similar experiences where they started their jobs, acquired the necessary salesmanship skills, and then moved quickly up the ladder to more senior positions. They were promoted rapidly because they were hired for their PhD expertise, which provided value to the company. From the company’s perspective, it’s much harder to train a non-scientist in the science lingo (we do spend an excruciatingly long time getting our PhD’s after all) than it is to teach a scientist the sales lingo.
- “I’m usually the person who is yelled at by the customer”
We have all had the experience of trying out a new kit or equipment, gleefully anticipating a great result, and the feeling of disappointment when the experiment does not go as planned. In these situations, we call tech support in order to understand why our experiment didn’t work out as expected. I was surprised by the enthusiasm the panelists showed for this particular aspect of their work. They commented that when they contributed to someone else’s outstanding piece of scientific work they received a profound sense of purpose, that they had contributed to furthering human understanding of the natural world. 
- “Consulting with peers”
Whenever any of us have a confounding problem in our lab, we ask our peers and the people around us for help. Sitting down with a group of colleagues over coffee, hashing out the problem in detail, what you have and have not tried is often a fun, informative, and learning experience. Our tech support panelists discussed that this is how they would like to view themselves, your over the phone coffee support group. They want the products they sell to contribute to great scientific work.
- “You are hired to do a specific task”
You are always hired because the people hiring you expect that you will add value to the company. For any type of job, you are expected to contribute a monetary revenue that is greater than the value of your salary. When applying for jobs and interviewing for them, you want to be focused on how you can provide value in that position. File this one under career advice. The panelists explained that the value you bring to the company is in your PhD, which is not limited to your experimental expertise. One panelist discussed how his boss made him tediously, develop his presentation skills by requiring him to present frequently. Although the panelist said he could not see the value of this at the time, he conceded that this experience was invaluable for his job as a territory manager.
- “Every time you write a grant you sell yourself”
Grant writing is a wonderful way of preparing for a job in tech sales. One way to think about grant writing is that your aim is to make someone excited enough about your research to hand you thousands of dollars. The role of a salesperson is not that different; you’re trying to talk about how great your product is and to excite the buyer about it as well. 
- “An advocate for you”
Your professional network is a very important part of your professional career and this was exemplified by the fact that nearly half of the panelists got their first job through networking. Your network includes the sales people that come to your lab and try to get you to try out their products. Contacting an acquaintance at the company you are applying and asking for a recommendation is a great way to get your first job.
- “I had a Peter Pan moment where I needed to grow up”
Leaving the bench is often an emotional decision. Many of us feel like a part of us dies and that the world dims a little when we give up on the dreams of making a life-saving discovery. But, the moment one begins to yearn for black pants rather than faded jeans, one begins to leave their native spawning lab for the open business world. Finding the opportunity to make the transition requires some planning, but making the effort to plan out the transition, and not alienate your boss, is worth the effort.
- “Is a PhD valuable? Should I put it on my resume?:
Yes, emphatically. The panelists agreed that a PhD is viewed as a certificate that says “I can do difficult things.” I had always made vague assumptions about the role of tech support, or sales persons in industry, and had never really considered these positions as a career option. Listening to the panelists made me realize how I could achieve real fulfillment in one of these positions as an integral part of the research community. At the end of the seminar we had a chance to meet and greet the panel and add them to our professional network; so be sure to come to future iJOBS career panels to expand yours!