Many graduates do not have the pharmaceutical industry on their radar when they look for future employers. The image of the industry now seems a bit outdated compared to some others. 'Generation Y' misses the coolness factor. However, graduates would do well not to ignore this direction when looking for a job. Because entry opportunities and earning potential are good, the job profiles are diverse and the challenges are exciting. A plea for an industry that only seems uncool at first glance.
To put it bluntly: the pharmaceutical industry is doing well. Compared to other industries, it’s actually very good. However, if you ask students and graduates in Germany which companies they would most like to work in later, the same sectors of the economy have always been mentioned at the top for years: Internet giants like Google or Facebook, car manufacturers like Daimler, Volkswagen and Audi, or established ones Industrial giants like Siemens or BASF are particularly popular. Companies like Sanofi, Bayer or Novartis often don't even make it into the top ten. The pharmaceutical sector, it seems, leads a wallflower existence when it comes to attracting attention from applicants. It is considered comparatively dusty and cumbersome. Merck, Pfizer, Roche – many students often don't have much use for company names like these outside of related courses such as medicine, pharmacy or pharmacology. Likewise, many economists often do not really perceive the pharmaceutical industry as a future potential employer. Where does this apparent lack of interest come from? Or is it perhaps a purely German phenomenon whereby every pharmaceutical employee appears like a pharmacist without a shop? I myself had not had the pharmaceutical industry on my radar for a long time, until one day I came across a job advertisement on a student job portal. I applied and still had no great illusions about my chances of getting the job. After all, I had no business knowledge and as a student of religious studies, my knowledge of pharmaceuticals was limited to buying headache tablets. I had no prior knowledge of the subject and still got the job.
MORE VERSATILE THAN THINKING
Over time, I realized that I wasn't the only career changer here. A stroke of luck for me because I learned an incredible amount about business, healthcare and the future. A pharmaceutical company must have an eye on the future, more than any other company. Cancer, AIDS, Ebola, allergies - diseases that everyone is talking about, but I knew very little about how to treat and combat them, even though they could have a decisive impact on the future. One thing always amazed me during my time as a working student. It was the reaction I got when I mentioned the name of the company I worked for at parties: 'I don't know. Who is this? What are they doing? What are you doing?' To this day, I don't think my fellow students or my parents really understood what my work in corporate communications entailed. Although the topic of health affects us all and everyone takes medication at some point, most people are bored by dealing with the economic background or being interested in the professions behind the pill packaging and the vaccine ampoules. However, few sectors are considered to have as much growth and development potential as the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. When you think of pharmaceutical companies, you usually automatically have a certain image in your head: the doctor or chemical laboratory technician in the white coat who develops vaccines and pills. This image is characteristic of one of the most innovative and diverse sectors of the economy. Because that is what the pharmaceutical industry represents, even though it is itself to blame for the dusty and long-outdated image of the pharmaceutical employee in a white coat. Too many television commercials for medicines still begin with a jovially smiling man in white, and on the homepage of every pharmaceutical giant there are pictures of people in white coats holding Erlenmeyer flasks up to the light with weighty refills poring over lab records and test tubes or simply wearing a suit and briefcase. A rather one-sided image of the industry has emerged among the younger generation. For many people, pharmaceuticals have the sex appeal factor of a building savings contract. The companies operating in this area seem like a self-contained circle, hardly accessible from outside. You can hardly find pharmaceutical companies at university and job fairs either. That must be surprising.
NOT JUST MEDICINE
Pharmaceutical companies combine a wide variety of job profiles and areas of focus in-house. A pharmaceutical company needs pharmacologists and doctors as well as lawyers and creative marketing minds, engineers, business economists and warehouse logistics specialists. In addition, pharmaceutical companies offer a high degree of internationality; the majority of companies operate worldwide, so good knowledge of English is essential. The innovation factor is also above average, because drug manufacturers face major challenges. Against the background of an increasingly aging society and global imbalances in terms of healthcare, even industry giants such as Bayer, Sanofi and Pfizer are forced to deliver results faster and more precisely. Until a few years ago, drug manufacturers were only able to use one of more than ten substances under development. Today, most manufacturers only have two or three products or materials in development. The pressure to succeed is therefore much higher. Anyone who wants to grow or survive as a pharmaceutical company is happy to buy other company segments from competitors or sell off parts of their own portfolio. The industry, which from the outside still appears to be very sluggish, has started to move enormously.
FROM IDEA TO HEALING
But the path to a new drug is still long: According to the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (vfa), it takes an average of 13.5 years from the idea to the approval of a new drug. Of the few newly developed drugs that are selected for testing in humans, only one in nine makes it to approval. This inspires the research enthusiasm of individual companies. Pharmaceutical companies spend around $100 billion a year on research and development. According to vfa, more than two thirds of the medicines produced in Germany are now exported. The domestic market is becoming increasingly less important for producers. Production continued to rise last year, by almost five percent.
CHALLENGES – COUNTERFEITS & PROFESSIONALS
All manufacturers in Germany have now expanded their technical capacities and operate technical systems for the storage, production, packaging and shipping of medicines at the highest technical level. In addition to the increasingly harsh market conditions, drug counterfeiting, in which branded drugs are counterfeited and thrown onto the international market at dumping prices - with sometimes catastrophic consequences for patients - and 'e-health', in which electronic patient files or the remote monitoring of vital signs of Patients become conceivable, issues that the pharmaceutical industry also has to face. Are you prepared for this? How can you best face the challenges? One answer: Well-trained specialists are needed. The entry opportunities are just as varied as the fields of activity. As a rule, (paid) internships, working student positions or even trainee positions form the entry point. Applications now only take place online. The interested party must create an account on the company's career website and upload their application documents. This is now standard for all large companies. Career advisors recommend leaving your accounts in place if possible, even if you have already been employed by another company as an applicant. At certain intervals, the accounts should even be filled with current documents and brought up to date. More and more companies are starting to send job offers to applicants or former applicants via the account. The wave of retirements in the next few years will also be felt in the pharmaceutical industry, although we are not yet talking about a shortage of skilled workers here. In Germany, most pharmaceutical manufacturers pay according to the collective agreements of the chemical industry. With an average annual gross of 55,000 euros, according to the Association of the Chemical Industry, employee salaries are around 25 percent above the average in the manufacturing industry. Comparatively secure jobs, exciting job challenges and good earning potential - and yet many students don't know names like Pfizer, Baxter, GlaxoSmithKline, Stada or Boehringer Ingelheim. Dear fellow students, read what’s on the pill boxes. The name of a potential employer could be there….
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Many graduates do not have the pharmaceutical industry on their radar when they look for future employers. The image of the industry now seems a bit outdated compared to some others. 'Generation Y' misses the coolness factor. However, graduates would do well not to ignore this direction when looking for a job. Because entry opportunities and earning potential are good,
