Life Science Marketing Radio

Darcy Bevalacqua is a career coach and executive recruiter for senior marketing executives over 50. Nevertheless, this episode has good advice for anyone looking to change jobs and even companies that are competing for talent.

Challenges for companies

I asked Darcy about the state of the job market. Companies are having a hard time attracting talent right now. She verified what I have seen a lot on LinkedIn and that is that companies have a hard time “getting candidates through the pipeline in any reasonable period of time. And so many times they lose great candidates because they take too long to make a decision about who they wanna hire.”

The second challenge is compensation. Companies are giving small raises but job switchers are getting 15% raises. Expectations for flexibility and other factors have changes during the pandemic.

Meet the new boss...

Even with those large raises however, more than a third of people who switched jobs last year are looking to move again. Darcy explained that if you don’t understand what motivates you and what you are looking for you can trade bosses and still end up hating the job because it isn’t any different that what you had before.

One thing you, as a job seeker, need to do is really start to think through what is it that I really want in a job?

What is making me unhappy now? Is it the scope of the job? Is it the culture? Is it the lack of flexibility? Is it not enough collaboration or teamwork? Not enough creativity? You need to really look inside and figure out what are your important skills and what motivates you to keep happy in a job.

And once you know those things and you set your career path, it's much easier to look for those in the new opportunity.

In the current environment, she notes that balance is more important than ever and given all that’s going on in the world, people want to work where they feel they are making a difference and making the world a better place.

Getting yourself through the pipeline

As marketers, I hope you’ll all appreciate this. You need to be able to sell your unique skills and do whatever it takes to find that ideal job. Darcy gave an example of a candidate that was not hired but was the 2nd choice. She felt she could really help the company. Darcy encouraged her to talk to the CEO and offer to help as a consultant to demonstrate what she could do. She ended up being hired as the VP of Marketing and got a (ka-ching!) $100,000 raise.

If you’re an older worker, you undoubtedly have skills. But you might have to think about how you frame those to be relevant in today’s market. This is where some coaching could definitely help.

What about imposter syndrome? I personally believe that most people who have it, shouldn’t worry and some of those that don’t probably should. In any case, Darcy laid out some ideas about how to overcome it and focus on what you know you are good at. You should also trust that anyone who invited you to an interview hasn’t made some awful mistake or been somehow fooled by you.

Finally it’s important to keep up a positive routine. It’s easy to start feeling down when the job search is a string of no’s followed by a yes. Volunteering, exercise and a regular get-together with friends are all good options. You’ve got this.

Darcy on LinkedIn

Chat with Chris about content for demand generation.

PharmExec.com published a study in 2020 of 25 first commercial launches. 48% of them missed their first year forecast for sales (<70% of forecast).

Almost a third of them outperformed (>130% of forecast). Outperformers started commercial planning more than 2 years ahead of approval and typically spent more on SG&A.

It has to be difficult for a CEO or CFO to devote resources to commercializing a therapy when approval is still uncertain and far away. I invited Maureen Franco and Mike Hodgson to talk about the activities that make these launches successful and who is brought on to make it happen.

Key takeaways:

Understanding the market, customers and market access is important. If it’s misunderstood or unappreciated, even the best product will struggle to get traction.

Positioning your drug, the disease and your company is key. Those things have to fit together. And when they do, it becomes easier to make decisions and attract the right employees to carry your vision through. Strong positioning is the beginning of establishing a culture.

Your first commercial hire will do a lot of educating the founder and others on the value of commercial planning. It can be a lonely position.

As an example of shaping the market and positioning a disease, Mike shared the story of how Pfizer repositioned impotence into erectile dysfunction which made a huge impact on the success of Viagra.

In essence, Pfizer launched two products, right? They relaunched the disease with a totally new name and then they launched their drug...We think that's applicable to just about any condition in any therapy you're launching. You've really gotta... you don't necessarily have to rebrand the disease, but you should understand its perception and its relationship to your product.

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Intro Music stefsax / CC BY 2.5