How do you feel like your degree prepared you for medical writing?
Oh my gosh, this is a great one. And this is one that I would love to talk about at length because I think that people really don't understand how transferable everything you do in academia is. There's some way that you can spend anything that you did during any graduate period.
That's transferable to the workplace. Hey
folks, welcome back to the Grad School Sucks podcast, the show for grad students and academics who want to take their career from academia to industry. I'm your host, Dr. Matt Carlson, and today I'm excited to bring you an interview with Dr. Alexis Jameson. Dr.
Jameson was in neuroscience, that's where she got her PhD, until she decided to enter the industry job market, and she got a job as a medical writer. And that's what we talk about in this interview. We discuss medical writing, what it is. How to break into it as well as we go over a variety of different Resume tips that can be applied to many different fields Additionally, we talk about working remotely as her job is remote And this episode is going to be great for people who are interested in medical writing Or even technical writing as well as those who are wanting to know more about how to clearly show the value You created as a phd student on a resume when you're trying to get a job.
Additionally, we talk a little bit about parenting as PhDs. Now, before we get started, I do just want to say that the views reflected by myself and my guests on the show of course do not reflect the views of the employer. They're just individual views that we're sharing on a podcast. Without further ado, let's jump into the show.
Dr. Alexis Jameson, thank you so much for coming on the show. Just to give you a brief introduction, you are now a medical writer and that is something that we will be talking about, uh, moving forward. So thank you for coming on the show and feel free to further introduce yourself and then plug away with however you want folks to follow along with you
online.
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Um, yeah, I'm Alexis. I'm a medical writer right now. I just, uh, graduated with my PhD in neuroscience. And I'm now working on a neurology and mental health team doing medical writing there. And if you want to follow along, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I'm assuming you'll have like a link or something.
Yes. I will have a link in the description of this episode people can click on and go connect with Alexis there. So let's get started with medical writing. What is medical writing?
Oh my gosh, it's so broad. I mean, it can really be anything. So, medical writing, with, specifically with what I do, I'm in a specific field called continuing medical education.
Which is basically anybody that's in the clinic in order to keep your, like, maintain your license. Pharmacists, like anybody, nurses, doctors. You have to take a certain amount of accredited education. in order to maintain that license. And so we basically provide accredited education about the most latest updates in treatment guidelines, the most cutting edge issues regarding a certain disease area, you know, things like that.
I'm in a really specific place, but there's all kinds of stuff. I mean, there's like regulatory writing and there's medical writing in terms of clinical trials. I mean, you could really, it's so expansive that. My head's exploding just thinking about trying to cover it all. But yeah, and there's specific different, you know, needs within medical writing and different disease areas too.
Very cool. What, what is your day to day like as a medical
writer? Yeah, I work at a completely remote company. So we're all over the place in the country. I don't go to an office, I actually just log on here. And I have a list of tasks that I'm assigned that I have to get done by a certain date. I have some one on one meetings with some of the leadership of the team.
And as long as I'm getting my tasks done, then that's pretty much it. I rarely have meetings during the week. So yeah, I'm just kind of chilling here. Every once in a while, we'll have like a virtual happy hour. So that's like the most. exciting thing from the day to day, I guess I could share. Most of it's just me writing here.
Very cool. How do you feel like your degree prepared you for medical
writing? Oh my gosh, this is a great one. And this is one that I would love to talk about at length, because I think that people really don't understand how transferable everything you do in academia is. There is some way that you can spend anything that you did during any graduate period.
That's transferable to the workplace. So, I mean, within my sector, I'm doing literature searches for the most up to date information. That's a skill that you develop in graduate school. I'm doing, you know, developing relationships with key opinion leaders in the area, which basically just translates to like specialists in the disease area and just faculty who are in academia.
So, you are interacting with faculty that are in academia, and so you have something that you can relate to them with in order to build those relationships, right? What else do I do that's transferable? Grant writing. Part of the process for getting the funding for, you know, different things that we do at our job, we actually get grants from pharmaceutical companies.
Grant writing is, like, all academia is, it feels like sometimes. What else is there? I mean, I could go on. Analytical skills, you know, communication, presentation skills. I just, I don't think there's a single thing that you do in grad school that you couldn't use in the workplace.
That makes a lot of sense.
How did you find out about medical writing as a profession?
Oh, I'm really lucky with that one. Basically, the grad program that I was in has some really great career centers that help you connect with things. So there's all kinds of like coffee and chat with alumni that did this, this or that job. And so people that are recruiting for jobs also can come through that center and we'll give like recruiting demonstrations.
whatever. The company that I ended up at was offering internships to PhD students or candidates, and so it was a paid internship that you were supposed to do in the last year of your PhD with the intent to possibly transition to full time at the end, and That's, I, I feel so lucky because that's how I found out about this medical writing job, how I found out about the field, how I found an internship that was paid during the PhD, which is something that, you know, some programs won't allow that, but thankfully mine did, and that's really rare to find paid opportunities while you're in graduate school.
And then on top of that, the expectation was to transition to full time. I don't think that's also, you know, the most common or at least solidified. And so the interview process for that was basically just, like, when can you start? So, I actually didn't go through the typical job search for this one. I did end up doing a job search, though, to, you know, see what else was out there and what was comparable, but Yeah, that's how I found out about medical writing.
I got connected through my university, but I think that there's Honestly, even without that connection. I think there's a lot of ways that you can be Creative. I just think a lot of grad students don't think that they're ready to do that search, you know I didn't certainly it was just an event that was held by my university But I feel like if I just did a few Google searches, I would have found the internship also it was on LinkedIn I feel like a lot of grad students are hesitant to open up LinkedIn and just start looking because they think that, you know, Oh, I'm a third year.
I'm not even close to graduating. And it's like, just always be looking and stay up to date.
Yep. The time to start is today. So for folks who want to, let's say they are in neuroscience or a similar field and they want to go into medical writing or an associated field. What are the things that they should be doing as a grad student to prepare themselves for that?
So, depending on what you're studying in neuroscience, which can be so varied also, one thing is that pretty much everything in non academia is clinically based with the, you know, intent to eventually create something that can benefit humans. And so, I think that, you know, for me, Everything was in mouse models, all of my studies, all of my expertise, and rarely was I reading literature about, like, clinical practice.
So I was reading literature about, you know, like, the burden of certain diseases that I was studying in terms of, you know, like, on humans, but the nitty gritty details of what makes a clinical visit with a provider really impactful for a patient versus just going through the motions I had no idea. I'd never been in the clinic other than my own experiences as a patient.
I would say not that you have to exhaustively know all of those details, but be aware that there's going to be some rapid literature searches that you might have to do to get up to speed with something you might already feel like you're an expert in. And so maybe finding opportunities through your university to interact more on the clinical side.
If you already are in that, then that's great, but. So at my university, there was a program where you could get partnered with a treating, like a treatment faculty or like somebody that actually had an MD in the disease area that your PhD was in. So even if you're in like a totally mouse model world, you know, like not thinking about that or working with cell culture, it allowed PhD students to shadow the doctors with the intent to increase that.
clinical understanding of what they were doing. I didn't do it. I wish I did, but I think it would have helped a lot. Yeah, that's the biggest advice is that if you're working with like cells, mice, fish, whatever, get ready to be in a completely new universe where a lot of that may still apply depending on if you're in drug discovery versus, you know, the clinical side.
But yeah, that was something where I was like, Ooh, I felt like I was an expert in depression, for example. That's what I studied. And I have depression too. So I was like, I've got this. And then I was like, whoa, there's a whole new world out there. Yeah. Otherwise like just keep track of what you're writing and save it and create a portfolio.
Because like we were mentioning before, like having a writing portfolio or like samples seems really intimidating, but I sent over when I was interviewing for the internship. Which is the closest thing that I had to a job interview with where I went was a presentation for our graduate symposium, like the yearly presentation I had to give for my Ph.
D. program, and then I sent them a grant that I had written with my P. I. like for an N. I. H. So there's like plenty of stuff that you don't have to come up with something. Just save things that you're proud of and things that you think. reflect it and just know where they are. Have them on hand.
That makes a lot of sense.
So, one of the things that we were, we were talking about before we started recording was being working parents. And so, Now that you are out of academia, what is it like to be a working parent? Oh my god,
it's so much better. I feel like, I think that, you know, if you're, if you're not a parent, this might not be a huge selling point to go to industry, and it might be worth it to stay in academia, actually, but I think every academic can relate to like coming home, leaving the lab, leaving your work environment, And then being like, I really should get started on that abstract.
Or like that conference is coming up and like, whatever. And you have all these things that are swirling in your head and you're like, I could do them, but I couldn't. And if I choose self care, I'm going to be thinking about this the entire time I'm doing self care. Versus an industry and a job, you have all these daily tasks that you're checking off, but there is no, I mean, in academia, there's all these big end goals, like this big grant, this big paper, this big degree, a PhD, a master's.
But in industry, you have this project and then it's done, then you have this project and then it's done. There's no magnum opus that is hanging over your head, looming, telling you, you could always be that person that chooses to Skip this and work on work anyway, and because it's like a lot less of a mountain to climb and smaller fires to put out I'm not like constantly guilty and when I play with my kid, I'm actually playing with my kid now That's huge.
I mean like yeah, I think especially for parents That's what's difficult is like not feeling totally present with your child in the small amounts of time that you get with them like between School or daycare ending in their bedtime. It feels so short And not being present during that tiny amount of time, especially in grad school, if you like working on the weekends, got to go into lab, feed your mice, feed your fish, whatever you're doing.
Then the weekends get taken away from you. Also industry, especially a remote job has done wonders for me feeling present and less guilty as a mom. But, and that being said too, it's really nice because when daycares out, it aligns with holidays that companies celebrate instead of me, like not being in lab meeting because it's labor day.
So that's nice too.
Yeah, no, I totally totally get that. Yeah, it's great. It's really fun. Hey folks I just wanted to interrupt the conversation with Alexis for a brief moment to let you know that if you're interested in Taking your career from academia to industry I have a one page PDF that walks you through all the steps that you need to take in order to prepare yourself to be on the industry market.
It is called the six week checklist and you can download it for free at sixweekchecklist. com or the link in the description of this episode. Now back to the show. Whenever you were on the job market, you're looking at the options that were out there. What were some of the things that you were looking for in an industry job?
I know you, you were already had the internship. But you were looking for that next thing. What was, what were you looking for?
Environment was like everything. Culture and environment. I think that that's something that in academia is typically the thing that, you know, is rough beyond the systemic issues.
So I needed a change, like absolutely. I was in like a really male dominated environment, which was fine and I like was, I'm like a completely different person after my PhD because of it in a good way. But at the same time, I was like, I need people that I can relate to that have similar issues that I do.
I was like, there were no kids, like nobody had kids for a long time. I was the only one that was married in the lab, all kinds of things that I don't think people, I couldn't relate to the people that I worked with. And because of that, there was misunderstandings about my work ethic and my, you know, dedication when I'm like, I'm physically limited based on my family responsibilities that you don't have.
That's my rant. And I was really excited to find a field where there were a lot of women dominated environments. Not that that was necessary, but I was shocked at how many, you know, teams in medical writing specifically were like majority women actually on the team. And that was something that was really interesting.
Someone pointed out to me, they were like, well, doesn't that make sense? Women are the ones that are most often pushed out of academia, white women, especially women of color though. And they're like all of these jobs that like require a PhD out here. It makes a lot of sense that they're women dominated.
If academia is male dominated and I was like. So that's my conspiracy theory. I will say that that's like conspiracy. I don't know if that's like speculation, whatever, but that was something I was looking for. And yeah, I mean, just like something to slow down. I needed a break. So something that was, it felt chill.
It felt like do what you do. We trust you. The remote vibe was very much that change of pace I needed. That's
awesome. What, for, for someone who's interested in medical writing, what kind of a salary range could they be expecting to fall into if they're coming straight out of grad
school? I think it ranges.
And I think that, unfortunately, it's the lower end of the range postdoc, if I'm not mistaken. I think 60, 000 as I've heard thrown around, but there are a lot if you're coming out of a PhD program specifically, or a master's with some experience, like if you stayed around for like doing some research or whatever, for that to be much closer to like 85 to 90 on average.
And that is in like the entry level, but entry level for a Ph. D. level person. The other thing is that if they ask for a terminal degree with experience, you can use your qualifying exam or master's or whatever you did on the way to your Ph. D. and then consider the years in your Ph. D. post grad experience.
And so even if you're coming straight out of a PhD, you can say, I am competitive with a lot of these people that have a few years post grad experience. Cause aren't we coming in at the same time anyway. Um, right. I mean, there's so many tips and tricks on how to read that and be like, if this is, you know, if I don't have any post grad experience, but you think about the entire pool that's eligible, definitely like definitely comparable, definitely competitive, definitely should not, not apply because of that.
And yeah, that I can say is like closer to six figures, and if you can really spin like your experience well, and really demonstrate that you understand how your skills apply, and say, yes, I haven't done this before, but I really understand what I would be doing, and here's some concrete examples of how I'm good at that.
And you can gain that trust in the interview process when they ask you questions about that. I think that you can definitely easily negotiate up to six figures during that process, even if they don't offer that outright. I truly believe it's possible to come straight out of the PhD program, no experience.
Six figures. I will advocate for that hard for anyone.
Yeah, love that. What, so when you think about the, your career ahead of you, what do you see in terms of a promotion or other job paths that you could take down the road? What do you see in the future?
Yeah, so a typical linear path, for example, for a medical writer would, regardless of the field, would be like, you know, you go up to editor, you know, and then once you're editor or senior writer, you can be a team lead, like someone that edits an entire disease area or is director of a disease area for a medical writing team, but there's offshoots too, right?
So that's the linear path. I would say the ceiling for that. If you're like the director of a medical writing team in a disease area, that's. ceiling I say is like max 200, 000. I could be off, just requires a Google search. And, but offshoots of that, right? So with your medical writing experience, depending on what kind of medical writing you're doing, you can try and position yourself to get medical writing experience within scientific or medical affairs, which is typically like at a pharmaceutical company.
or a continuing medical education company is fantastic for this because you're interacting with clinical people like key opinion leaders in the clinics so like specialists in a disease area you're also interacting with and writing grants for pharmaceutical companies and interacting with their scientific affairs team.
So with that kind of experience, you can become what's called a medical science liaison, which is like really hot. It's like a really popular, I think, alt ac career because it's got a flashy salary attached to it. I think that's what it's known for. At least that's what it was known for in my program. But yeah, medical writing and it's specifically like CME writing.
Lends itself really well to gaining experience to that because most jobs require like, you know, three years experience as an MSL. So there's, it's really hard to enter that space. So this is the kind of career that you can use if you want to eventually be an MSL. That's like a huge stepping stone that I've seen.
Otherwise, like all, all kinds of stuff that I'm probably not thinking of, but those are the two most popular things that I'm
thinking of. Very cool. Yeah. Very interesting. So I was wondering if we could pivot to I know a lot of folks listening Our grad students, and some number of them, are probably on the industry job market right now.
What tips or tricks or advice from your own journey, or from things you've heard, would you give to grad students who are about to make that leap into the job market?
I would say, first of all, really consider how you communicate any skill or anything you've done in graduate school, and maximize the impact of it as much as possible.
So I was put on this training grant in my institution when I came and it is like you're not, it's like your first year. So you haven't done anything yet. Like no, no evidence that you're a competent person and your PI applies for you on your behalf to get this institutional training grant. Right. It's like not even to the NIH or anything.
It's just like your school. And I got that, but there's also enough training grant spots for like, pretty much everyone in every cohort to get one. So, I kinda just got what was expected, which is like, everyone gets a training grant spot. That training grant, I looked it up, it is 109, 000. And I, that's like the first bullet point of, My PhD section on my resume is like secured funding from the National Institutes of Health for an institutional grant worth 109, 000.
I'm sorry. So many people would look at that and be like, I didn't even think to put it on there. And I'm like securing a hundred thousand dollars of funding for one person. And that person is you. That's gotta be on the resume. So I think that there's like huge things like that, that people miss. That's one advice is like, really pay attention to, are you really maximizing what you did with each bullet point?
For, I had one publication graduating and these days I feel like that's not, you know, the flashiest, one first author. And the bullet point I had for that was like coordinated a team of scientists across eight departments in an interdisciplinary research project, ultimately resulting in a publication as if that what it's like, that's what got me to graduate in the first place, I would not have a PhD on there if I didn't have this bullet point.
But, and the other thing that people don't realize too, is that you are basically fulfilling the job with eight different departments in an industry company, like, I don't analyze data. I don't interpret, well, I do interpret it, but I don't analyze it. I don't collect it. It's so much so focused into one thing that you bring to the team that you can really highlight that you're able to juggle and manage an entire team.
And so whether you're a member of it or managing it, you know how to do those things. People don't really understand how much you actually are prepared for a lot of different roles. So, I mean, just like, take another look at your resume is my advice.
Yeah, I feel like that is great advice. And I've said this before in different pieces of content that I feel like there's two kind of opposing extremes that I think myself included, but grad students going into the job market experience, there's the one end that's kind of like.
Maybe a little arrogant that says, Oh, I have a PhD, you know, I should be able to just kind of like walk into a business and get handed a job. And then there's the other end of the spectrum of, you know, I'm quote another worthless PhD. You know, my skills aren't worth anything outside of academia. The truth is.
One, no one's going to just hand you a job, of course, that's like, life doesn't go that way. But, you have so many skills, like you said, you know, you've done the work of many different kinds of industry jobs as a grad student. Frankly, you've compressed it, like, into a really small amount of time. I think grad students are so, I think we're indoctrinated to see, like, only the big achievements as things worth talking about, you know.
Getting a grant, or getting a publication in Nature, or something like that. We miss the whole ocean of things that we've done, that someone who hasn't been kind of like, beaten into the ground by grad school would think about as like, wow, you've done a lot of great things, and when it comes time to write their resume, they're just like, I was a grad student, I analyzed data.
Yeah. I TA'd for a class. And it's like, uh, you've done so much more than that.
Right. That's the other thing is that I didn't get any grants other than that one institutional grant actually from my time in graduate school. Every single one. Not discussed, not even reviewed, that's what I'll say. They were all not discussed.
But, in my job, my task as a medical writer is to write grants. Ultimately, yes, the goal is to get them funded, of course. But at the end of the day, it's like my grant output that they're really looking for and so if you're like I never got a grant and you don't put that you wrote them on your resume Then you're basically leaving off something that that's all they're expecting of you is can you write really really great grants?
And let's keep a track of their track record, but that's out of your hands, you know And if you're writing really horrible grants, then you can work with your supervisor to improve But at the end of the day, they just want you to write a bunch of them And age grants, that's a whole, that could be a whole podcast of like how much of that is like a crapshoot to like, because it's such a crapshoot, they might be like, of course you didn't get any of those, but your grant writing skills might be perfect for what we're writing them for.
There's a bunch of stuff that I never got an award for, never got published, that's like all over my resume.
Yeah, there was an example someone shared to me that really highlighted how I think grad students can maybe just not understand how to speak in terms that like recruiters will listen to or the industry people think in and it was the simple example of think about how many classes you've taught, you've TA'd for, you've been a guest lecturer for, Think about how many students were in those classes and had those experiences.
Now, think about what the value was to the university for all the classes that you've taught. I mean, you're talking probably hundreds of thousands of dollars if you TA'd for several years. But again, I think the automatic thing is to think about, Oh, I'm, I just, I checked the box of good enough and I was a TA and so.
You know, that's what I'll put on my resume. And it's like, no, no, no. Of course, we're not going to like create some fiction that wasn't real, but you have to polish it, put your best foot forward, like show the impact that you had because yeah, you go in the job market. It's a, it's competition.
So it's funny because when you mentioned the spectrum earlier of the extremes, it's funny because I'm in the bucket of lean this way.
Like you can be this arrogant PhD coming out and being like, as long as you like. This is the receipts. Like, I have evidence for every single thing that I'm saying I'm exceptional at, and that allows you to stay on this side. Um, but if you don't have that, like, this side, I think, is like a horrible side to be on, but if you come prepared, nobody can argue with you.
Nobody can really, like, argue with you and say, like, well, you brought this much value to the institution, but you can't say but after that, you know? And
if they do, then that's a good indication that maybe it's not an organization you want to work for.
Exactly. And
then it's a win win. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Alexis, this has been so fun.
We're running out of time. Before I ask you a final question, would you just plug away again how folks can, can find you and follow along on your
journey? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, my name on there is Alexis Jameson. And I'm sure there'll be a link that you can click on too.
Yep, yep, we'll have a link.
Alright, so Alexis, final question for you. What is one thing, either professional, serious, or just fun, that you think grad students should do before they graduate?
Before you graduate, take time off. I don't know if everyone has the amount of flexibility that I had in my environment, but it gets so much harder when you have a system to go through to ask for time off.
I know that some environment in academia might be that way too. But if you have the freedom, take time off. Really make sure that you're ending your PhD and taking that time to yourself because that is going to let you transition into your new chapter as refreshed as possible. I think that the end of the PhD, the end of any academic career, when it comes to that, you're Almost always, no matter what level you're leaving at burnt out, then that's the reason why you're leaving.
So I think it is paramount to figure out any amount of ways that you can get recharged. Cause the new chapter is going to be great, but it's going to be even better if you feel good going into it. That's my big thing.
Yeah. A hundred percent wise words, Alexis. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
It was great to chat with you.
Yes, I'm so glad we got something professional out of it other than just me commenting on your memes. Yes,
absolutely
Yeah, take care, thanks so much.
Alright folks, that was my show with Alexis I hope you got a lot out of that episode really enjoyed my conversation with her If you did enjoy this episode, please consider liking, leave a review, leaving a comment, etc On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on YouTube, if you're watching on YouTube.
Additionally, if you'd like to connect with Alexis on LinkedIn, you can do so at the link in the description of this episode. And that's where you can also download my six week checklist and get your journey started to a new career in industry. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you all next week.