The Best Way To Get Yourself Into The Clinical Research Industry Without Any Prior Experience
This question is one I get almost every day, but I have a new angle on it today. It’s from somebody who wants to be a CRA (Clinical Research Associate or Monitor), they actually want to get started in the research industry and they’re a grad student right now majoring in pharmaceutical science. They want to work in clinical research, whether it be as a coordinator or an assistant, but eventually they want to become a monitor. The following is the question I receive more or less every day:
“I want to be a CRA. I do not have any experience and I feel like that might be a setback for me. I was wondering if you could advise me on anything I can fix or work on to help me with this process. I understand volunteering within a clinical research environment or even a university would be an asset, but even this seems difficult to accomplish. Do you have any recommendations?”
In response to questions like these, my favorite thing to tell people to do is if you have no experience, go intern somewhere — anywhere that will take you. And I’ve noticed what a lot of people are doing is not applying to enough places. From person to person, I’m not sure how many research clinics are in your particular area and I don’t really know what area you’re in. But my introspective question to you is, what are you offering these people when you’re volunteering or interning there? While you are interviewing, are you telling them that you just want to do their research assistant or study coordinator activities? That might actually take a lot of their own time to train you. You may be going about it the wrong way, you need to find a way to provide some kind of value for them. What a lot of research sites need help with is recruitment.
Patient recruitment is the biggest obstacle in any study, and if you can intern as a recruiter or maybe a community outreach specialist you might be able to get a lot further than you would if you applied as a research assistant. I can personally say that if right now you applied to one of my research sites as a patient recruiter and get paid commission only, I would hire a million of you. If you bring me a patient, you get paid and I get paid. Guess what? Now you have experience. And at that point that’s no longer an internship, that’s an actual paid position. So look at the recruitment angle.
I know it may not be what you want to do if you eventually want to be a CRA. But if you are looking to get your foot in the door, what better way to do that than to be a patient recruiter? Not enough people are doing this. You guys need to hustle more and apply to more places. If they tell you no, ask if they are in need of community outreach people or recruiters. Don’t give up so soon. Take it a step further and find them a study participant who might qualify for one of their trials and bring their contact info with you to the interview! Be a study participant recruiter working on commission only with no risk to the employer, and get paid when a patient randomizes. This may be your key to getting into this industry and very few people are doing this.
