Career in biotech? You pay your dues

WORK YOUR WAY UP: Initial jobs build contacts, experience

By Paul Luke
The Province January 15, 2006

The biotech industry can be a terrific place to work, but you'd better get used to handling horse urine at the dawn of your career, says Karen Long, a life-sciences student at the University of B.C.

Biotech students should dump any expectation that their specialized education entitles them to plug into highly challenging work right after graduating, says Long, a masters student in pharmaceutical sciences.

Challenging jobs are earned by paying dues in more humble positions that let industry entrants gain experience and contacts, Long says.

"You might end up in a vitamin factory or in an analytical testing laboratory doing horse urine samples for the race track or at a beer plant, but hang in there," Long says. "Your first job may not be so glamorous, but eventually you'll get there."

Long, 38, should know. Her first job after finishing a bachelor's degree in chemistry at UBC was at a vitamin plant at Stanley Pharmaceuticals in North Vancouver.

Over the next 12 years, Long worked at local biotech heavyweights QLT Inc. and Inex Pharmaceuticals. Before returning to UBC in 2003, she had risen to manager of regulatory affairs at Inex, earning more than $70,000 a year.

Long, who plans to graduate this spring, will soon be job hunting again.

As head of regulatory affairs for the Student Biotechnology Network, she's helped organize a biotech career fair/conference at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel on Wednesday

The fair is designed to help students chart career paths in the industry. It interweaves corporate speakers, mentors and networking.

The SBN, formed in 2002, has about 850 members from UBC, Simon Fraser University and the B.C. Institute of Technology. Its goal is to give students the information they need to make career decisions.

Recent downsizings among local biotech companies have made it crucial for life-sciences students to be aware of alternative opportunities in areas such as business and law.

Karimah Es Sabar, executive director of industry association B.C. Biotech, says students often don't grasp the sector's full breadth.

"Seventy per cent of our industry here in B.C. is in biopharma," says Es Sabar. "We also have agriculture biotechnology, marine biotechnology and bioproducts. These are all very important areas for the future."

SBN president Edward Kim says B.C.'s young biotech cluster -- which consists of about 93 companies that employ about 2,600 people -- can't absorb all of the province's graduating students. Fortunately, other such clusters dot Canada and the U.S.

"The idea is that you put in three years elsewhere and then come back to B.C. with experience that will be attractive in the job market here," he says.

Kim hopes to get a postdoctoral appointment in industry after he graduates this spring from his PhD program in immunology at UBC.

"I'd like to be in drug discovery and development," says Kim, 28.

"I like the idea of translating basic research discoveries into novel therapeutics -- new medicine."