Crossing Over: Why Many Lab Scientists are Becoming Pharma Compliance Consultants

As a lab scientist, you have spent years developing a specific skill set, drilling down into a focused area of research, and becoming an expert in your field. You might wonder what other opportunities are out there and whether the skills you have developed are valued in other career paths. As lab scientists who have transitioned to pharma compliance consulting, we can tell you there are alternative career paths where your hard-earned skills are and will continue to be, valued.

More lab scientists are finding the rewards of working as a pharma compliance consultant. The work allows them to make a difference to patients using and continually enriching valued skill sets.

Pharma compliance consulting: a job that helps patients

Anyone who takes medicine trusts that they are getting the right medication, in the right dose. Pharmaceutical companies ensure this happens through compliance with global and local regulations. Compliance consultants help pharma companies:

• Create policies and procedures that ensure products are made correctly.
• Check that the systems used to make products work effectively and consistently.
• Improve processes to increase the quality of data generated and how it is used.
• Demonstrate compliance with regulations so they can put products on the market.
• Keep patients safe by ensuring products maintain high levels of quality.

As you can see, a compliance consultant’s job in the pharmaceutical industry amounts to so much more than just memorizing regulations. It is a job that can impact patients more directly than research in the lab.

Scientists’ skills are valued in GxP compliance

While doing focused research, you developed not only expertise in a specific scientific topic but also a wide range of skills that are highly valued in pharma compliance consulting. A typical project will require extensive use of the planning, performing, and presenting skills you built up through your experiments. In a compliance consulting project’s planning and design phase, your combination of critical thinking skills and logical, analytical approach will help teams identify objectives and risks with precision. An open mind and keen ability to think outside the box will help you identify new demands by challenging the status quo.

While working on a project, your informed and objective decision making will help you effectively move tasks forward. Every scientist knows the importance of experimental controls in ensuring results can be trusted. As a scientist equipped with skills and experience in controlling experiments, validation is in your blood!

As a compliance consultant, delivering results on time is particularly important, but so is keeping stakeholders apprised of progress and allowing flexibility to incorporate customer demands. Your organizational skills as a scientist will help you manage multiple projects and people at the same time.

Reporting at the end of a project is nothing new to you. You have collected key results and presented them regularly to specialists. Your presentation skills will help you to transfer knowledge and status updates concisely and clearly to colleagues and customers.

Outline of a compliance consulting project flow. Scientists have many valuable skills for compliance consulting projects.

Pharma compliance consulting gives you room to grow

Lab research can limit you to a narrow focus. However, personal growth comes from broadening your perspective and being open to different points of view. In pharma compliance consulting you can apply your skills and knowledge in new ways across a broad range of contexts. For example, your presentations will no longer focus on a single scientific topic. Instead, they will cover a much broader range of topics in meetings with diverse expert teams and stakeholders. Adapting your skill set in these settings will offer you opportunities for continuous learning and growth.

Lab scientists’ unique skill sets make them ideal pharma GxP compliance consultants

Demand from pharmaceutical companies for help with quality-related regulatory compliance is surging. Highly trained scientists bring key skills and attributes to the world of pharma compliance consulting. It is an attractive career option for anyone interested in project work, continuous learning, and improving the status quo. With your organizational, people, and critical thinking skills, you can make a difference in an industry important to all people.

If you are interested in learning more about becoming a compliance consultant in the pharmaceutical industry, contact us!