hey guys Serg here back with another episode today I've got a
viewer-submitted question and this person asks hi e CR G I'm a recent
graduate of human biology in looking into graduate schools for biostatistics
I was wondering if you had any advice for me seeing that you work in the
clinical field I was applying to CTA positions
likely clinical trials assistant positions to get some research exposure
do you know of any biostatistical path new grad onto CTA
onto biostatistics biostatistician I understand that CTA is not analytical so
I was wondering if I'd end up being pigeon-holed also I'm not sure if you
give free career advice so I appreciate any assistance you can provide in the
matter best regards and they sign their name so thank you so much for your
question this is really a unique question and I really wanted to make a
video on it because I'm sure there's some people out there in the blogosphere
or in ECR G land that are interested in the biostatistics path and want to know
how to be a biostatistics tician especially in the clinical research
field because there are other places where statistician that works kind of
hard to say where statisticians are used but clinical research can be hard to
break into so I think you're onto something really big here and the
question that you asked and of course for biostatistics you're
gonna have to go back to school you're not gonna be able to be that without
some kind of graduate degree whether it's a masters or a PhD so that's good
that you're already thinking that way but something really good that I think
you thought about was getting some clinical research experience early
before you apply and that's awesome so the main question you asked was am i if
I get a CTA position is that kind of pigeonhole me later and the answer is
absolutely not you need to get clinical research experience somehow some way and
it's better to do that early so that after you get your graduate degree in
biostatistics that you can then go on and market
yourself as having had clinical research experience and you're gonna combine that
with your biostatistics degree so you'd be a great fit for a job in
biostatistics because you already have clinical research experience you
understand how clinical research works you understand the process etc so that's
a great fit but an even better fit would be if you could somehow work in a
biostatistics department or in the statistics department without I mean
before you go back and get your a graduate degree so I would I would say
if you can get a CTA role or whatever role you can get in clinical research
maybe even data a data management role like a clinical data analyst or
something like that entry-level role that would be great
experience for you to do and then go and get your masters or your PhD in
biostatistics and then you'd be a great fit to come back and apply years later
when you've got your biostatistics master's a group degree to back it up so
that would be my idea so you're on the right track definitely try and get some
experience early maybe even intern for biostatistics or something along those
lines before and one of the great things you could do actually is if you could
somehow get a job in the statistics department in a CRO or a pharmaceutical
company or some kind of biotech company you can get a job there before work
there for a year you want to go to a place that has an a pathway to repay
your student loans so a lot of these companies that a lot of people don't
know but a lot of companies will offer what's called tuition reimbursement and
what that means is for a certain amount you know it's usually it could be
anything but it's a lot of money and you definitely want to take advantage of it
if you can some will pay for in full your graduate degree but especially if
you work in a statistics department they'll they're more likely to reimburse
you for that statistics degree and that's much better than paying for it on
your own is having the company pay for it for you so I'm not really sure if
this degree is something you can do part-time or if you've got to do a
time but that's definitely something I would explore is the tuition
reimbursement because there's no tuition like free tuition so I would definitely
look into that but as far as your mindset of getting some clinical
research experience before then going and getting your degree and then coming
back to the field great mindset great idea behind that a hundred percent you
will not be pigeonholed because you'll be using that experience to come back
for something different biostatistics so great question and I
think this can this kind of mindset can be applied for other things in clinical
research some of the more like niche areas maybe like data management I would
not do this for project management maybe like Medical monitor you know some
things like that because I talk about all the time in clinical research how
degrees don't mean anything but there are a couple things where the degrees do
for something like a medical monitor where you need an MD or like a
biostatistician where you likely need at least a master's to do it those are the
things where you need them where you need a degree but if you just want to
make a bunch of money in the pharmaceutical industry you don't need a
degree for that all you need is a bachelor's there's a number of ways to
do it CRA being the one that comes top to my
top of mine because there are a lot of things working for you as a CRA and
there's a lot of things that the other job did not provide for example your
phone bills paid your home Internet's paid when you're on the road you're not
paying anything in expenses so a lot of perks like that there's a few more I
could mention but that's another topic for another video but biostatistician is
a very good role they're very important to the clinical trial process and thank
you for your question so if anyone is interested in potentially interviewing
for these roles or have questions about how to interview or any type of advice
you can email me Ali clinical group at gmail.com
we'll also do resume reviews we also do interview preparation so if you're if he
about your resume or if he about your interview skills email me their
lead clinical group at gmail.com we'll get you right don't worry about it take
care