you go ahead and give a little intro about yourself sure um so I was actually
lucky enough to stumble into clinical research while I was still in school I
had realized that research is something that I had never really considered and
so I started off by just kind of helping out in a cognitive development lab and
from there I kind of realized that I really liked being a part of clinical
research and clinical trials from there I had decided to apply to a small CRO
that had a position as a study manager open and I I pretty much just had
mentioned the coursework that I had done which was some from ecology coursework
and from a circle chemistry coursework which gave me an understanding of the
medications that are being tested and from there I I got hired as a study
manager and I helped with the budgets and contracts and the site selection and
all of the processes that go towards starting up studies and managing them
from start to finish it was quite a role to take on as a senior in college but I
learned a lot from it because I pretty much started off at the deep end of the
pool and as the studies um came on they needed a CRA to take care of some of the
studies that were happening on the west coast the CRO was just had one office in
the East Coast so when they had that unmet need I'm I kind of volunteered to
take on that role so I could learn more about clinical research monitoring and
that's where I really got my experience of the CRA and then shortly after I
realized that I wanted to actually get the experience as a clinical research
coordinator and I realized that I really needed that because I'm in order to
manage studies and manage sites and make sure everything is going as planned
you really need to understand what goes on at the site level and that's when I
ended up switching my job to be a clinical research coordinator in the in
at a hospital and I worked both in non oncology and um
oh gee studies so I was there for about a year and five months and that's when I
was contacted regarding a CRA position directly with a sponsor and so now just
I've been there for a month and I'm really really liking it so my experience
has kind of been from Sierra Society to sponsor level CRA and then on the side
more recently I started consulting and helping with patient recruitment
strategies especially at sites where they struggle to recruit and with
studies that have very strict inclusion exclusion criteria okay awesome Wow so a
lot to unpack there some really good information in there so first you you've
got your first job as a study manager and you said you got that job right out
of college or you were working you're working as you were a senior in college
on that job and what year was this because I want to provide a framework in
a context for people for like the years because the industry goes up and down so
a lot of people may be having you know our time breaking in at certain times so
I want to just put that in perspective so what year was that and then how did
how more specifically did that come about um so that was May of 2015 so as I
was finishing up my my second to last year in college I really wanted to I'm
not just intern somewhere but have a job that I could carry throughout my senior
year and kind of extend through of the possibility of a full-time position
later on and I saw this one position posted on the career board and really I
didn't think that I would be selected for it because I was not a college
graduate I didn't already have research experience but I sent my resume in with
the strong cover letter just explaining what my potential is and I got selected
for the position so that was one thing I learned very quickly is that you know
you don't want to overreach but if you feel like you can handle something you
definitely want to try and ciao and explain why you're qualified
even if you don't have that you know three years of experience or two years
of experience exactly because you never know what they could be looking for at
that time because what they post is just like the perfect ideal candidate and a
lot of times they never come across that perfect ideal candidate exactly and the
nice thing about this position was that originally it was supposed to be
full-time and because I was a student the president of the company says that's
more than fine like if you can commit to 20 to 25 hours a week no tape do you
want so that was the nice thing I think that the cover letter really helped you
know not it's not always easy to have to write a specific cover letter for every
position when you're starting off but if you feel very strongly like if the
location is great to where you go to school and the hours may be flexible you
definitely want to give a strong cover letter because that may make you stand
out compared to other people that are applying it's true okay that's
interesting so that's why don't you say the cover letter thing because I
actually I don't advise against it but it does take time till I adapt it to a
specific job so I typically say like save all those but make sure you apply
to the non cover letter jobs also like fighting those out as quickly as
possible so they can spend more time working on the other cover letter jobs
yep so that's interesting so you were able to work that job in college 20 to
25 hours