hey guys ECR G here back with another episode today I've got a very very good
question very very good question that I think some other questions I've answered
before while giving my thoughts on before have kind of hinted at but I've
never really gotten into it so this person asked a very pinpoint question
that I want to get into and as you can see by the title of this video it is
about entry-level cra salary negotiations so this person writes in
heyy CR g i hope all is going well I'm writing to you because I am in need of
some guidance regarding how much to ask of a CRO for an entry-level clinical
research position as a PhD candidate with some clinical research experience
I'm a biomedical science PhD candidate who will be graduating in the late
summer early fall of 2019 I am interested in pursuing a career in
clinical research my goal is to get hired as a clinical research associate
at med pace which has its pros and cons it would allow me to be trained for the
role thus gaining invaluable experience without having to start off as a
clinical research coordinator or a CTA there would be putting their time and
effort into training me without actually making money off of me until after
completing the six month training program however I have heard from many
people that they do not pay well the assistant dean in charge of career
development at my school has said that several grads from our school have been
hired there but at lower rates compared to what our real market value is for
industry positions one graduate student got hired with her PhD without industry
experience but started off at $45,000 which appears to be similar to rates of
grads with only BS degrees if not lower currently the NIH recommendation for
postdocs is at fifty grand a year the former graduate student said that I
could start at fifty three thousand dollars without an issue I'm aiming
toward negotiating for salary around fifty five thousand even even upwards of
sixty thousand dollars however my fear is that I would be rejected despite
having some clinical trial experience and a PhD in roughly five years of
oncology research experience several current employees from their
company have stated that my experiences would be beneficial to them because
their sponsors would want to see arrays who have backgrounds and their
respective therapeutic areas also having a be a PhD helps in these negotiations
so let me see I don't alright so basically he goes on to explain a little
bit about what his PhD is in which doesn't really pertain to my response in
this video but basically as a bio PhD cell and molecular biology this person
attaches their CV also so I understand a little bit more about their background
again not very much needed I already know where I'm gonna go with this and
you know they look to be paid about fifty five thousand so alright so
unfortunately your PhD doesn't really do much for a CRA because CRA is a position
where you've got to be trained to do it and no however no however now however
many hours you spent getting your PhD and as much as you know about biology
you know zero about monitoring and being a CRA so that's how a CRO or a
pharmaceutical company is kind of looking at you and you're kind of caught
in this weird conundrum we feel like just because you have that PhD piece of
paper you feel like you should you deserve more than someone who does not
have that exact same degree and you know I think I mentioned this in my email to
you is I have worked with people in those entry-level roles who have PhDs
you know they have to they start at the bottom just like everyone else but the
thing about med pace is they do offer this CRA program now I've done extensive
research on this on Glassdoor and you can check my review of med pace as a
company too and what you're saying is exactly right they do like to hire
people in at much lower salary rates and they also make them sign a non-compete -
now I have not seen one of these non-competes
or have read what it says in the non-compete but basically a non-compete
is making sure that you don't go leave them for a competitor because they are
investing some money into early on and they want to make sure that
they get a return on their investment if they're gonna be doing this and I talked
before about how much I hate these non-competes and they should just pay
people appropriately than they want to worry about leaving they should know why
CRA is turnover and they should do what they can to alleviate that rather than
just make them sign a legal document because it leaves a bad taste in
people's mouth but I will say this so do I think that you can get over $50,000
from Ed pace maybe do I think you can get $60,000 from Ed pace that's probably
hell no just because there are so many people begging to be CRA s I'm sure
there are other people with PhDs that would take less than that to do the job
and even less than an even more people with just bachelor's degrees or master's
degree that would take whatever salary they give them so I definitely recommend
for you to trying to go she ate as much as you can obviously but take don't make
it a deal-breaker because there's not going to be many other opportunities out
there where you can go straight from you know studying to being a CRA there's
very very few of these programs and they pop up every once in a while sometimes
they want people only with study coordinator experience which I've talked
about before is I think is the best experience you can get to be to go on to
be then be a CRA so they have stipulations on these programs but if
you're able to go straight from being a PhD candidate without much monitoring
experience to being a monitor that's definitely something I would strongly
consider and then after that and after you've done your duty to med pace then
you can jump actually I'm sure there's ways that you could around the
non-compete like if you go work for academic center you know the non-compete
has to be reasonable they can't make it so you can't make a living so most the
most likely it says you can't go work for people that do the same type of
research whether it's oncology or something so you can go work in CNS or
other they're saying you can't go work for another CRO
well then you can go work for a large academic institution as a monitor or you
can go work for a pharmaceutical company as a monitor for a couple years and then
you can get back in the CRO game so you've got to kind of look at the
non-compete and what it says to know how you can use it to your benefit but
you're right they are paying way under in way out way under CRA salary
expectations because entry level CRA is should be making almost under seven like
right under seventy thousand then that's just base salary when we talk in bonus
if you get stocks at your company socking options if you get other perks
to your conversation should be well over $70,000 your total compensation should
be well over seventy thousand so yeah they - their game and I've talked about
this in their video their game is to lowball you make you sign a non-compete
and then they know that you're gonna be walking after that because you'll be
you'll make enough you will have enough experience to be a serial 'evil - and
you should be making six figures at then why would you have that experience and
still continue to only make forty-five thousand fifty thousand dollars so you
should be able to double your salary if you when you leave them maybe even
triple it in that first year depending depending on what kind of sign-on bonus
you're able to get but yeah I'm not the biggest fan of them honestly you know
people talk about those tactics on Glassdoor and you don't see that at
other companies but then again other companies aren't necessarily hiring
entry-level see Ras without any experience - so but definitely if I was
in your shoes and you had and they offered me the position I would
definitely take it and then figure out how to get around that non-compete six
months later a year later because there's definitely a way and if if the
non-compete is too restrictive a judge will throw it out but most likely
they're not gonna be pursuing you with with those legal fees for only forty
five thousand dollars a lot of people have talked about on the blogs that you
know they break non-compete all the time because they're really put in place for
people that can really strongly affect the
business so these gonna be like high-level executives like VPS or some
of the scientists that are working with the actual compounds and molecules they
don't want those trade secrets to go to the competitor so that's who the
non-competes are really designed for but med pace is probably just putting this
there to scare people from from a jumping ship so early because they're
spending all that money on you but yeah so when it comes to your salary
negotiation you can talk about your research experience but it doesn't sound
like it's clinical research experience like on the clinical side you know may
silent sound it's kind of sounds like it's probably more bench research which
is researched but it's not clinical research you know you've got to be
trained in good clinical practice you've got to be you've got to be trained in
how clinical trials work in the clinical trial process and things of that nature
so you've got a good background got a good start but I would definitely have
given the opportunity and I was in your shoes I would definitely take that
position because it's very rare to start as a CRA without any experience and you
know if you're not given that position don't hate on starting from the bottom I
know plenty of people I know people with dental degrees foreign medical doctors
PhDs I know people who started from the
bottom just like everyone else and you know the way this industry works is you
can start making money very quickly after a year or two years if you play
your cards right even three years you can start making very good money very
quickly so don't think just because you have a PhD you should making X amount
when you get out you got to think kind of long term think two years out three
years out five years out where you want to be and most likely you'll you'll be
able to get there so that's what I would recommend and I know you kind of want to
come out making money quick especially after spending all that time studying
and although being in all those books all the time but definitely take a step
back think think about how hard it is to get a position in this industry in
general and you'll you'll kind of respect the fact that you kinda have to
pay your dues you kind of have to get in regardless of the degree that you hold
you know like I mentioned earlier it is it is not uncommon for foreign medical
doctors dental students even do s to want to get in this industry and BCRA s
so you're not unique in the fact that you are personally with a high-level
graduate degree wanted to get in this industry it's very competitive it's
competitive for people of all backgrounds and usually they all end up
starting at the bottom unless you do another position like I don't know if
you could do medical monitor but you might be able to do a medical science
liaison role there's there's there's a couple other positions maybe on the
scientist side where you could use your PhD that way and still be involved in
the clinical research process for a pharmaceutical company so don't don't
just look at being a CRA because that's not really gonna utilize your degree I
mean I know people with associate's degrees that are see arrays and then
there's plenty of people with just bachelor's degrees mphs is common to a
few MBAs also but you definitely don't need an advanced degree to become a CRA
so I would look at if you want to utilize your degree I would definitely
look at those roles that kind of require that so I look at this research
scientist or something for a pharmaceutical company - and that
probably that typically pays a little bit better also so I would think about
that alright guys thank you so much for listening to this episode really glad I
was able to answer this question but when it when it comes to it so I'll just
take a second to think more generally here so when it comes to people doing
their entry-level cr8 negotiation it is very very hard to jump from any position
to an entry-level CRA especially if you're doing it at a different company
like if you're at one company and you eventually apply for entry-level CRA
position at another company it is hard to make that jump so I wouldn't be too
strict on the salary salary there now they're gonna pay you
well because you work a lot as a CRA you sacrifice a lot as a CRA because you
know just the other night I got back at midnight on a on a weekend night
on a Friday night I got that guy at midnight so of course you know normal
people there out of there out by work four o'clock five o'clock and you have
that time but I'm technically working so you that's why they typically pay you a
little bit better as a CRA and that's fine and I think that's that's how it
should be that's why that's part of the reason why I see a raise get paid so
well is because you do have to sacrifice a lot of your personal life to be a CRA
but you also get a lot of freedom too but you know going going back on that
point when it when it comes to the entry-level role I would take what they
offer definitely negotiate but I would take it
because it's very easy to find another job as a CRA right after a month two
months I mean I hadn't even done monitoring visits yet and I was getting
emails constantly from recruiters I'm going to you know recruiting me to come
to their companies so I mean definitely get the experience that's that's my
message in these episodes all the time get the experience and then you can
figure out what to do with it later but you've got to get that experience so the
same thing for you with your PhD you know later on after you get some sea air
experience and then you combine that with your PhD then you can command even
more money then then you're hoping for now but you got to get that monitoring
experience first because now your PhD doesn't really mean much because you
don't know how to monitor and it's different because you know you don't
really you don't really utilize PhD as a monitor you've got to be resourceful you
got to utilize a whole bunch of different things you know and especially
because you're not really looking at the nitty-gritty science like that that's
for the pis that's for other people you're more so looking at data you're
more so you know training your teaching there's a lot of the lot that goes into
it that you probably didn't learn it it's your PhD program or any other
a graduate degree program unless you like majored in clinical research or
something like that but that's just something to think about
so thank you so much for your question again if you have any questions email me
Ali clinical route group at gmail.com take care guys