Additional resources on this blog
Interview-based career profiles for this career area
Dr. Gary Kusdian, Account Manager
A life science careers blog for early career researchers
This blog aims to inspire early career researchers exploring different career options. We provide interview-based profiles of life scientists working in diverse science-related careers and articles on a broad range of career-related topics, with new content added on a regular basis.
When hiring for sales and marketing roles for scientific products, companies often look to hire scientists. This is because their familiarity with the needs and challenges of scientists, their ability to communicate and their network are highly valuable in these positions. Employers include companies who produce products aimed at scientists (e.g. reagents, labware, instrumentation, scientific services), as well as pharma, biotech and medical device companies.
The job titles and the tasks associated with sales / marketing positions have a large variety. Possible tasks may include a subset of the following activities:
Sales roles
Marketing roles
In our careers & skills survey, 9 sales and marketing professionals told us the competencies they use most in their daily work The most frequently selected competencies were:
It is often possible to enter junior sales and marketing roles with no commercial experience. In particular, ‘inside-sales’ roles are one potential entry-level role – these are office based, primarily communicating with customers by phone. Other junior sales roles include ‘sales representative roles’: these tend to be focussed on specific customers (usually in a specific ‘territory’), and building up a customer base in that area. Depending on the company, role and location, the customers may all be rather spread out requiring a lot of travelling– but sometimes they are localised in the region in which you live, requiring no overnight trips.
Sales and marketing roles are closely related, and there is often the possibility to switch between these two roles. Career progression may also include managing teams of sales reps / marketing professionals and eventually more senior management positions, moving into product management, or other commercial roles.
Example job titles
Note: there is large variety between companies ; some roles may require experience in a more junior role first.
In our careers and skills survey, scientists working in sales and marketing told us that they appreciate that their work:
Interview-based career profiles for this career area
Dr. Gary Kusdian, Account Manager
For EMBL fellows
Within EMBL, further internal resources (e.g. recorded career seminars) can also be found on our career exploration intranet pages.
For all career areas, we highly recommend first learning more about the careers using the resources above, then conducting informational interviews to gain further insights directly from former PhDs working in career areas that interest you.
Last update: November 2022