BIO:ON Career
Bio careers
Things I've looked up and written down while preparing for a biotech or pharma career. Where expert judgement is needed, I've gathered published industry sources and accounts from people in the roles — with sources.
"So what changes when that rule changes?" Preparing interview follow-ups with three stories from Issue #21
After you mention a news story, the next question is often about a concept. I took the three rule-change stories in Issue
Reading FDA briefing documents and 10-Ks for trial results and primary endpoints
How I pull just the trial results and primary endpoints out of long FDA advisory committee briefing documents and company filings (10-K and 8-K, or 20-F and 6-K for foreign companies) and Korea's DART. Uses the camizestrant case, with AI to find the right pages and every number checked by hand.
Discovery in China, manufacturing in Korea, pricing in the US: three stories, three roles
I re-read the Novartis × Abogen deal, CMS's GLOBE model and the Teva × Samsung Bioepis alliance through a careers lens. For each story, the role that handles it, how that role is described, and an exercise you can try as a student.
Is the paper your AI cited even real? The checklist I use
Four checks for catching fake citations, non-existent trial results and wrong gene names in AI answers, with research on how often citations are fabricated and a free checklist.
A biotech and pharma career orientation — what the roles are, and where you might fit
The five stages of bringing a drug to market, where people work, what nine core roles do and require, and four questions to find your direction. Every role description is grounded in an official source.
Put one piece of industry news in your cover letter — turning 'interested' into 'understands'
Replace the generic "biotech is a growing industry" line with one recent story that proves you understand the role — a four-sentence structure with before-and-after examples.
Reading biotech hiring demand in the news — four signals from 17 issues this summer and autumn
I regrouped the news BIO:ON Insight covered from June to September by role. The trends that kept coming up for manufacturing and quality, market access, regulatory and BD roles — and what to prepare.
"What industry news caught your eye?" — Turning one headline into a role-specific answer
A three-step structure for answering the classic biotech interview question from your role's point of view, with four worked examples built from real news.
Your biotech LinkedIn headline shouldn't end with 'Student'
A headline formula that gets you found by recruiters without experience, five role-by-role examples, and how to build the activity that backs it up.