educated but not employed

We are in an era of specialisation. Everything around us is complex and we need specialists to deal with every small issue. Today, the job opportunities are aplenty. universities and colleges have sprouted like beans; and available courses offer plenty of variety where one reads all types of alphabets in a degree or a diploma. Paradoxically, an aspirant finds it difficult to get a job and retain it. Companies form, dissolve, merge, diversify, integrate, compete, form alliances and do many things at a fast speed. Even a senior employee feels insecure, inadequate or outdated. There is no certainty of a smooth career path. Imagine if an employee witnesses two accelerated promotions, four transfers and three retrenchments in his company within a single month. Even a Diwali bonus may not bring smile to him--even if he is not affected.

Managements have not become more vicious, rather, the order of the world has changed with globalisation. Dynamic changes will now be the order of the day. If your company has to survive, thrive and grow, it must withstand changes that take place on a day-to-day basis. Earlier, this was year-to-year basis. So need of corporate world today is to produce quality goods or deliver quality services--on time and at globally competitive rates. Your company therefore needs people who are knowledgeable, productive and ambitious; those who are eager to acquire new knowledge and master new skills; and those who adapt to changing times smoothly. Who can say this is unfair?

Yet, we have some worrying facts. A white paper by Sabita Rebecca reveals certain paradoxes. U R Rao Committee Report observes that 'India will require well over 10,000 PhDs and twice as many M Tech Degree holders for meeting its huge R&D needs. But then, currently, India churns out barely 400 PhDs a year'. Only 25 percent of Indian Engineers (campus) are hirable. The Indian biotech industry has been growing at the rate of 38 percent annually. It is projected that at this rate the biotech Industry will cross $ 5 billion by 2010. On the other hand, till 2005, success rate of campus hiring in the biotech institutes in India was between one to three percent.

This paradox has been noted all over the world. The impact is particularly felt in India for two reasons. First, India is a favored destination particularly in pharma sector (contract manufacture as well as drug discovery and development). There are a large number of visible opportunities. Yet, when only ten percent of qualified persons are absorbed in the corporate system, the unemployment in the remaining becomes a point of frustration for the individual and an idle human resource that the country cannot afford.

Let us examine what are the qualities that an employer is on the look out for. The first is core competence. Today, it matters much more as to what you can do rather than what you know. So a demonstrable skill or ability will be valued much more. Next important quality is your ability to gain new knowledge and inclination to acquire new skills. Lastly, the most important aspect is your abilities to be a team member--to follow always and to lead sometimes. Industry essentially means team work. If you are a loner, industry is not the right place for you.

To achieve these, today, irrespective of your title, you will need to multi-task. That means relearning and reinforcement of what you already know. You may have passed with 50 percent marks; but in a job your output must be 100 per cent perfect to retain the job. And 110 percent perfect if you want a promotion. Yes, the extra 10 percent is called value addition that you have done. It needs imagination, trial and error, discussion with colleagues and many other things. If you do it, you show that you can go beyond the pale of your job chart.

With changing times, new knowledge and skills become necessary. It is not sufficient to take a sabbatical for that. Your section head will decide this. If you cannot do this, you may not lose your job--but you may stagnate in your post till such a time your junior is your boss. After a few years, you may be construed as 'dead wood' and may qualify for a 'pink slip'.

The team work has more to do with your nature and attitudes than formal training. Yes, formal training is needed. But the training will be fruitful if you have the positive frame of mind. There are two broad areas.

First is introduction to managerial sciences. The era of thousands of employees with water tight compartments of materials, production and marketing is now relevant only to large scale manufacture. A sector like drug discovery and development needs your involvement at every step. You need to know basics of material management because your requirements are so specific and specialided that it cannot be left to imagination of purchase department. You must know not only basics but advanced aspects of packaging because you may be sending a blood sample to another city and it will be treated as bio-hazardous material. You must know at least the mere fundamentals of financial management to the extent these are relevant to project management. You may be leading a few small projects; participating in a few medium sized project or you may be at the periphery of a large project; yet you must know the broad picture and your role in it. Project management will teach you that. You will have to learn planning, organisation and scheduling because you are expected to deliver an output on time for which, some other section in your company may be waiting. All this knowledge will not give you a diploma in management; but it will make you a better manager. You will perform the same tasks; but as a professional--not as an amateur.

The second area is 'Soft Skills' (as against your hardcore skills, which is your specialisation). These include skills of communication (listening and speaking), art of negotiation, corporate etiquette, language skills (interpersonal, telephonic electronic) etc. Soft skills can be classified into corporate skills, employability skills and life skills. These are generic in nature. Certainly the list is not exhaustive.

One needs to decide which ones more are relevant to a particular industry. Training in these areas is scalable. It can range from a brief weekend lecture or a two day workshop as a part of periodic corporate training program. Or else these can be integrated in formal curriculum along with hardcore skills training.

Soft skills are an area where in needs assessment must be done by training institutes in consultation with the Industry. Our experience while seeking inputs from the clinical research industry has led us to incorporate some modules in our syllabus, keeping the the curriculum elastic. For example, business communication for a pharma marketing trainee will be vastly different than the one who is aspirant for clinical research or for clinical data management. The first needs emphasis on verbal communications; the second on interpersonal communications and third is tied down mainly to electronic communications. Thus, the faculty has to fine tune the curriculum to the needs of the job profile.

Managerial sciences provide the context to the student. Hardcore skills are needed for the student to perform as a professional. Soft skills show the way as to how to go about it. The employer needs the entire package ready to undertake challenge of the job!

clinical research carear

A graduate in life sciences or medical sciences is often at cross roads after completion of his/her degree. Many of them are not confident of their career and are anxious about their next move. They are often undecided on whether they should pursue a postgraduation in the same subject, prepare for foreign university exams, accept jobs offered with a decent salary irrespective of the nature of the job or try something different that is more challenging and satisfying.

There is also a category of students who are neither content with their graduation nor happy with the type of jobs offered to them. With the rising cost and competition, they are also not confident of pursuing post graduation in the main stream. It is this category of students, mostly venturing into trying something more challenging. In such a scenario, advertisements like 'Clinical research the emerging career option for lifesciences, dental and medical graduates', will certainly stimulate the students to consider clinical research as their destination. Furthermore, the terms Clinical and Research makes this field an attractive option. For many of the science graduates aspiring for growth, research is a boon because science and research are inseparable. When research offers an attractive salary too, guardians and parents are obviously drawn towards the field. The journey of exploration thus begins. The students and the parents discuss with the institutional heads and end up taking the course. Many succeed in this attempt and get their ambitions fulfilled. But there are some who become miserable because they could not achieve what they aspired for.

What were the reasons for such failures? Is clinical research a feasible option for all the life science graduates? Does it offer highly paid jobs as claimed by the advertisements? Are the job opportunities really in plenty? How can the course equally fulfil the aspirations of medical and non medical graduates? These are some queries which have to be answered so that students genuinely interested in challenging but emerging areas are not misled.

Through this article, an attempt is made to clear some of the myths and put forth the facts of careers in clinical research. Before we actually get into these issues, let us first understand the basic concepts of clinical research.

A multi disciplinary effort

Clinical research is applied research. In simple terms, it involves testing of new medication in human population. The purpose is to evaluate whether the medication is safe and effective when it is used for the disease under question. Clinical trials also tell us what is the appropriate dose and route of administration. The whole task of clinical trials is carried out in a phased manner. Initial testing called Phase-I is carried out on healthy volunteers to understand the safety profile and observe how the body handles the drug (ie pharmacokinetics). The subsequent phases, Phase-II and III are carried out on patients suffering from the disease to understand the efficacy (whether it really works) and safety of the medication.

As clinical trials involves research on human subjects, it has to be performed to the highest standards. Ensuring clinical trials are performed in accordance with national and international guidelines of Good Clinical Practice (GCP) is a combined responsibility. Trials cannot be conducted without the approval of the regulatory bodies (Drug Controller General (India)) and Ethics Committees located at the institutions performing the trials. Such scrutiny is intended to protect the safety and rights of the patient. Clinical trials are conducted on thousands of patients who volunteer themselves to participate in the trial after fully understanding the purpose and rationale behind the research (called as informed consent).

After completion of all the phases, the regulatory agency reviews the data obtained from thousands of patients. If the medication proves to be effective without causing much of side effects, permission is granted to market the product. However the pharmaceutical manufacturer (sponsor) is expected to monitor for any new risks/side effects even after the drug is marketed. Generation of quality data (observations on the patients like blood pressure) by the physicians (investigators) is the fundamental and crucial component of clinical research. The sponsor with his team supports the investigators in such activity. Each investigator carries out the actual clinical trial at his site (hospital) and the sponsor's team co-ordinates trials initiated simultaneously at various centres. Preparing clinical trial documents (the protocol, case report form etc) ,monitoring the trials at regular intervals, quality assurance, audits, supply of tested drugs at desired time are some of the important responsibilities of the sponsor. However the investigator dispenses the medication, obtains informed consent, ensures safety of the patient through follow ups and attends to the patients whenever there is an adverse event. Thus a collective and well co-ordinated effort of sponsor and investigators team results in good clinical trial management, which is crucial for the successful outcome of clinical trials.

Behind the curtain

Research would have started at least four to five years before the drug was tested on humans in the research and development centres of the sponsor. The diseases that are unaddressed or are yet to find a good medication with fewer side effects are first identified. Research is then carried out to understand the molecular targets that need to be rectified by drugs. With this information, drug discoverers synthesise chemicals and identify the suitable candidate molecule through sophisticated technologies like high through put screening. The probable candidate is then put for further pharmacological and toxicological testing in experimental animals. The molecule is then subjected to clinical trials. The cost of drug development is approximately $1.2 billion and it takes about eight to 12 years for the drug to reach the market from the time it is discovered.

The clinical research team

At the Sponsor/Contract (Clinical) Research organisations (clinical research organisations are independent private companies to whom the sponsor sometimes outsources the clinical trial projects): Clinical Research Associate, Clinical Trial Administrator, Project Manager, Medical Writer, Quality Assurance Manager/ Eexecutive, Medical Advisor (These positions are exclusively for medical professionals, the rest are available for any lifesciences graduate/post graduates), Medical Monitor, Data Entry Operator, Data Manager, Data Validator, Bio-statistician, Manager- Regulatory Affairs.

At the Clinical trial site

Principal Investigator, Co-investigator, Clinical Research Co-ordinator, other hospital staff as per requirement

Companies into clinical research Sponsor companies: Johnson & Johnson, Biocon, GlaxoSmithKline Beecham, Allergan, Astra Zeneca, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Nicholas Piramal, Dr.Reddys Laboratories, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer etc.

CROs: Quintiles, Manipal Acunova, ICON International, Clintec, Clinigene International, Accenture, Paraxel, Asian Clinical trials, Paragon, etc.

Hospitals : St.Johns Hospital, M S Ramiah Memorial Hospital, Kidwai Memorial Hospital, Bangalore Institute of Oncology, Bangalore Diabetes Hospital, Wockhardt Hospital, Apollo Hospitals etc.

Information technology and clinical research

Information technology has been a boon to the clinical research industry. The software programmes such as Oracle data base helps the organisations to effectively manage huge amount of clinical trial data. Since we have several thousands of patient's data using software makes the job easy andgenerate high quality analysis. Clinical data management has thus emerged as one of the important off shoot of clinical research. There are many other applications of computers in clinical research, the discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article.

Role of training

Every player in clinical research is expected to be a responsible and committed manager. He /she must be quality conscious, willing to take responsibility, have self discipline and must be willing to be a team player. He must also have a good communication skills, the right attitude, be able to build up good interpersonal relationship and be easily adaptable. There should be a sound fundamental knowledge of common disease conditions, new drug development, GCP, regulations and ethics. He should be able to draft some of the documents, interpret any clinical trial document and have an eye for details.

Training in clinical research to a great extent helps to build up most of these qualities and develop an insight into the field. However, it always depends upon the quality and the methodology of training and trainers' experience in the field. A good training will ensure that at the end of the course the student is able to take up responsibilities in the industry without further training by the employer where he would be eventually placed. Hence it is not sufficient to have an ambition to do a course in clinical research but also to choose the right institution. Aspiring students should collect information through internet, past students, through personal visits and interaction with the teaching faculty.

Choosing the right institution

A good institution will alone guide students towards the right path. The following points are crucial to be considered while selecting the institution.

• The management: A sound management with a good track record in any field will be a stable organisation. The management with a right attitude and mission will always be pro-students. Students in such institutions are well protected
• The infrastructure: The student oriented institutions always provide good amenities to students like classrooms conducive to learning, adequate library facilities (adequate enough for all the students), good student faculty ratio, work space, counselling rooms etc
• The faculty: It is extremely important to select institutions with faculty who are qualified, well versed with teaching methodologies and well experienced in clinical research training. An institution that can afford to have at least one such faculty for every 10-15 students will certainly give quality education. Further, there should be a regular inflow of guest faculty from industry
• Placement records: A good placement record indicates acceptability of students by the industry. It also indicates that the institution has a cordial relationship with the industry and has taken into consideration the industry needs. With the mushrooming of training institutes, employers are becoming institution-selective. It is no longer sufficient if you are trained but the institution that trained you becomes an important criteria for placement
• Affiliations/ accreditations: The body accrediting the degree should be acceptable to the industry and have high standards and curriculum that caters to the needs of the industry. Therefore prospective students are expected to interact with industry professionals through contacts before taking admission
• Training methods: A sound theoretical knowledge is a necessity to understand the rationale behind the various processes in clinical research. Training methods in addition should also include hands on training in as many areas of clinical research as possible. Simulations, exercises, case studies, role plays, assignments, visits to clinical research units and R&D centres, projects etc should happen as a part of training. The student must ascertain whether the institution is able to provide such an atmosphere. This information can be gathered by an interaction with students already pursuing the course.

Opportunities in Clinical Research

One of the questions frequently asked is 'are there really good number of jobs to all the clinical research students passing out of the course?' Yes, there are jobs available, but one must be able to move out of their town for a prospective career. Secondly, the students must be able to come up to the high expectations of employers. A mere degree in clinical research will not suffice. There has to be an active effort by the student in understanding the subject and improving his soft skills. If students are sincere in these aspects, with a little patience they are guaranteed to be placed.

At times, it is very disappointing if sincere students are not placed after they have taken up the course for a career change. They have also been promised a very fat salary during admission. Such students are already in a good position doing well in their jobs. It is not advisable to opt for a career change at this stage because they are freshers in clinical research. The work experience in any other field will not be considered. Such students will be utterly disappointed as the salary will not match up to their expectations. To conclude, a career in clinical research is definitely challenging and satisfying. However success is ensured only when one chooses the right course from the right institution after thorough homework.

marketing carear in pharma

Of all the aspects of sales and marketing, branding has the unique distinction of being the most subjective concept with the most objective impact. The scenario becomes all the more interesting when this subjective concept is personified and a concept called 'brand ambassador' is created. This makes it necessary that the meaning of 'brand ambassador' be established before any deliberation on the topic to be fruitful.

Rather than exploring classical dictionary definitions, let us establish it through an example of the oldest ambassadors known to human civilisation - Sri Krishna.

The grand nature of the battle of Mahabharat sometimes takes attention away from the gruelling preparation which went behind it. It was easy for the Kauravas to rally kings and consolidate a combined army of 11 Akshauhini (approximately 2.2 million) since they themselves were rulers of Hastinapur. But for the Pandavas who were ousted from their kingdom and thrown into obscurity, gathering support was a herculean task. It was Sri Krishna's charisma which, when applied to rally support for the Pandavas' cause, gathered the seven Akshauhini (approximately 1.4 million) army for Pandavas. He was the person who went from court to court, presented his influential personality as a reflection of the Pandav character and won the Kings' hearts and minds alike.

This story of Sri Krishna gives us a practical definition of an ambassador. Logically extending this to branding which essentially involves creating anchors for a company and its products; 'A charismatic person who establishes trust for a stakeholder by representing characteristics of the stakeholder through his own influential personality'.

Importance of 'trust' in pharma industry

In a competitive set up based upon choices, no company, irrespective of sector, can succeed without trust among the consumer and other stake holders. However, in a sector like pharma where matters are related to health - even life and death, the importance of trust is many times more as compared to other sectors. This naturally increases the importance of 'Brand Ambassadors' in pharma, they being the agents of trust for a company and its products.

Who can be a brand ambassador?

Applying the definition in today's context where reaching to the desired category of customers is of prime importance, any charismatic personality who is also a recognised name within masses is a suitable choice for a brand ambassador.

Think on these lines and the known celebrities related to entertainment and sports are the first picture which pops up in our mind. The fact that they are a well known face in their arenas vouches for their charisma and influence; add this to the media which connects them to all categories of customers and they stand as the primary choices for a brand ambassadorship.

Brand ambassadors for pharma - a special challenge

Pharma industry has a special challenge in context of choosing brand ambassadors. The technical and complex nature of products for pharma companies (medicines) limits the options of brand ambassadors.

Let us again understand through an example. It is easy for a textile company to use Amitabh Bachchan's elegant personality to represent the suave nature of its fabric; however for a pharma company it will be difficult to find a representative for the anti - inflammatory nature of its medicine.

Thus, pharma companies face a special challenge - while the importance of brand ambassadors and the trust created by them is a lot more in pharma industry, the primary choice of brand ambassadors is difficult to exercise (barring rare exceptions like Wasim Akram, who promote products for a disease he himself suffers from).

This compels pharma companies to take up the formidable challenge of making up for the absence of the primary choice of brand ambassadors and creating the same amount of trust in a different way - through creating 'internal celebrities'.

Creating 'internal celebrities'

The example above can be used to establish two conditions for a pharma brand ambassador:

• For a brand with non - technical features, the brand ambassador's personality facilitates linkage between itself and the product's feature, on its own.

However, for a brand with technical features, the brand ambassador's personality will have to be mixed with a sound technical knowledge of the product and its background, for the linkage to happen.

The first natural choice which stands true on this are the high performing employees of the company; since an employee being present in the 'high performing' cadre implies that the employee has a strong personality backed with sound knowledge.

• The fact that the use of a known personality is limited and that there are restrictions on advertisement of most pharma products (barring OTC drugs, which can be advertised like any other product), it becomes imperative that pharma companies develop their own platforms to project these high performing employees as 'brand ambassadors'

Creation of these platforms is the most significant initiative a pharma company needs to take to build its employees as brand ambassadors.

Creation of 'platforms'

These are the steps which are proposed in this direction:

• Establishing stories:

All high performers have 'success stories' - challenges which tested their mettle and which they successfully met during their career. The first step in building the platforms is to explore all such stories with the associated thoughts and give them a structured and communicable shape - of an article, of a short film and so on.

• Communicating stories:

All these stories need to be communicated on all possible platforms - electronic media coverage (short films), print media coverage (articles), employee meets etc.

• Building up on the stories:

Once these established stories are communicated thoroughly and the employees have been positioned as a 'pharma celebrity', the employees themselves need to build upon this positioning to carry out the 'brand ambassadorship' for their company. The category they will target is a niche category consisting of medical fraternity, dealers of medicines and other stakeholders directly related to pharma (like entrepreneurs etc.)

Significance of 'Word of Mouth (WOM) Concept'

The Word of Mouth (WOM) concept finds a special relevance in this endeavour. One of the latest and most effective concepts in marketing, WOM involves spreading information about a company, product, event etc essentially through informal channels like one to one conversations, chatting, blogs and social networks. Although simple in description, the strength of this technique has been established through mathematical assessment like 'The Law of 250' (The Law of 250 states that every person is in touch with an average of 250 people to whom he can convey an opinion).

While the concept is an everyday phenomenon, the importance of focusing on and managing this concept is increasingly being understood and acted upon. By its very nature, the concept is most effective while targeting a niche clientele.

It is contended that internally created brand ambassadors of pharma companies need to make optimum use of this tool to create trust for their brand within the niche category described above.

These are some values which the pharma brand ambassadors will need to inculcate and demonstrate when using the WOM tool for brand building.

• Initiative in reaching out:

It is a basic fact of human psychology that people show interest in you when you show interest in them. Thus, for a WOM marketing specialists whose task is to make people say good things about their company and its products, ie spreading brand salient, initiative to reach out to as many people as possible is quintessential.

• Building a personal rapport:

The ability to detail a product is widely found in pharma world and easily achievable. What will differentiate a WOM marketing specialist will be his / her ability to strike a personal chord with the persons he is detailing to or generally dealing with. This will involve keen observation of the person's behaviour, communication abilities and knowledge to convert these observations into conversations and a high emotional quotient (EQ) to build relationships on the basis of these conversations.

• Passion:

Passion is one of the most contagious of all human emotions. Thus, in a scenario when the aim is to create trust by spreading a good word about a company or a product, strong passion in the employees about the company, its philosophies and its values is a must.

• Personal credibility:

As highlighted above, trust is all the more important in pharma since the matters are related to health - even life and death. In such a scenario, only that person who has built a personal credibility by standing true on his word and being transparent in his action can utilise WOM to the fullest.

These values which enable an employee to spread good word about his / her company through informal channels can be inculcated through informal and formal channels. Apart from training and development initiatives, when the leadership team is seen to be 'walking the talk', the values percolate down the organisation enabling a pharma company to meet of the challenge of building its brand through its employees.

talent shortaGE

The pharmaceuticals, life sciences and related industries are facing a great challenge of talent at this moment. On one hand there is a talent supply and demand gap while supply is lesser than demand and on the other hand challenges of attrition amongst existing human resources are as high as 20 percent for sales professionals to around eight percent in Management and Executives cadre!

Trends: professional pharmaceutical selling personnel

In order to look at this phenomenon more from the grass root level, you can appreciate that there is no desirability as well as motivation for anybody to join this profession of pharmaceutical selling as it has lost its charm in the mid 70's and beginning of 80's. Somewhere during this period this noble profession of Medical Service Men / Medical representatives who used to occupy a clear positioning of providing medical information and keeping the customers updated got fully sacrificed. There were expectations from this group of professionals earlier.

However, as the 80's ended, one of the successful multi-nationals changed the focus of this profession towards sales alone. This group received skills of communication and selling. The medical contents were robbed from this profession.

Over a period, intense competition forced sales and marketing professionals to deploy marketing and selling tactics and the same communicators or salesmen became more skillful in trading. In other words, the desirability of this medical service professional lowered down to a level of just trading and replacing stocks. On the front of prescription generation, it stated pursuing CRM activities. Most of the products became generic and acquired the status of commodities. The differentiation amongst products got lost.

Although, this U graph, is likely to come back again to where it was in 70's as many specialists companies are now looking at this particular job profile and man profile in such a way that the desirability and motivation is likely to improve over a period of years.

However, industry has to consider this background and work towards ensuring that there is the desirability, motivation and distinction in this grass root job so that pharma sales professionals get their respect back from their customers.

It's a fact that, this model of communicating through Medical Representation has not become bankrupt in any country so far. As pharma selling is a consultative selling, it needs lot of medical, technical, commercial knowledge and business skills to perform the role effectively and adequately. For this endeavour, industry needs to focus on this group of professionals.

Executives and managerial professionals:

As the entry level is indulging in trading and selling, strategic intent and content remained at a tactical level. Thematic inputs became less pre-dominant over tactical inputs. So, as an industry, it could not attract required talent from outside.

Hence, in case of other executives, managerial personnel remained internal from industry and no fresh thoughts could enter the industry. As a result, there is a clear amount of gap in demand and supply of those who need to revamp the industry.

Technical personnel:

Talent supply is lagging behind the demand, as candidated need many academic qualifications as well as adherences to regulatory affairs, intellectual property rights and also adaptability to IT, HR and Finance practices.

Those who are engaged in R&D, clinical trials, manufacturing, quality assurance and other developmental aspects of existing as well as new products face a tremendous gap between industry demand and supply from academics.

Overall:

Simultaneously, if you look at the last 10 years, employee costs are rising, average age of employees is changing and multi-generation employees exist in any given organisation.

Issues:

These trends identify three major issues which industry is facing and it calls for a very critical introspection to make it flourish. The issues are as follows:

• Non-availability of right human resources from academic institutions for technical and other areas of research, clinical trials and manufacturing.
• Impact of inbreeding of managerial personnel from industry alone
• No desirability and motivation at entry level of pharma selling.

It's a clear case of employability.

Employability:

Usually, employability is equated with qualifications alone. This is not a fact. Employability not only means qualification or qualifying academic qualification but it is a mixture of 45 percent of this qualifying education, 30 percent of skills required to make these qualifications applicable for a given job in pharma and 30 percent of attitude towards such kind of jobs.

All jobs need high degree of precision, quality, adherence to the regulatory / ethical standards in sales, marketing, manufacturing, research, development and all other technical aspects as ultimately we are delivering solutions for the health of human beings. As there is intense competition at sales management and executive levels, we also need a different attitude and willingness to work with extra focus and excellence.

Employability gap:

This employability gap is due to not only shortage or supply of talent but is sometimes also a result of outdated educational curriculum, other related education and skill level which is required for the industry as a whole and for the job specifically. As a result, although there is a good research pool from different universities available at all levels, the employable pool is shrinking every time. Hence employees who have acquired skills and attitude are more susceptible to newer opportunities at higher pay scales, resulting in an eight to 20 percent attrition rate at different levels.

In other words, to be employed becomes a risk. This risk can be judged only as a danger, it may be an opportunity too. It could be a danger due to environmental conditions, economical conditions and the inability of the management to make organisations grow. A number of jobs may become redundant. It becomes an opportunity for these employee because they have acquired certain skills and have aligned their attitudes towards working in the pharma domain so they are better employable than those who are not employable at all. That's the reason why when Peter Hawkins talks about employability, he says… "To be employed is to be at risk , to be employable is to be stable."

Skills:

Besides, academic qualification, students lack self reliance skills (such as self-promotion, self awareness, networking), people skills (such as team working, communication, leadership) and general skills (such as problem solving, entrepreneurial acumen, numeracy and overall commitment). Employability also needs specialists skills and in pharma and healthcare specific occupational skills and technical skills are equally important to understand and interact in the common language of the customer. As everything at the end needs economic performance, they also need to know about commerce and commercial benefit.

Need of the hour:

If you look at these situations and the issues and challenges in our industry, the need of the hour is to ensure constant learning, continuous upgradation of functional as well as coping skills and overall personal training as the entire world is a flux.

If you look at the existing skills shortage, you would find the shortage is experienced at all levels right from managerial to sales, manufacturing to supply chain, formulation to healthcare in the entire pharma domain. The shortage can be of varying degree in different functions.

Employability partnerships:

Is there a need for partnerships between educational institutions and pharma industry?

Should they come together on a platform and deal with the situation together rather than looking at supply at one end and demand on the other end, making life miserable for both?

Is there scope for those who would like to work on such partnerships and develop 21st century skills for employability in India?

Can we address the employability issue of pharma , healthcare, life sciences and related industry?

Let's resolve these issues of industry and evolve the industry together.

pharma carrear

Pharmacy graduates have a wide array of career options and as a result there has been a huge demand for the admissions to Bachelor of Pharmacy (B Pharm) course in India. The career options after completing B Pharm or Masters in Pharmacy (M Pharm) are: Teaching, Pharmacists, Medical Transcriptionists, Quality Assurance Managers, Analytical Chemists, Sales and Marketing Managers, Data Managers, Drug Regulatory Managers, Scientists, Healthcare Professionals, Retailers. The education imparted to the pharmacy graduates should be such that the students can take up the assignments in the industry, hospitals etc.

At the MET Institute of Pharmacy our emphasis has been to impart quality education that is useful for higher education such as M.S., Ph.D. The various subjects taught at the undergraduate B Pharm four year course of University of Mumbai include the subjects like Industrial Sociology and Psychology, Industry Management which help them to join production units in the industry.

Subjects like Drug Store Management, Hospital Pharmacy make them suitable candidates to join Hospitals as Community Pharmacists or he/she can start his own retail store. The subject such as Pharmacology Biopharmaceutics helps the students to gain knowledge to enter into clinical research organisations. The subject of Forensic Pharmacy gives some insight to the regulatory affairs which is of paramount importance in clinical organisations. Quality control is being taught in the subject of Pharmaceutics. Formulation development is a part of research wing of the pharmaceutical industries and the students get insight into formulations development through the subject of pharmaceutics. Through the subject of Physical Pharmacy the students can calculate the 'shelf life' of a product and design experiments to study the same. The topics such as Radiopharmaceutical and Radio Immuno Assay give fairly good knowledge of the radiation hazards and students have the career opportunity in the atomic energy establishment. The knowledge of Radio Immuno Assay Elisa Technique covered in the subject of Pharmaceutical Analysis help the students to grasp the technique quickly when they join the Hospitals and take up the practical work.

Microbiology laboratory is a must for most of the industrial set up. Although the subject of microbiology is included in the B. Pharm syllabus, the depth of knowledge is not up to the expectations of pharmaceutical industries. The students should be given more laboratory work in the subjects and make them experts in handling the microbial cultures. The importance of Pharmaceutical Engineering subject cannot be overlooked as it helps the students to understand the factory layout and the important industrial units such as generators, boilers and their working.

The synthesis of organic compounds is included in the subject of pharmaceutical chemistry and helps the student to join R & D of any industry and can synthesise new drug molecules. The subject of Instrumental Methods of Analysis is extremely important in the quality control laboratories. The validations of methods F - Test, T - Test are taught in the subject of Statistics. The Process Analytical Techniques (PAT) should be included in the syllabus. A leading analytical technique for PAT is NIR (Near Infra Red) Spectroscopy).

NIR is fast, non - destructive and hence is ideal technique. The advance technique F & T - NIR is also a technique of choice. The B. Pharm syllabus may be accordingly updated. Process monitoring and process control using analytical techniques has been long established in various industries to improve yields, quality and efficiency.

Example of PAT: In Tablet Manufacturing Process -

• Raw Material Characterisation
• Dryer Control
• Blender Control
• Tablet Analysis

At the end of Third year of B. Pharm. the students have to complete in plant training for about six weeks which gives them good exposure to industrial set up.

At MET we encourage the students to participate in the research projects which we present at the Indian Pharmaceutical Congress etc.

This gives students the exposure to research activity and they know the importance of literature survey.