As recruitment season starts ramping up here is a hot take you may or may not think heavily impacts your chances of crossing that threshold into becoming a fellow. Fellowship recruitment has normalized the harassment of associate level PharmD graduates of the pharmaceutical / biopharmaceutical industry with questions that have been thrown together to fight for the attention of the fellow. No other job application process is like this, where we revere professionals, with only 3-4 months of experience may I add, to speak on their function and company as if they are distinguished drug developers. We continue to reinforce this broken cycle of recruitment every year simply because that is what was done in previous application cycles.
Before hitting send on the list of 10 questions that you have generated for the 20 positions that you are currently applying to please think twice about why you are reaching out to a fellow on LinkedIn.
Here’s why you likely should not reach out to the fellow for the fellowship position you're applying to:
A lot of the questions asked can be answered via the brochure, website, or company website. Do your own research- as you can’t expect the fellow to mama bird you the information. By not knowing the basics about the fellowship you’re going to be applying to, it makes you look unprepared and unprofessional.
To this point further: if you make a mistake (i.e. sending a thank you email addressed to the wrong company), you've ruined your application before its begun.
If you reach out, only ask questions that will help you make a decision to apply for that position. If you are asking questions about the candidates’ path to industry, rotations in their P4 year, or even their decision to pick industry over residency then why ask? These are questions that provide 0 value to you and YOUR rationale for why to pick that program so please curb your social media addiction to Tik Tok.
Oftentimes, P4s want to chat with the fellows before applying to learn about the culture. While this is understandable, in a real-life job application process, you would not be able to interact directly but through other channels. Find ways to creatively research the company and how their culture translates into their outputs. Review the companies externally facing material on their company website, Youtube, social media (LinkedIn). Also check out their publications, posters, and review available clinical trails on Ct.gov.
The main point of all this? No, we’re not just trying to be mean while also driving our LinkedIn requests down. Most fellows genuinely like spreading information and helping P4s out during the process. Many of us will respond because we want to help, that doesn’t mean our time and advice should be used as a thinly veiled attempt to copy our interview question responses. Pro tip: don’t send out a mass message to every fellow you can connect with to get advice: we all talk and it will look bad on your part for just trying to talk to anyone and everyone you can get ahold of. Ultimately, you are welcome to reach out and ask appropriate questions to fellows, but do so with caution.