Humanities at Work

Leaving Academe for the Drug Industry

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By Elizabeth J. McSweeney

For Ph.D.'s in the humanities and social sciences, there is no well-worn path from academe to industry. The route you take seems to depend on your goals, strengths, and interests.

In my case, I earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. There I chose to specialize in Japan's political system because I wanted to understand Japanese-style democracy, and through that, to better understand democracy in general. Mine was not what one would assume to be a direct path to the corporate world, let alone to the pharmaceutical industry.

Yet, after just 18 months with Merck & Co., the international pharmaceutical company, my transition from academe to industry is complete, and I could not have imagined a better environment for using the skills I developed as an academic. The transition has not meant shedding my past career but building upon it in ways that have enriched my life and allowed me to continue to find the kinds of cross-societal challenges that I have always found intriguing.

Searching for a New Career

After earning my Ph.D. in 1998, I landed a visiting assistant professorship at Yale University, with a dual appointment in sociology and at the Center for East Asian Studies. I had been leaning toward a nonacademic career even before I took the job at Yale, and my experience there did not deter me. My reasons for leaving academe will be familiar to others who have made the same choice: the lack of balance between work and life in the academy; the lack of control over where you'll find a job; the growing split between quantitative and qualitative approaches to research; and, of course, the limited salaries.

Ultimately, after several interviews, I went to work in Merck's public- and industrial-policy office for the Asian Pacific region. The office conducts research on issues in the region related to Merck's interests.

But of course, I have started at the happy ending of the story: I spent most of the year before I landed the job trying to figure out what I wanted to do and what kind of place I might want to do it in.

While I had decided to leave academic life, I was unclear as to what I might miss about research and teaching, and what I might embrace from the business world. Moreover, I had very little understanding of what was unique about the skills I had developed and even less about how to discuss these skills in a way that would excite nonacademic employers. I went through certain classic stages, though, that proved extremely useful in terms of defining what I wanted and what to do to get there.

In the first stage of a job search -- when you're analyzing your skills and looking into companies, industries, and career paths -- I found that the research skills I'd gained from my academic training were an immediate plus. First, I identified a network of people with varied backgrounds with whom I could discuss my résumé. This group actually helped me strip down my CV and transform it into a résumé -- a process that also awakened me to the different cues that résumé-readers seek. The people in my network also suggested where in a corporation someone with my skills might fit. I read just about all of the books that are commonly recommended to learn more about job-seeking and career development, as well as books that encouraged me to identify personality traits to understand what kind of work might suit me.

In the second stage of job hunting -- conducting informational interviews -- my research training continued to serve me relatively well. I sought out people in different types of jobs who would take some time to answer questions about their work, what they valued about it and how a typical work day was organized. These few people then recommended others to contact. Pretty soon, I had a file full of informational-interview notes from a variety of industries and positions.

I realized during the informational interviews that one specific academic skill -- the need to remain a neutral observer -- was making it difficult to assess the information from the standpoint of someone who might actually want to become a participant in the work being described. Although my ability to remain impartial is important in my current position, it initially kept me from engaging fully in the job-search process.

The third stage of job hunting --- actually sending out résumés, contacting people, and seeking interviews -- was probably the most difficult for me because these were all new tasks. Thanks to the informational interviewees, however, I had some contacts who knew I would be calling for "real" interviews. Several of these people actually hired me as a consultant on a project-by-project basis, which became important experiences when it came to the final round of interviews for full-time work. These positions also provided me with the opportunity to try out large companies versus small ones, nonprofit work versus the private sector -- adding to my understanding of the kind of organization for which I was best suited.

The consulting work also left me feeling confident, since I found so many different paths to a fulfilling career. Unlike in academe, I discovered that I had choices about where I wanted to live, what lifestyle I wanted to pursue, and what kind of institution I wanted to devote my energies to. Just as important, I began to recognize the value of my academic skills, and what "language" to use in describing those skills in nonacademic settings.

By the time I had interviewed at Merck, I felt relatively comfortable with the process and the language of business. And that confidence seemed warranted when I received a job offer. Little did I know that I was only at the very beginning of the transition process.

An On-the-Job Transition

I joined Merck in January 2001. I could offer many different examples of the culture clash in moving from the academy to the business world, but communication issues best capture the fundamental differences you're likely to encounter.

As an academic, meeting colleagues is an important part of learning and sharing information, but the pace is quite different. Academic conferences meet annually, and given the nature of my studies, I never met with colleagues on a daily basis. Moreover, the information presented at an academic conference is often original work that furthers existing theories.

Yet at Merck, I was soon struck by the fact that you meet the same people in your work group every day, and also meet regularly with colleagues in other groups. Looking back, I remember feeling anxious that I did not have enough time to do the "real work" of analyzing pharmaceutical policy. Yet, somehow, my co-workers seemed to take most of these meetings quite seriously. Slowly, I accepted that meetings are an important forum for disseminating information quickly and for building and maintaining a company's culture. Large companies are filled with different departments and divisions that can easily focus more on their immediate concerns, and it is vital to a company's success that it maintain alignment between departmental, divisional, and company objectives.

Written forms of communication also differ dramatically. Academic writing is based on the assumption that you are taking part in an ongoing debate but are trying to persuade others to think about a problem or theory in a different way. Citations are an academic method for bringing vast amounts of prior and continuing research perspectives into the discussion, serving as both exploratory tools and evidence.

In a company, such carefully crafted articles are unnecessary since so much effort goes into developing a consensus in advance regarding how problems should be handled; the information being conveyed is often not under debate.

I have to admit, it was perhaps most difficult for me to shift from an academic writing style to "PowerPoint speak" where information is offered in bulleted lists, and writers make nouns of verbs and drop participles in order to keep major points to one or two lines of text. I have accepted, though, that there is a place for such a style, especially because the business audience feels comfortable with this format. And I find that, just recently, I have started to take pride in a PowerPoint presentation well done -- a real sign that the transition is taking hold.

There will always be aspects of academic life that I will miss. But I have now embarked on a career where I am able to continue to use my academic skills and apply them to the challenges of policy work for Merck. As a (political) sociologist and a Japan scholar, I am now conducting research on health-care reform in Japan as well as advising the company about potential and real developments in Japan's political arena and the implications for the pharmaceutical industry. I am using my specific knowledge of the Japanese political system, society, and culture to bring clarity and understanding to others, as well as to guide my own actions in this multinational context.

I am constantly learning and have the resources available to support the necessary work. Moreover, I continue to write (in various forms) and I am also lucky enough to work throughout the Asian Pacific region with academics who receive grants from Merck, helping to disseminate their work across national boundaries.

For me, the business world no longer seems a foreign place, and its dialect, if still a little strange on my tongue, is now familiar.