Why Use BioPharmGuy? (part 2)

May 27, 2012

On April 13, 2008 we posted a brief summary of why you should use this site. Four years later, it's about time for an update.

Why should you use BioPharmGuy?

There is nothing out there like BioPharmGuy in that we provide an outstanding resource for you to do your own job search and we've been doing it for four years. We simply give you the links to career pages in the industries you want to work in, and you do the rest.

We believe a job search should be somewhat difficult. But that's crazy, right? Shouldn't you just enter in a search term and voila, all the jobs in the country that are exactly right for you are there before your eyes? Yeah, and we should all have flying cars and be teleporting everywhere.

Job Boards are Almost Worthless

There are so many sites that function as job boards - we are not one of those sites. We believe job boards are a futile way to find a job. The postings at big job boards get about a thousand applicants and the jobs on small boards are just repeats of the postings you find on the big job boards.

But the biggest problem we have with the current system is that job boards expect you to know exactly what you want and how to find it, but you don't and you can't. We run a job search service through BioPharmGuy where people hire us to find jobs for them. We could NEVER find all these jobs without going straight to company career pages and reading the job descriptions. It's only through experience that we know there are many different job titles that might be entry-level. And we've been running a job search site for four years!

For example, take the job title Research Associate I. That job will be entry-level about 50-70% of the time. Research Associate II maybe 10%. Associate Scientist maybe 4%. Scientist maybe 1%. So every company classifies their jobs differently. If you looked at five Research Associate II jobs, there's a 50% chance you would see zero entry-level jobs, and probably altogether stop looking at that job title. And you would be the worse for it.

Too Good to be True

The big job boards are peddling the myth of the easy job search. They are the job search equivalent of get-rich-quick schemes. They sound great to someone who doesn't know any better, but when you actually try it out, you get very little results and you don't know why. Yet they might actually be worse than get-rich-quick schemes, because if they don't work, the job seeker feels defeated. Someone involved in a get-rich-quick scheme at least realizes it's the scheme that was faulty. Job seekers who have no success with big job boards often falsely believe that 'no one is hiring' and their efforts tail off.

So in this way, job boards are not only a poor resource but a counterproductive one. Get off them! Move on and use LinkedIn and other social networking sites to try to find jobs through people you know. Then as a second arm of your strategy go directly to company career pages.

Nothing is as Easy as you Would Like

If finding a job was as easy as getting on the Internet and typing in a few keywords, then everyone would have a job. Obviously it's not. As with anything in life, once it becomes simpler for everyone to search for jobs, you have to do something else better than everyone else. Even a dummy knows about the biggest job boards that advertise everywhere. You have to be willing to do what everyone is NOT doing to get an advantage.

The main thing that people do not want to do when searching for work, is WORK! It's bizarre, we know, but they don't think hard about what will give them an advantage against their competition. Yet that is exactly what you must do! We firmly believe that the job search method we espouse at BioPharmGuy is better.

Easy = Fruitless

Of course it's easier to go to one job board instead of 400 biotech company career sites. If you use lots of keyword combinations and search hard, the job board will take an hour and let's say you find 12 good job openings. Going to 400 career sites might take you six hours and find you those 12 jobs plus 18 others. Now ask yourself, who else is finding those additional 18 jobs? The answer is a lot fewer people. Every person who applies to one of those 18 harder-to-find jobs is going to have a much better chance at getting the job. So ask yourself, is it worth spending five hours to find 18 jobs for which you have a very good chance at getting an interview? If it isn't, then you're lazy and you don't really want a new job.

What else?

All our links are checked every month to ensure they are working. We have maps on our career link pages so you can see what companies are in and around a city you might be interested in checking. Lots of people want to move to Boston, but they don't know that Medford and Allston are right nearby. With the mapping tool, you can easily see companies not only in Boston and Cambridge (or any city) but the ones nearby.

The companies we list here are almost exclusively ones that will employ scientists and engineers. No financial companies or anything like that. Just biotech, pharmaceutical & medical device companies.

We know the field

You can read about my background here. I have worked as a molecular biology research associate, an engineer at a biotech company and an Investigator at the FDA. Having a little taste of all these areas has given me a good understanding of what's what in the industry.

Other Ways We Can Help

If you have any questions about searching for jobs or anything in particular, feel free to contact us. We also offer some advice for job seekers and even offer some job search services that you may find useful.

Thanks for using our site and good luck on your job search!

-BPG