Always Have a Conversation – You Never Know What Will Come From It

Liza Kunz, MD is a maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) specialist who works in the US affiliate of a large diagnostics company.  She’s worked in “industry” since 2017. 

Liza was not actively looking to transition out of clinical care when she was approached by the company looking for a Medical Director for their non-invasive prenatal and genetic diagnostic testing.  This is an area she has specific expertise given an earlier clinical role she held she was tasked with leading everything in the practice related to prenatal diagnosis; however, with the paradigm shift when prenatal testing came in 2012, she realized that there were many education gaps for MDs related to prenatal testing.  

Should she have explored this opportunity further? The company came back to her several weeks later offering for her to have a networking conversation with the hiring manager.  She said “yes” and during the discussion realized there was “a lot of commonality in how the company looked at implementation of new technology” and her approach as a physician.  She really wanted to positively impact patients by impacting care paradigms.  Ultimately, she took the role: “it was worth being bold”

She initially turned the company down.  Then came the second thoughts…

How did the company find her??

Interestingly, she was not using this company’s assay in practice.  

She had a LinkedIn profile with her “Medical Director” title; her profile also highlighted her operations experience and strategic thinking.  Likely, a recruiter or talent acquisition team member at the company queried and found her profile fitting their needs.  

Talent acquisition is an often-used title for Human Resources team members

that focus on hiring people for a company 

Her first role at the company was a global role where she focused on physician education, conference and congress messaging and strategy, and more generally, the “integrated evidence strategy” for the non-invasive prenatal and genetic testing area.  She describes this as being the “unifying voice for how we (the company) show up (in this space)”

She was recently offered a development opportunity as the “Disease Area Network Lead” in the Medical Affairs organization.  It is a pilot program the company started and she reports to the Chief Medical Officer on the U.S. Medical Affairs leadership team.  Her position interfaces with the CEO, CMO and other leadership team members! (Awesome!!)

Liza’s advice related to finding a role in the biopharma/diagnostics industry was:

“always have a conversation; you never know where a casual conversation

 can turn into a lead”.

To that same point, Liza shared that she “almost always responds when a recruiter pings her” even though 9 out of 10 times the position they are communicating about is not for her.  “Sometimes, it is just a polite email back explaining why I’m a poor fit.  But if I can’t tell, then I’ll have the 10-minute exploratory conversation”.  If possible she tries to share an idea, refer another person in her network or make a new connection that may be helpful in the future.  

Liza reminded physicians that are considering the pharma/biotech industry as a career opportunity that 

“you have relevant experience”

You need to figure out which aspects of what you do day-to-day that you want to transfer so you learn how to sell what you do and what you bring to the table.

I wholeheartedly agree with Liza’s advice for physicians – either looking for their first role in pharma or already in pharma – take the phone call, respond to the email or LinkedIn message.  Obviously, you can be selective about the recruiters you decide to speak with but you never know what a networking call will bring – even months or years later. Try to be helpful to others – make a referral of someone already in your network that may be a good fit for a role.  Help the recruiter with ideas about the job description.  These few minutes can be important relationship building tools!

Liza had so many FANTASTIC insights to share I’m going to publish two blogs on her story and advice – next week I’ll focus on her U.S. Medical Affairs role and share her key learnings and challenges she has faced in transitioning to a career in pharma.