All of us know that according to Mckinsey report India needs 50,000 clinical research professionals but hardly India has not more than 10,000 professionals. I have been seeing so many discussions on other public disussion platforms that Indian Clinical Research Industry has reached a saturated stage where the industry is no more a viable option. But personally I feel that the industry is still young in India and has a lot of growth ahead so relatively it has a good career scope.

Firstly to get a break into the industry is a little tough and needs a bit of perseverance.As we have discussed earlier, the best way to get a break is to work voluntarily as a Site coordinator(observer) who will be soon promoted as a full time Coordinator which gives a good platform for a career and a lot of exposure also. In no time, if somebody has the edge of networking skills with the CRAs’ who come to the site, it should not take more than a year to get into the industry as a Junior level CRA.

Now, What should one do to get a job as a Site Coodinator/ CRC/observer(a CRC volunteer)

STEP 1: Should have a basic Life Science degree
STEP 2: Understand who is a CRC and what will be the role of a CRC. For this, do a little googling for getting acquainted with the roles and responsibilites of a CRC and the related terminology.
STEP 3: Develope your Communication skills. Both written and spoken communication skills are very important. A CRC has to write a lot of emails and also has do a lot of verbal communication
STEP 4: Prepare a resume with skill set which is relevant and will suffice the responsibilities as a CRC
STEP 5: Identify references who can acknowledge you to this job and also identify hospitals/SMOs’/CROs’ which recruit coordinators
STEP 6: Find the name of a specific person who works in human resources or incharge or clinical trials at site, rather than just sending out a general query letter or email. Try to meet him/her face to face and brief him your objective. Mostly, if you know any PI, you should be able to get in and try to follow up your application but do not over follow up also Note: Please take a prior appointment
STEP 7: Keep your self updated with the industry news, guidelines, basic knowledge of therapeutic areas like endocrinology, oncology etc. You can even attend seminars and some training programmes available.
STEP 8: Be persevarant and have hope. Rest is all luck

CDM consist of following departments: (please note this list may differ from organizations to organizations)

• Project Management team (5 years of CDM and CR experience)
• CRF designing team (2-3 years of CDM and CR experience)
• Database design, programming and maintenance team (0-4 year exp, preferably at least experience of handling one leading CDMS)
• Data Entry team (0-1 year experience)
• Data Clean Up team (2-4 year experience in CDM)
• Medical Coding (using various dictionaries) team (2-4 year exp. In CDM)
• Quality Control Team (0-2 year exp. In CDM)
• Quality Assurance Team (this may be department specific or organization specific – most of the time
• Organization specific) (3-5 year exp. In CR Industry)

For few departments prior experience is required. Few departments can accommodate fresher like Data Entry, Database Design and programming, QC. However, this is totally depending on the Organization’s rules and regulations.

Few organizations prefer only candidates of having life science degree and above. However, few organizations hire candidates from Commerce, Arts, IT background.

You need to have these skills and basic knowledge of Clinical Research Industry. Apart from this, you should have very positive attitude, which should reflect on your face whenever you face any interview. Whenever you get call for Interview, do read the job description carefully. Understand and try to ask questions to yourself about where you find yourself for that position. Note down the skills, which you have which will help you in that position and let interviewer know that. Time management and team player are key assets as well.

Apart from this, you need to believe in your luck.
Frankly speaking, currently market is so tight that it is difficult to find experienced people. Every month new CRO is opening office in India and planning to hire experienced people. Companies will start to hire fresher only when their first batch of employees are well set in the organization. As rightly mentioned, try to establish contacts within industry by attending seminars, emails, networking sites, visiting hospitals, investigators and doctors. If you could able to find reference then it is helpful.

Please note whenever we come to know about any vacancies through our network we try to post them in the forum. Also, please note that we do not send personal emails to anyone notifying the job availability. Hence, you need to keep visiting CRF.