Considering a career transition in pharma, biotech or the chemical industry?

Turn career uncertainty into a clear direction

Why are you considering a career change?

When the idea of changing career first appears, the reason can seem obvious. Perhaps opportunities to progress have become limited, several years have been spent doing similar work, responsibilities no longer create the same interest, or a change in personal circumstances has altered what you want from working life. Nevertheless, the first explanation is only a starting point. Becoming more precise about what sits behind is important since different problems call for different solutions.

For example, suppose there is little room left to progress within your company. If the work itself remains satisfying, moving to another employer with better opportunities may be enough. On the other hand, if the work has also lost some of its appeal, changing companies could lead back to much the same situation a year later. Alternatively, a project may have introduced another function that feels more interesting. In that case, the real decision concerns the kind of work you want to do, rather than simply the organisation where you do it.

In this context, the Yale Office of Career Strategy places this question at the beginning of career planning, before self-assessment and the exploration of possible occupations. “I want to leave my job” describes the current situation, whereas “I want more responsibility for projects and less time doing laboratory work” begins to define what another role would need to offer.

With this distinction in mind, think back to the point when changing career became a serious possibility and write down what was happening at the time. Then consider what you would miss if you left tomorrow. The technical part of the job may still be enjoyable, as may the independence involved in solving problems, working with a particular type of product or interacting with colleagues in other departments. Therefore, a transition does not require abandoning everything about the present career. Understanding what should be preserved can be just as useful as identifying what should change.

A simple way to put this on paper is to answer three questions:

• What do I want to change?
• What do I want to keep?
• What would I like to find in my next role?

When answering, be specific. “More opportunities” could mean managing people, becoming a recognised technical expert, taking responsibility for larger projects, working across more functions or having a greater role in decisions. The more precisely the missing elements are described, the easier it becomes to recognise a position that actually offers them.

Your interests

Interests provide another useful source of information. Wanting to transition into a different profession can begin with one part of a project that repeatedly attracts your attention, a responsibility you volunteer to take on again, or conversations with another team that gradually become some of the most engaging parts of the week.

For example, consider someone working in pharmaceutical development who becomes involved in a regulatory submission. The initial task may be limited to providing technical data or answering questions about the product. However, the project also creates exposure to the interpretation of regulatory requirements, the preparation of a submission and the decisions made when a health authority raises a question. If these aspects continue to attract attention, Regulatory Affairs becomes something concrete to investigate instead of simply another title on a careers page.

More broadly, Holland used the term differentiation to describe how clearly a person’s interests stand apart. For some people, a few areas are much more attractive than the rest, making possible career choices easier to identify. For others, several kinds of work are equally interesting. In those cases, additional factors will be needed to separate the options.

To identify your own interests, think about specific moments from your professional experience and consider the following questions:

• Which projects made you want to become more involved?
• Which subjects did you continue reading about after the immediate problem had been solved?
• Which responsibilities would you willingly take on again?

The answers might involve solving technical problems, interpreting data, working with regulations, improving manufacturing, developing strategy or coordinating several contributors around the same project. At this stage, record the activities themselves; the job titles can come later.

What skills can you transfer to another role?

Skills can be difficult to recognise in work you know well because, with experience, complicated tasks begin to feel ordinary. Someone who has solved the same type of problem dozens of times may describe it in a few words, even though doing it well requires technical knowledge, judgement, analysis and collaboration with several people.

Take a process engineer in chemical manufacturing faced with an unexpected change in the performance of a production process. Finding the cause may involve checking process parameters, reviewing production data, comparing results with previous runs, examining equipment or operating conditions and discussing possible explanations with production, maintenance and Quality. On a job description, all of this might simply appear as process troubleshooting.

The engineer is deciding which information matters, analysing data from different sources, investigating possible causes, applying technical knowledge and working with several functions to find a solution.

Breaking the responsibility down in this way makes it possible to see abilities that are easy to overlook when they are simply described as part of the job.

Once these abilities have been identified, they can be compared with the work involved in another career option. If the engineer were considering operational excellence or continuous improvement, for example, some connections would become clear. Examining how a process performs, identifying problems, investigating their causes and working with others to introduce improvements are activities found in both areas. The engineer would still have new methods and responsibilities to learn, but part of the experience gained in process engineering would already be relevant to the new function.

The same approach can be used with your own experience.

• Choose two or three responsibilities from your current job and break down what you actually do when you perform them.
• Identify the skills involved in each responsibility.
• Compare these skills with those required in the career direction you are considering.
• Identify what already transfers to the new role and what you would still need to develop.

What values matter to you in your career?

Your values influence what matters to you in your working life. Autonomy, learning, achievement, recognition, stability, responsibility, relationships with others and having an impact can all affect how satisfied you feel in a position, and their importance can change considerably during a career.

Donald Super treated values as part of a person’s developing self-concept, alongside interests, abilities and goals. A position that suited you ten years ago can therefore feel very different today, even if the job itself has changed little. Greater responsibility may now matter more, stability may carry more weight, or autonomy may have become more important than continued learning.

The words themselves also need some definition. “Impact” might mean helping bring a medicine to patients, protecting the quality of a product before release, improving the reliability of an industrial process or having greater influence over decisions on a development programme. Two people can therefore rank the same value highly and still be drawn towards completely different careers.

It is worth thinking about what these values mean in your own working life. Recognition, for example, could come from being known for your expertise, receiving feedback from a manager or having your contribution acknowledged by a wider team. Being specific about what matters to you will make it easier to compare these priorities when considering different career options.



Try this exercise to identify your career values:

• Choose five or six values that matter most to you in your working life.
• Rank them from most to least important.
• Compare values that are difficult to rank. Imagine an opportunity that offers plenty of one but less of the other. Which one would have the stronger influence on your decision?
• Separate your priorities. Identify the values you would find difficult to compromise and those where you have more flexibility.

How can you research your career options?

After exploring your interests, skills and values, you should have a better sense of the kind of work you are looking for. The next step is to connect this information with possible careers and find out which ones deserve a closer look. For each option you explore, focus on three questions.

• What does the job actually involve?
• Does it fit your interests and values?
• What skills and experience would you need to move into it?

Understand the job. Start by searching for positions connected with the activities and subjects that interest you. Read five to ten vacancies with similar titles and go beyond the list of requirements. What would you actually spend your time doing? What problems would you solve? What would you be expected to deliver? Which decisions would you make? Who would you work with? Comparing several descriptions will help you distinguish the main features of the job from responsibilities that belong to a particular company.

Job descriptions provide only part of the picture. Search LinkedIn for professionals in similar positions and look at their profiles. Contact two or three and ask if they would be willing to have a short conversation about their work. Ask what a typical week involves, what they enjoy, what they dislike, what they find difficult and what surprised them when they entered the field. These conversations can reveal aspects of the job that are rarely mentioned in an advertisement.

Understand the fit. Bring what you have discovered back to your interests and values. Consider which activities attract you, which ones appeal to you less and how the responsibilities and working environment compare with what matters to you. This is where the reflection you completed earlier becomes useful, because you are now comparing what you want with a concrete type of work.

Understand the feasibility. Look at the skills, knowledge and experience employers request and compare them with your own background. Identify what you already have, what you could transfer from previous positions and what you would still need to develop. The LinkedIn profiles you found can also help. Look at what these professionals did before entering the field, the positions they held and any training or experience they gained along the way.

Put this into practice with one career option:

• Read five to ten relevant vacancies and note the main activities, responsibilities and requirements.
• Find three to five professionals on LinkedIn and examine how they reached their current positions.
• Contact two or three people for a short conversation about the reality of their work.
• Write down what attracts you and what appeals to you less.

Compare the requirements with your background and identify what you already bring and what you would still need to develop.

By the end of this research, you should have a much more concrete picture of the career option and enough information to decide if it is worth exploring further.

How can you test a career direction before committing to it?

Research can tell you a great deal about a profession, but some questions become easier to answer after seeing part of the work firsthand. If one option is beginning to stand out, find a limited way to try it before making a larger commitment: join a relevant internal project, spend time shadowing someone in the function, volunteer for a responsibility that crosses into that area or take a temporary assignment when one is available.

Pay attention to how you respond to the work itself, including which responsibilities hold your interest, which ones you enjoy taking on and which parts of the role you would like to have a greater place in your future work. A cross-functional project, for example, might confirm that you enjoy bringing several contributors together and keeping activities on schedule, or it might reveal that constant coordination leaves you missing the technical depth of your previous role. Either result is useful because it replaces an assumption about the profession with something you have actually experienced.



You can then make the decision with a clearer idea of what you are choosing and what the first move will require, allowing you to concentrate your time on the skills, knowledge or practical experience that will help you enter the new field.

Career uncertainty becomes easier to manage when the question moves from "What job could I do?" to "Which possibilities are worth exploring?" Some options will lose their appeal as you learn more about them, others will become more interesting, and new possibilities may appear along the way.

However, finding a direction takes time. A career can seem attractive at first and look quite different as you discover more about the work and what the move would involve. Giving yourself time to explore these possibilities helps you see which ones continue to hold your interest after that first impression.

Eventually, one option may stand out, or you may narrow the choice to two or three possibilities that deserve further attention. Either way, you have something more useful than a long list of careers. You know where to focus next and which possibilities deserve more of your time.

A career transition can influence several years of your professional life, so the direction deserves careful thought. The purpose is to reach a choice that makes sense to you and feels worth pursuing.

If you are considering a career transition and would like support exploring your options, you can contact Alina Ciubotaru, Talent Acquisition Specialist at SQUIPP and Certified Career Coach, at alina.ciubotaru@squipp.be.