More Research Outsourced

I saw this posting on BioJobBlog, which talks about the movement of research and development abroad, especially to India, where many companies have set themselves up to get this kind of work from the pharmaceutical companies. What’s more, not only are companies like Merck and GSK looking to cut costs, but are also looking for innovation from these CROs (contract research organizations). The article concludes that a lot of this is the fault of the U.S., as industrial training and investment in life science research has diminished.

As this article points out, investment in many western countries is down and China and Korea are becoming world leaders. The Spiked article reflects all kinds of R&D of course (and even comments that not all the R&D is of clear value), but it would be foolish to believe that the situation is miraculously much better in the pharmaceutical sector. Indeed, if the earlier article is any guide, it is just as bad if not worse.

It is quite sobering. I knew it would be a difficult transition, with the economy in deep recession, but I did believe that something would come up. I talked about this in my own blog post. I still maintain that some R&D will remain in this country, though I am eagerly awaiting some sign that companies are beginning to reinvest in research again and starting to look for people like me to do that research. But when it does, the competition for positions will be fierce, which will lead to people leaving their chosen career and finding other work, whether as a temporary respite from the lab rat race or permanently transitioning to new careers.

I want to remain in the lab myself. I have my moments of doubt, but I know that I am a good scientist, with value to the right organization. But I also have a family to support and opportunities will need to be taken when they come up. It is part of life, what makes it interesting. I plan to embrace whatever life gives me.

Let Me Tell You About Myself

One of the most dangerous things an interviewer can say to you is “Tell me about yourself”. It seems so innocuous, an invitation to share something about yourself, to break the ice and get the conversation flowing. But what can (and does) happen is that the interviewee goes on a long and rambling autobiography with minimal relevance to the subject at hand (the job) and suddenly you find that the interviewer is losing interest in your candidacy.

As usual with these things, it helps if you have anticipated such a question or, if not the specific question that was asked, then how you want to present yourself. Revealing incidental information about yourself can have a negative effect on your interview, even if it shouldn’t. You need to keep the answer on point, concise and relevant to the matter at hand i.e. the job.

Of course, this question is not restricted to formal interviews, it is the basic question fundamental to every network meeting and every time you make a business contact. You need to answer the question “why do I need to pay attention to you?”

Most people refer to this as the elevator pitch: you meet someone waiting for the elevator and you have until they get out at their floor (a rather undefined length of time) to tell them enough about yourself that they are interested in learning more (and if they do, make sure you have a business card to give them). Though there is not a specific job in mind in this case, the basic principle is the same. You need to deliver a concise, relevant summary, with a few things to make them remember you, but not so long that you haven’t gotten through it by the time those elevator doors open. The first 45 seconds are thus critical – after that point you may be on borrowed time, so don’t spend 30 seconds on a witty but uninformative introduction.

I should interject at this point that this was the precise subject of my network group’s meeting yesterday (DBM Pathfinders). In that meeting, I heard some excellent advice which I shall attempt to pass on here. It also reminded me that I am myself not polished enough at this. Hopefully, I can take some of the advice I dole out here.

The simplest approach is to have a prepared speech written beforehand then learn it and repeat it at any given opportunity. Overall, I’d say that is what I have done up to now and it hasn’t really worked. Partly, this is due to a combination of not enough practice (so I stumble) and an evolving pitch, as I try and make it a bit better. But it is the wrong approach in any case, because you need to change your pitch depending on your audience. You don’t get into fine scientific detail with the HR manager, but you need to get a bit more technical with a senior scientist. What I have seen others do is to have an outline of content, a list of talking points from which you can pick and choose. It is good to make them talking points rather than explicitly written out so you say them naturally and not like you are reading them aloud. But you need them so you can make the best use of that window of opportunity. If you stumble and stutter, the moment may be lost, so you need to practice it enough to bring it off when it is for real.

Some things to include:

First, an introduction. Your name, your tag line. In my case, “David Perrey, PhD organic chemist with 12 years experience in drug discovery research.” It isn’t very flashy or distinctive, which is a minus, but it is concise and tells the listener what area I am involved in.

Qualifications: useful to say, especially if it is distinctive. Sadly for me, a PhD is not that unusual but an MBA from a top school “Harvard MBA” attracts the attention.

Recent history: main employer or employers, what you did for them, how you excelled. Give hard numbers if you can.

Awards: if you received Outstanding Employee recognition, that is definitely something to mention. School achievements are also worth noting, especially if highly relevant.

Strengths: talking about your best qualities is a great way to make you distinct from another candidate and gives the listener an insight to what kind of person you are – and whether that would be a good fit with their organization.

Typically, I see people finish with a repeat of their name (spelling it sometimes). A lot of people say that they are LinkedIn too, an implicit invitation to look them up there. It makes a good ending point.

The overall effect should be a picture of you that they can project into their own world. If this guy was Salesperson of the Year at company X, maybe he can bring that kind of stuff to my sales force. If this guy has published that many patents and brought so many compounds through pre-clinical candidate selection, he can enrich my pipeline too.

The final point is one I have mentioned already. Once you have this framework in place, you need to practice it. Take it to your network group. Try it on your family. See how it looks in the mirror even. Be aware of yourself and your verbal quirks. I have a tendency to speak too softly, so when I stand up at the meeting, I start off louder, knowing that. But I was told yesterday that I trailed off, becoming quieter through the pitch. That is great feedback. I can work on that now.

Interviewing Tips

I ran across this piece on interviewing yesterday. In reading it, I found most of the points to be common sense, although apparently the author has some video evidence to back up that assertion that common sense is not so common.

It seemed to me that most of the points are there to show that you are taking this interview seriously, that it is the most important thing going on in your life. Most likely, overlooking turning off the cell phone is a result of having other things on your mind. So a nice check list is a nice thing to have, helps you focus and not to make an obvious mistake.

One of the things that I did not fully agree with in the article was about making jokes. Obviously, you should not be trying out your stand up routine on your interviewer, but one of the points of an interview is to determine whether or not you and this company are a good fit for each other. Establishing a rapport with someone is part of that. Showing that you have a sense of humor could be part of that too. Although it is best to stay conservative and keep answers concise, showing a little personality can make you stand out from other candidates in a positive way, especially if the person you are talking with will be working with you closely.

I have had some good input on the subject of interviewing recently. A couple of key elements I heard from people who have interviewed recently are preparation and research. You need to go into an interview knowing who you are talking with – what the company is about, what they do, whatever you can find out. If you know a little about the people you will be meeting with, even better. With all the information on the intenet, it is significant what you can find out, but your network is, arguably, more important. Dry facts from a web site are not as valuable as someone you know who worked there or is neighbors with the guy on your interview schedule. Getting an edge like that can make all the difference.

But you should also know yourself, be ready to answer those questions. Go over your stories. We all have projects or obstacles in our history which we overcome and are proud of, and those are a valuable tool for communicating to your interviewer how you approach problems, how you operate. They are also incredibly valuable for giving examples of strengths and (sometimes) weaknesses. The catalog of tales should not be just success stories, but can show how you learned from an experience. One of the points from the web site I mentioned earlier was to not ramble. If you have rehearsed, then you will keep things crisp and on point. Be ready for difficult questions. The simple ‘tell me about yourself’ is not an invitation to tell your life story, the interviewer does not want that. Keeping it relevant to the job is key. One more tip I got was to summarize at the end, bringing the story into a nut shell as it were and reinforce the message.

Another point is your body language. Some people can tell a lot about a person without them saying a word. Everyone in an interview will be nervous, although good preparation will give you confidence that should show through in how you carry yourself. So you should be attentive and positive. Maintain good eye contact (without staring). Show your interest and enthusiasm for the position.

Although the guy on the other side of the desk is the one with most of the power in this situation, it is worth remembering they are being interviewed by you too. So if you are not comfortable due to what you are seeing or hearing, you should really think it through before taking a job there. Bear in mind, though, that interviewers are often much less prepared for the interview than the candidate. It is not a major part of their job in most cases, so they may ask odd questions or even ones they are not allowed to ask. Note that if you offer information they are allowed to follow up with questions – if you say you have kids, they might ask how old then. But this is again a reason to stay focussed on the job interview. And it is also an opportunity to steer the interview in a direction that suits you better.

Some last tips I heard were to prepare handouts or even a power point slide, if you have your laptop there. These can help reinforce a point, show that you are prepared and, incidentally, keep you on task too. If you have your bullets lined up in front of you, you are less prone to go off on a tangent.

I am always very nervous before interviews, so for me, preparation is key. I compare interviews where I felt unprepared with ones I was ready for and they are like night and day. The same, incidentally, often applies to presentations to customers or at conferences.

Of course, now all I need is the opportunity to put some of this stuff into practice.

Low-Cost Analytical Techniques

These days, with budgets cut and credit tight, any opportunity to get a deal needs serious consideration. So I was very interested when I was contacted by a company called Common Sense Analytical.

The way their service works is that they send their team of highly trained analyzers to your place of business and they will take care of all the compound characterization, purity analysis and impurity identification for you, using a battery of proprietary tests they developed in-house. I asked Ian Havenuone, head of business development, to describe some of their services to me.

“The real secret behind this business model is our people,” he explained. “They are experts, constantly undergoing new training techniques and retraining to ensure they are at the top of their performance.

“The first technique we developed is primarily used to detect very low levels of the particular types of impurity that, well, show up in this test. It really is very sensitive, although not unlike UV detection on a non-UV sensitive substance, outside its domain, it tends to be rather weak. The analyzer takes a sample from the volatile components of the desired test compound and feeds it into the olfactroscope. A few minutes is all it takes, though it can be quite intense and sometimes an analyzer will have to go and get a breath of air after analysis is complete.

“However, we did find it rather limited. Much more popular is the technique we call retinal spectrocopy. Basically, the effect of light, primarily visible band radiation, on the sample can give a lot of information about the chemical make-up of the substance, including identification, purity and isomeric ratio. Of course, one needs a great deal of training in the interpretation of the data for this technique to be effective. We provide a wealth of supporting documentation for QA and QC purposes.

“Another very popular technique is our reaction monitoring procedure, known as SCAR, which stands for Sonic Collision And Release. There are several methods for following ongoing processes, but most require you to open the reaction, potentially exposing the chemicals to air, which may be hazardous or counter-productive. A key but little known finding that we made is that the collision between molecules as they react causes a minute vibrational pattern which can be detected using our equipment. A reaction that is done will no longer give these collisions and you can follow its progress without even opening the reaction vessel.”

“Amazing. How about for drug development labs? Anything you do there?”

“We do have a quality check for formulations, which we call Digital Monitoring. It rolls out the formulated compound and checks for inconsistencies and proper mixing, as well as confirming the proper ratios of ingredients. We did had a few issues due to variations in glove quality, but we have those resolved now and the technique is becoming very successful.”

“Does any other company use these methodologies?”

“Well, it is difficult for anyone not immersed in our corporate culture to become proficient with these methods. But we have had success in a very specific training method for certain areas of law enforcement, such that they can detect the identity and purity of seized drug shipments, just by tasting a small sample. This has worked well for this specific application. Our attempts to incorporate this into wider use as part of our analytic portfolio has been problematic, due to our staff succumbing to the effect of toxic components. So we generally don’t offer that service unless the customer gives some kind of guarantee or has an ambulance standing by.”

“Well thanks again for talking with us, Ian.”

“My pleasure.”

And I hope you, dear reader, got a good sense of the usefulness of these amazing techniques.

Smoking Ban in North Carolina

Govenor Perdue of North Carolina signed into law a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants which will take effect next year. I know we are not the first state to pass such a law, but it is pretty big news for a tobacco state. Personally, I think it is long overdue.

The argument against is always about the freedom of a businessman to do what he likes in his place of business, but it is a false premise. A restaurant is not allowed to keep a dirty kitchen. A bar cannot serve beer that is gone bad. No matter how you try to divide places into smoking and non-smoking, the smoke pervades. The smell persists.

In all fairness, I have no issue with people wanting to smoke if they want. I wouldn’t do it in their place, but I also don’t want to share the experience. I did see there were some provisions for cigar bars to be allowed to operate. You go to such a place specifically to smoke, so that seems fair enough. I also saw that the hookah bars did not get such a provision and that is unfortunate, as again, the clientele of such a place are there because of the smoking-related activities. I was personally open to the idea of some bars being for smokers, though it looks like that did not get included either.

However, food and smoke do not mix. Part of the enjoyment of food comes in the smell. You know how you don’t taste as well when you have a cold? Regular exposure to smoke (and nicotine especially) deadens the taste buds and lessens the sense of smell. Both will interfere with your enjoyment of a meal. I’ll go further. I like a beer. Over time, my tastes have run to the hand-crafted ales and the Belgian dubbel and tripel. Some folks say that beer and smoking go together, but in my opinion, a beer that is improved by smoking is not a very good beer.

So anyway, I am pleased by this development. I have already noticed a growth of bars with excellent beer selections in town. I look forward to trying them all out, smoke-free.

Dangerous Work

I’m not going to be shaking anyone with revelations when I say that working with chemicals is a dangerous business. The list of warnings on the labels of some chemicals are enough to make one consider taking up something safer. Most of us have horror stories of spills or fires of some sort. Recently in the news there have been several chemical accidents – an accident at a Bayer plant, in which several people were treated for chemical exposure, the tragic death of a UCLA research assistant and another death due to TMS-diazomethane exposure.

And yet, I have not seen any data concluding that chemistry is a negative on your life expectancy nor have I contemplated abandoning a career in the field due to safety concerns.

It is certainly true that working in a research lab is much less dangerous than some vocations. The chemicals (no matter what you might think) are not actively out to get you, unlike enemy soldiers. And while that is also true of a fire fighter, they are clearly being brought into a situation that is getting out of control. When we walk into a lab full of toxins and flammables, we know what we are doing and we thus treat our day’s work with the proper respect. We use gloves, lab coats and fume hoods to keep us safe and away from the danger. Which, incidentally, why I was so shocked by the earlier mentioned TMS-diazomethane story, because the fellow was working with the chemical while the fume hoods were turned off due to maintenance. When hoods go down where I have worked, that is a cue for everyone in there to step away to their office or out of the building.

Accidents seem to happen not when things are going along as normal but when people are in a hurry. You didn’t have time to review this reaction before doing it because you have a deadline to meet. You have been shown how to do this reaction once, but the teacher is too busy to look after you again and now you are flying solo. You have the wrong piece of equipment and it will take too long to put it right. Under pressure like this, you make mistakes and poor decisions. These things go a lot smoother when you have the experience, the proper equipment and no looming need to be done and onto the next thing.

I have made and used diazomethane many times. I always did it using the proper diazomethane kit, with the smooth glass joints, everything properly chilled and behind a blast shield. For those who don’t know (and didn’t read the Wikipedia link), diazomethane is toxic and also known to explode under certain conditions. The first few times I did it, I took great great care over it. I never had any problem (which can occur mainly if you allow the diazomethane to concentrate – while it is in solution, there is little issue). At the time, I was using it regularly, we made it in relatively small batches (no more than the equipment would allow) and stored what we made in solution in the freezer. This is one reagent that my colleagues expressed a significant amount of fear over. But it is like any other dangerous substance we use in the laboratory: if you use it correctly, there will be no problem. Show confidence in yourself and your engineering controls without slipping into arrogance – in which you begin to neglect the safety measures and treat the chemical without all due respect, all because you’ve done it 10 times already and nothing bad ever happened.

Safety in the work place is an important issue, especially when the work place has so many things in it that can do you harm. Ironically, several of the incidents I can recall from my experience were not related to chemistry at all – tripping hazards and bumping heads on open cabinet doors (which is a specialty of mine, by the way). Something that could happen anywhere.

Be careful out there.

The Future of Medicinal Chemistry

There have been big changes in the world of drug discovery, even ignoring the upheavals in the world in general. Not too many years ago, combinatorial chemistry was the Future and everyone was getting in on the act. The fever over that broke and now it has taken its place in the tool box for drug discovery.

What happened next is that companies started to move their research overseas, where a lot of qualified people were waiting to work for much much less than their equivalents in the United States. Regular library and custom synthesis work is done in China and India (and other places). Companies are springing up to do medicinal chemistry and other early stage drug discovery research. Large companies are building their own facilities in those countries. With mergers and acquisitions occurring here, leading to lay-offs for American scientists, what is the future for research here in the U.S.A. and for my own field in particular?

This is a tough time to be a medicinal chemist looking for a job in the U.S. right now, although that is true for many industries and specialties. A lot of companies are tightening belts and trying to save to survive. That is to be expected in a down turn. However, it is my belief that this will not continue for the long term. Companies cannot save to grow, they need a well-fed pipeline. So I do think that research will pick up again. But I also think it will not be quite the same again.

After Pfizer merged with Wyeth, the new company announced their R&D would operate as two entities under one umbrella, a small molecules side and a biologics side. This reflects the growth in the biologics side of the business, its increase in importance. That also might be seen as bad news for the makers of the small molecules. It does take resources away from the chemists (who are not going to be the ones making those large molecules), but drug companies must go after actives. Plus, pre-clinical drug discovery is relatively cheap. Making series of small molecules is not free, but compared to the costs of putting one compound through a clinical trial, it is a minor expense. Thus efforts will continue to find active compounds with appropriate properties to be taken into a clinical setting.

Of course, the question becomes where will this research be carried out? The number of facilities world wide suggest that more will go overseas. I do agree that more research for and on behalf of big pharmaceutical companies will be outsourced, plus biotech companies will focus their efforts on what they do best (the biology) and bring in outside help when they want the chemical probes to plug into their assays and models. However, I do not think that the majority of medicinal chemistry will be sent overseas. Some will, undoubtedly, and library synthesis and custom resynthesis can and will be done efficiently abroad, but the intellectual property issues over an ongoing drug discovery effort will keep such collaborations closer to home.

The reasons I have for this assertion are several-fold. The first and the one that has kept it here up till now is that I.P. argument, keep the research in the same country, it keeps the legalities over confidential disclosures more straightforward. A second argument ties into the idea of a research project like this as a collaboration, a free exchange of insights between scientists. This is best achieved by people close in time-zone, not to mention language. It is not impossible to negotiate multiple hour time zone differences, but it creates a lag. The final piece for me is that the cost of labor in India and China is increasing. It is not up to American levels by any means, but it is increasing and one cost of the down turn here is that people are more willing to settle for a little less here too. Thus the gap between the two work forces is narrowing and the pay off for outsourcing overseas becomes less.

As I said already, I do not anticipate big pharma rehiring thousands of scientists in the next few years. Some, surely, but not to a great extent. What I do expect to see is a growth of support and service companies providing the research they need on a contract basis, not just in medicinal chemistry but in other related drug discovery efforts also. I expect companies to hire a lot more short term, contract-to-permanent, a development I have already seen. This will reflect their business – they need people while they have contracts, they don’t when they have none. Individuals and companies will build upon their reputations – will sink or swim on those reputations in fact. Effective employees will be taken full-time. Trusted companies that consistently deliver results will be retained in longer term contracts.

It makes for a much more fluid environment. Competitive and adaptable entities will thrive. It will be up to each of us as scientists to be versatile enough to survive.

Essence of Recalcitrance

It had been a long couple of weeks already, with too much taken up in distracting meetings. Still, the next project meeting was coming up and progress was expected. With the crush of my schedule, I had attempted to make that progress through straightforward chemistry. Something that was sure to work. But the thing before me now, looking so innocent in my hood, was that most dangerous and insidious of foes, the literature procedure.

Of course, they make it all look so simple. Mix this with that, add a little of the other. Wait a few hours and you’re done. Simple extraction and no purification required. What could go wrong?

I gave a hollow laugh. I had given it my most close attention, let it stir all day. Then all night. Then all weekend. And still it remained in its constituent parts. I could almost hear it chuckling at me.

Well, we will see about that. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the lab. I watched the rising temperature on the digital read-out with satisfaction. Something was sure to happen now.

Two hours later, as far as I could tell from my analysis and despite my earlier confident prediction, still nothing had happened. I made a slight adjustment to the heat. About 15 seconds later, I added another nudge upwards.

I waited, seemingly entranced by the stirring bar inside the vessel. I don’t think there is much evidence to support activation of chemical reactions by sheer will, but I was willing to get in on that research effort.

Perhaps it was that intense concentration and (I admit it) quiet desperation to get somewhere with this. Or perhaps it was a bottle of ether left out on a bench somewhere. Perhaps it was sun spots or the phase of the moon. Perhaps it was a subtle combination of all of these things. Either that or I was going crazy and no one is saner than the scientist, so it couldn’t be that. Anyway, I heard something. A voice. It appeared to be coming from inside the hood. I leaned closer. My forehead bounced off the pane of glass protecting me from my work.

That broke the spell. Clearly, I had been out of the sunlight too long again. Hearing voices now.

“Look, you, I don’t want to hang around with that one.”

I blinked. “You … don’t?” I managed.

“No. I mean really. This other one, well, it’s OK for a little while, quite fun as a matter of fact. But I’m not looking for anything long term.”

“You’re not?”

“I’m not denying that amines and aldehydes do get on pretty well for the most part. But I am still young, I’m not even a millimole yet. That’s no time to be going off and becoming all secondary.”

“I didn’t realize millimole was…”

“You wouldn’t, would you? I don’t know, why do you biologicals think you can understand us chemicals?”

I took a step back. I looked around to see if anyone had dropped an entire bottle of ether, with perhaps some kind of hallucinogen mixed in.

Other than the chatty amine in my reaction, it seemed remarkably quiet.

“OK,” I muttered to myself. “Don’t want to get together, eh? Maybe a little something to loosen the inhibitions.”

I took out the bottle of 200 proof ethanol and measured out a milliliter. I added to slowly to the stirring reaction. As an after-thought, I added a little chaser. A moment later, a further nudge to the heater.

My eyes may have lingered too long on the vessel. Plus, I recalled that I still hadn’t gotten out of the lab and perhaps into some fresh air. But again a voice.

“It won’t work, you know. The amine just doesn’t like me.” It was a new voice, with a perpetually peevish tone. “Can’t say I am too keen on any of them either.”

I flung my hands up. Then I realized what that might look like to anyone observing my activities. I went to get a fresh and special vial for my little reaction and its talkative contents.

The microwave was originally adapted to chemical reactions to give efficient heating and the debate over whether it truly has any beneficial effects beyond that is ongoing. Reactions are certainly cleaner and what is more, at least with the machine in front of me, you could heat to above the boiling point of the solvent, in effect giving a pressurized reaction. Of course, you had to be somewhat careful. Probes and monitors looked for pressure spikes and the thing had thick metal walls in case of any fault in the vial. In any case, it looked like it should suit my needs right now, which were, briefly, to show this reaction I meant business and to find something to show my boss in the project meeting tomorrow.

I detected some muffled sounds from the reactor. I dismissed them. Given the success rate so far, I could not as such claim to be feeling optimistic, but I did feel vindication that I was giving it my all. I pressed the start button and there was a hiss and a whir from the instrument.

*****

“And nothing happened at all?”

“Well,” I answered carefully, “I didn’t detect anything more. The reactants appear to be sitting in different corners of the vial sulking.”

“I must say,” said my boss, jotting something on his pad, “that was one of the more colorful attempts to cover a total lack of progress.” He looked up. “I just hope I don’t have to hear one next group meeting.”

“Me too,” I replied. “Me too.”

Why Should I Use LinkedIn?

When I first encountered LinkedIn approximately one while ago, I glanced at it and thought to myself “That’s a lot of work.” As a result, I didn’t linger and moved on. When I was let go from my company, the transition team and a whole lot of people writing advice articles on the internet told me I should sign up and fill out my profile. I saw one article that quoted a hiring manager saying he looks for a ZoomInfo page and a LinkedIn profile. So I took their advice and got to work.

So what did I learn?

Well, for a start, LinkedIn works if you have a fleshed out profile, but it works best if all your contacts, connections and coworkers are on there too. But many people do not want the extra hassle of filling out a profile (and making all those connections) if they do not see a benefit in it. So they either don’t do it or stop after filling in their name and current position. In fact, LinkedIn was not doing so well until the recent downward spiral of the economy, when suddenly a lot of professional people for whom their network was their lifeline to get to their next job suddenly found themselves out of a job and looking for ways to connect. Suddenly a bunch of people, a critical mass, put their info on there and started to use it to find their colleagues and contacts. So it begins to spread and become more acceptable and expected even.

There are several articles out there telling you about different ways to make use of LinkedIn. One of the more comprehensive is this 10 part series that lays out a whole lot of ways you can use it. For me, there were stages.

Stage 1: Building up the history. In filling in my profile, it got me thinking about all my past positions, accomplishments, the whens and wheres and occasionally whys of our career. Other sites do this too, of course. A word of warning: this will not be the last time you have to fill in one of these as a job seekers.

Stage 2: Connecting with friends. You can use your address book to get you started. It will look for all the emails in your address book and see if they are on LinkedIn. And before you know it, you have sent a whole lot of highly impersonal messages to all your friends and colleagues, inviting them to your network. I later learned (and I agree) that just sending the default message is considered discourteous, that if you are sending a message to someone, at least take the trouble to use your own words to do it. But your friends will probably forgive you.

Stage 3: Connecting to lost friends and colleagues. Sadly, we do sometimes lose touch with people we knew who moved or when we moved. It is hard to make the time just to say hi and even harder when enough time has gone by that you no longer have an up-to-date address or way to contact them. You can look for people by name. You can also look up people who have worked at the same places as you. Or the same schools for that matter. I have reconnected with several of my old colleagues from Minnesota and also to my old comrade from Georgia Tech through this feature. And if they aren’t on there when you sign up but join later, you will see notifications that new colleagues from this place and that place have joined and you can see if it is anyone you know.

In the middle of this you begin to use the other features: there are groups to join based on whatever way to group people you can imagine. There is a job search feature (using SimplyHired). There is a way to research companies, at least getting some information. There are other little toys you can use to display a resume (box.net) or even the feed from your blog. But then you realize that, with all the data here there is something powerful you can do.

Stage 4: Powerful networking. So you have your list of contacts, which is all well and good. But if your contacts have been doing the same thing, you can see who they know. If you look up a company you are interested in, you may have someone you know who knows someone who works there already. If you can get a warm introduction to that person, it is definitely a step up from an email into the void of careers@company.com

LinkedIn is not the be all and end all. You still need to meet people, make that personal connection. You still need to get through an interview and all that good stuff. It ends up being a lot of work to establish and maintain a network. You also need your employed colleagues to do their part, in a number of ways. I do encourage folks to make a start on that profile sooner rather than later. It is definitely better to have a network already in place should the worst happen than to be dropped into it unprepared. Plus, you should not just regard LinkedIn as a tool to aid the job seeker. It is great just to maintain contact with professional colleagues (I leave Facebook to my wife). You can also use it to make connections with business colleagues that you deal with, strengthen your relationship with them. For entrepreneurs, the contacts are vital, but even something like the client project manager is useful. And like many things in life, you get out of it what you are prepared to put into it.

Prospects

So as of a couple of months ago, I joined what we might call the employment challenged. This was quite a shock for me as it was the very first time (if we include being at school as employed) that I have ever been out of work. So what are my prospects?

Well, you don’t need to be an economics wizard to tell that we are in a down economy. Companies are laying off so many people such that when the unemployment numbers for last month were released, over 500,000 newly unemployed was considered an improvement. Within my particular sector, thousands have been laid off or are going to be laid off, partly as a result of cost-cutting and partly as a result of mergers (Pfizer-Wyeth; Merck-Schering Plough, Roche-Genentech, to name a few).

How about RTP in particular? Well, again, several names come up. Eli Lilly closed their site here some years ago. Inspire and King Pharmaceuticals had lay-offs. Of course, my old employer let some people go too. And the big boys in the park, Glaxo SmithKline, have had several reorganizations in recent years, with a significant lay-off last year.

All in all, it is not looking promising.

But all is not black. I did get a decent severance, to give me time to find my feet. They also put me in touch with some transition consultants to give me advice, support and training. Moreover, I am not alone. There are a multitude of networking and job seeker groups in the triangle area alone, including one through my transition group, DBM Pathfinders, as well as general ones, such as Colonial Job Seekers, Triangle Networking Group and TAFU (to avoid future unemployment), which meet at different times during the week.

These networking meetings are quite key. I hear different statistics about the subject, but the consensus is that most jobs are found via someone you know. Many jobs are never even posted, so unless you know about the vacancy, you never even see it. And those jobs on monster.com are much more likely to go to someone who knows someone on the inside already. Especially nowadays, as the number of applicants for each position rises, the hiring managers can spend less time looking at your resume. You need something to make you stand out from the crowd. That usually means a recommendation from someone the hiring manager knows.

So suddenly networking is all important (as if it was not previously) but the nature of how that networking is done has been changed by the internet. First, sites like Monster and Craig’s List took the classified ads from the newspapers and put them online, but now people communicate digitally so much more. So we have Facebook, MySpace and, increasingly, Twitter. We also have sites like LinkedIn, where you can post your professional qualifications and build your network online via connections.

The face-to-face interaction is still important – crucial even – but with the tools out there, the prospects of that meeting being useful and informative to both sides increases, as you already know more about that person than you might in a chance encounter at a conference.

So what about me? My best chance of finding a job would be if I were able to move anywhere and that is not an option at the moment. But RTP is not a terrible place to be stuck. Aside from climatic considerations, while it lags behind the hottest biotech centers of the country (Boston, San Diego and the bay area), it also lags behind them in cost of living as well. I am very glad to be not paying one of those mortgages right now. You also have to believe that companies will stop cutting and look to research to give them growth. Even now there are a few glimmers. UNC opened the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, which aims to bridge the gap between basic research and new medicines. Glaxo and Pfizer announced they would combine their HIV efforts in a new entity that will have its US headquarters here in RTP. And Bayer CropScience plan to expand their facility here, adding 120 jobs over the next 5 years. While these are the bigger players, there is also an opportunity for smaller companies to come in and take advantage of the talent pool here. I already know of several displaced chemists that have started their own businesses and while I am not cut from that cloth myself, I can see myself grabbing onto their entrepreneurial coat tails.

Yes, it is bleak, certainly the toughest job market I have seen. But a positive outlook and a little faith go a long way.