You want to switch to pharma BD? One reader asked. Here's my honest, unfiltered answer: glamour, grind, and everything between
I recently received an email from a reader.
She has a finance background. After reading some of my articles about pharma BD, she started seriously thinking:
Should I go to graduate school in pharmacy and then move into biopharma BD?
I was actually very happy to receive her email.
It made me realize that people are reading what I write, and that my articles are helping some readers understand the industry better and think about new possibilities.
But after the initial excitement, I started to worry.
Am I only showing the good side of pharma BD?
Traveling overseas for conferences, meeting different companies, discussing partnerships, developing new markets, and bringing a product into a new market...
These are definitely some of the things I enjoy about BD.
But if someone reads my articles and starts imagining that pharma BD is a job filled with opportunities, international travel, and a strong sense of achievement, I feel I'm responsible for showing the other side too.
there are also plenty of moments in BD that make you want to roll your eyes.
Just like any other job, it has interesting moments and moments when you really want to get away from it. So, I want to answer some of the questions people may have about pharma BD and share a more realistic picture of what this job is actually like.
Pharma BD often looks glamorous. You travel overseas. You attend international conferences. You meet people from different companies and countries.
It certainly looks glamorous, but, I need to say, it just looks glamorous. :p
You may spend six months working on a deal, only to see everything go back to zero because the other company's management changes.
Or you may finally earn a customer's trust and get close to signing the deal, but another department say, "The technology is too difficult," and kill the deal with one sentence.
Or your customer's project gets pushed aside because another project suddenly becomes a higher priority.
None of this appears in your conference photos. However, these moments are actually a big part of the daily reality of BD.
The glamorous side of BD usually gets the attention. The painful side happens in emails, internal meetings, coordination, and sales target.
I sincerely hope that anyone interested in pharma BD doesn't walk into this career with an overly idealized picture of the job.
From what I have seen, not really.
At the junior level, you can create value through execution, customer development, relationship management, and hitting sales targets.
But there is one reality in every workplace:
The higher you go, the fewer positions there are.
For example, if a company can use an Associate VP or VP salary to hire two or three younger employees to handle most of that work, the company will naturally ask:
"Why do we need to spend that much more?"
As you move into more senior positions, companies start expecting something different.
Can you open new markets?
Can you build a business model?
Can you negotiate major partnerships?
Can you connect internal and external resources?
Can you actually influence the company's growth direction?
There are so many "can you..." that a company interested in; therefore, I don't think age itself is the most important issue. The more important questions are:
What kind of person does the company actually need? And as you gain more experience, is your value increasing along with your years?
That said, I don't think age has zero impact either. Or perhaps a better way to put it is this:
As you move through different stages of life, the opportunity cost change and it would affect your career choices.
For example, BD may frequently travel. Your company may also ask you to move to another country to develop a new market.
When I was in my twenties and single, I would usually say yes immediately if I had an exciting opportunity to go to another city or country for the business. (Unless there was a war going on and my life was at risk, of course.)
But after having a family and children, there are simply more things to consider.
If I am traveling for several days, is my family okay?
If I have to attend a dinner and come home late, is that okay for my family?
If I move to another country, what does my family think? Will they support it or not? What about my children's education? Is the local environment safe?
These questions are simply part of the reality of being at a different stage of life.
When you're young, you usually have fewer constraints, which means your opportunity cost is lower. That can actually be an advantage in the workplace.
That doesn't necessarily mean the company is "discriminating against older employees." From a company's perspective, someone who is young, and willing to work in different locations may indeed be easier to send overseas.
From my point of view, it is not about ceiling; it's about choices and making decisions.
Most people come from pharmaceutical, life science, chemistry, or business backgrounds.
Because the products are drugs, or the business involves CDMO services, people with pharmaceutical or life science backgrounds can usually understand the technology, products, and limitations more easily.
At the same time, pharmaceutical company doing business. As a BD, you are dealing with commercial transactions and partnerships, so people with business backgrounds are also very common and many of them do very well.
Beyond that, many useful BD skills come from previous working experience in functions such as PM, R&D, QC, or QA. It helps you understand and integrate different work in your BD work.
Now, back to that reader with the finance background.
A finance background is not necessarily a weakness. It can actually be an advantage.
Pharma BD is not simply about finding a partner and closing a deal. You also need to think about deal structure, upfront and milestone payments, asset valuation, and the financial logic behind a transaction. These all require financial thinking.
In fact, many BD professionals who come from technical backgrounds have to spend time catching up on this part.
If you already understand financial modeling and valuation, what you are missing may simply be industry knowledge. And industry knowledge can be learned through work, reading, and further education. However, financial intuition, on the other hand, takes time to build. So in that sense, your background may actually put you in a pretty good position.
So if you have experience across different fields, you could think about this:
When you combine your abilities from two or three different fields, what problem can you solve?
It would be a value that many companies want to get.
BD is about helping a company grow. For many companies, this often means selling to more customers and expanding into more markets.
Because pharmaceutical products must comply with regulations such as pharmaceutical laws and GMP requirements, experience in the pharmaceutical industry can also be relatively difficult to replace and therefore be valuable.
There is also an important difference between working in BD for a multinational pharmaceutical company and a local pharmaceutical company in your country.
In a local branch, BD often involves executing the commercial strategy of the parent company.
In other words, when you work for a multinational pharmaceutical company, the "international" people you communicate with on a daily basis are often colleagues in regional offices or headquarters. Your customers, meanwhile, are usually in your local market.
Your job is often to translate the company's existing products, resources, and strategy into actions that work in the local market. The advantage is that you get exposure to mature BD methodologies, systematic processes, and international training resources.
The downside is that your decision-making space can be more limited. You may spend the first few years mainly in an execution role. To get closer to international markets and upstream strategic decisions, you may need to move into a regional role, take an international assignment, or join cross-border projects.
If the local company already has international business, you may get much closer to the front line much faster.
You may be contacting overseas customers, attending international conferences, and negotiating licensing deals from your first year. You don't necessarily have to wait for an internal transfer opportunity.
You may also have more room to experiment, make mistakes, and develop your own way of working. Because local companies tend to have smaller organizations and fewer layers of management, decision-making can be more flexible. And yes, wearing multiple hats is pretty normal!
The downside is that the resources and training systems may not be as complete as those at multinational companies. You often have to figure things out yourself.
So, if your goal is to get exposure to overseas customers and build international negotiation experience as quickly as possible, joining a local pharmaceutical company that already operates internationally business may be a more direct route.
If you want structured training, established methodologies, and an international career platform, a multinational company may be a more stable starting point.
There is no absolute winner here. It depends on whether you need more "depth" or more "breadth" at this stage of your career.
As I mentioned earlier, you don't necessarily need a pharmacy degree to work in pharmaceutical BD. If you're hesitating simply because you're not sure whether this career is right for you, my advice is simple:
Apply for the job and try it.
Getting actual experience in the pharmaceutical industry is probably the best way to understand whether you really like it.
What if you don't get the BD job?
If you still really want to try working in pharma BD, you could first look for a role in a pharmaceutical company that is similar to what you are already doing. That may give you a higher chance of getting hired.
Once you're inside, observe the culture and see whether you actually enjoy working in a pharmaceutical company.
If you do, you can look for opportunities to join cross-functional projects, apply for an internal transfer, or move into BD job at another pharmaceutical company later.
If pharmaceutical research and study itself is something you genuinely enjoy, and after thinking it through you decide that graduate school makes sense for you, then go for it.
But just be prepared for what graduate school actually looks like. It is highly research-oriented.
You will spend a lot of time reading papers, designing and running experiments, cell culture, animal studies, assays, and dealing with all kinds of small, time-consuming tasks. These things can take up most of your day.
On the other hand, when you finally get a result that confirms the hypothesis of your study, the sense of achievement can be pretty great!
Life is basically a series of decisions. Trying something new is a decision; staying where you are is also a decision.
Looking back at my own career, not every decision I made turned out to be a great one. But at the time, I evaluated the situation, considered what I really want, and made decision at that moment. Right or wrong, I kept moving forward.
So if you are standing at a similar career crossroads, I hope you understand this:
Age and career ceilings should not be the reason you stop yourself from trying.
A lot of the time, they become excuses as doubt or fear. And eventually, those doubts and fears make us stay where we are.
But if you ask me any other thing that I really want you to take away, it would be this:
There is no "completely ready" moment before you start. Please do not wait for that moment because it will never come.
Nobody is going to send you a notification saying, "Congratulations. You are now ready to change careers. (or anything that you really want to do)" You have to apply, do, make mistakes, and adjust your direction along the way.
The cost of hesitation is often higher than the cost of taking action, especially when you're young and your opportunity cost is still relatively low.
If you have other questions about biopharma BD, feel free to leave a comment or email me at harry@chivanta.com.
I'm also genuinely curious about how do you see BD job and your career!
Want to know more about business development? Feel free to read series articles below, or reach out to me via Email or LinkedIn! Also welcome to share your thoughts or questions in the comments.
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About the author
Scientist-turned-strategist — work from researcher, pandemic vaccine PM, to strategic planning & global licensing BD. I share business, strategy and what I've gotten wrong and learned. Welcome to contact: harry@chivanta.com, and connect my LinkedIn.