Choosing a Functional Area
In a sea of options, how does one even choose a role?
As fellowship and internship recruitment kick off, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the number of functional areas out there.
Most advice points to networking, involvement, or even the “spray and pray” application strategy. While this advice has value, you may often find yourself asking, "How do I know what role I want?".
We at MockView believe the work truly starts with introspection, in 3 steps:
❓ Observe your day-to-day activities that sparked the most joy.
Ask if you can see yourself doing this for 3+ decades and find fulfillment.
📖 Research all functional areas and their subfunctions to generally understand their environments and day-to-day activities to gain clarity.
Start top-down with a large functional area like the big 4 and look deeper into their subfunctions: Clinical Development, Medical Affairs, Regulatory Affairs, and Commercial. Over time, your understanding grows, such as knowing Medical Affairs has Med Strategy, Med Comms, and Med Info as subfunctions.
💼 Find the overlap between what you enjoy and what functional areas need!
Enjoy the math behind predicting concentrations? Clinical Pharmacology involves performing NCA and Pharmacometrics involves modeling with this goal. Is creating posts for your club social media a chore or a blessing? Medical Communications involves curating media for decision makers. There are many other examples.
Using this process to focus down makes downstream applications easier!
By focusing down, you reduce random internship applications, strengthen your strategic involvement, and make your fellowship applications laser-sharp.
The best time to start knowing yourself was yesterday; the second-best time is now. We can help you focus by asking the right questions.
🚀Book your first session, on us!
