CAREER GUIDANCE SESSIONS for FINAL YEAR B. PHARM GRADUATES

With increasing competitiveness in pharma industry, it is always been a challenge for an industry to get right candidates with specific skill sets with respect to the requirements of the jobs. Therefore, in order to abreast the final year students and to provide them to interact with industry stalwarts, HK College of pharmacy’s; Placement cell organized “Career Guidance Interactive session”. These sessions were divided into three major groups based on the availability of jobs for Fresh graduates in pharma sector.

These included separate sessions on ‘Clinical Research’; ‘Regulatory, IPR and Disaster management and most challenging and easy- to- enter ‘Marketing’. These were conducted on 1st, 8th & 15th Feb 2014 at HK campus auditorium. All the speakers for each of the session were experts working in the specialized field.

Clinical research Experts (Sujit Nair from Cognizant technologies solutions Ltd) and Mandar Kanekar (TCS Pvt LTD) briefed students with respect to job profiles with respect to clinical research associate (BA/BE studies), clinical data manager; clinical Data management as an upcoming field with attractive pay packets to fresh graduates, Pharmacovigilance and Medical writing. They also motivated students and explained the personality traits required apart from technical skills for jobs in clinical arena. Further, students inquired with respect to courses available for clinical research and practical advantages of pursuing courses with respect to jobs.

Next session was on Regulatory, IPR & disaster management. Reputed experienced speakers from Regulatory included Rajshri Ojha (Cognizant Regulatory Affairs Department) and Poonam Dhake [Patent attorney and Visiting Faculty for IPR to ICT]. Both the speakers explained the overall job responsibilities as regulatory personnel and IPR expert respectively. Briefed about the courses available after B.pharm to gain insight with respect to regulatory and IPR fields before joining with the pharmaceutical companies for these specific jobs.

Amyn Sopariwala; ex-alumni of HK college of Pharmacy and Dipesh suvarna (Both are B.pharm graduates), currently pursuing course in Disaster Management with Tata Institute of social sciences briefed with respect to the Disaster management. They explained how pharmacists are also involved with NGO’s and government’s Drive of providing health benefits at lower cost especially to rural sector; Role of DCGI with respect to Indian Regulatory. Disaster management is recent upcoming sector for jobs in Pharma and for students dreaming to pursue unique social career.
With respect to jobs in Marketing, it is important for students to understand the scope beyond mere medical representatives so we had speakers from IPCA, Tapasya Engineering, CEO of Akademia for the same. Speakers from IPCA included Sudeep Shah, Medico-Marketing manager; Rakesh Upadhyay (Ex Alumni of HK college of Pharmacy), Brand and Product Manager working with PMT team. Pankaj Khanditkar works as Techno-Marketing Expert with Tapasya Engineering Works, a company dealing with pharmaceutical equipment’s since 1960. CEO of Akademia; Nilesh Sarwate; stressed on pursuing MBA as an unique option after B.Pharm.