Building a career

This sub-branch follows one writer's own working life in medical writing: how people get into the profession and what their background already supplies, what to study and which credentials and certifications count, what a writer is expected to be able to do, from the competency model to the soft skills, numeracy and business literacy beside it, applying for a job, from the CV to the offer, the range of work the field covers and choosing a specialism within it, growing the craft once inside, the moves an established writer makes or meets, from the next post, the move into management and the move out of writing into regulatory affairs to retiring, what the work pays, and the online presence that carries a reputation. It leaves the crossing into freelance work and the running of a practice to setting up a freelance practice, finding and keeping freelance clients, freelance agreements and pricing and running a freelance writing business; hiring and growing other writers to leading a writing team; the associations a writer joins to professional associations; teaching other writers to teaching and training medical writers; and the writer's health and working from home to working conditions and your own health.

• Getting into medical writing — the way into the profession: the accounts of how people arrived and why there is no standard route, what each starting background supplies, where a newcomer finds out what the career is, and the first post, from the employers who take an entrant to what the job contains
• Education and credentials — what to study and which credentials count: education against training, the science beside the documents, free online courses, degrees and taught programmes, association workshops and certificates, and the examined certifications a writer can hold and what each signals
• Medical writing competencies — what a writer is expected to be able to do: the industry competency model, the knowledge, skills and aptitudes the work needs, how practitioners and job adverts rank them and where the model stops, and the abilities beside it: soft skills, emotional intelligence, numeracy and judgement, and business literacy
• Applying for medical writing jobs — the selection from the application to the offer: what employers screen for, the CV, the covering letter and showing your writing, the tests and the interview, negotiating the salary of the post, and where the employers are
• Choosing a specialism — the range of work the field spans and narrowing a practice within it: what defines the work, whether to hold a niche at all, the areas and the sponsor and vendor sides compared, and the moves into regulatory, nonclinical, pharmacovigilance, device, agency, medical affairs, grant, rare-disease, veterinary, translation and journalism work, the regulated sectors next to medicines, and the markets never labelled medical writing
• Developing as a medical writer — growing the craft and the career once you are inside: why writers stay, starting to write from a clinical or research career, reading and continuing learning, improving your own prose, showing your work, adapting to change, unfamiliar assignments, and public speaking
• Online presence — the profile and the channels around it: whether to have one at all, what you are branding, what a search already returns, the network profile section by section, which networks are worth the time, and the posting and engaging that follow
• What medical writing pays — reading a salary survey before using it, employed pay in the United States and Europe, what a certificate adds, and whether satisfaction follows pay
• Making a career move — the moves an established writer makes or meets on their own behalf: planning the next post, moving into management, leaving writing for regulatory affairs, returning to employment after freelancing, being made redundant, a career redirected by events nobody chose, and retiring