{"id":1368,"date":"2019-09-10T10:59:55","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T14:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2025-07-11T10:29:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T14:29:04","slug":"samantha-coates-msc-in-neuroscience-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/2019\/samantha-coates-msc-in-neuroscience-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Samantha Coates: MSc in Neuroscience (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Samantha Coates: MSc in Neuroscience (2016)\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Samantha Coates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

MSc in Neuroscience (2016)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. What field of work are you in, and what duties are required in your position?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    I work in the biotech field! I am a Senior Biosciences Account Manager for Thermo Fisher Scientific. I am expected to effectively manage a territory with revenues around $7.5M across about 150 biotech, industrial, academic and environmental companies. I sell across a large portfolio of life sciences products while also managing customer relationships. I have to respond to customer outreach and prospect for new business in order to achieve my sales goal. As a senior account manager, I also have a mentorship and onboarding responsibility for new hires!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    1. What challenges did you face when looking for work after graduating?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      The biggest challenge I faced was finding something within my field (Neuroscience) that wasn\u2019t at the bench. I absolutely loved my time at Carleton doing research. However it was not the future for me. I wanted to remain within the science community but in a role that was more focused on people. Sales hadn\u2019t ever been a job that I had considered, so I think having a narrow view of industry coming out of academia also added to my challenges. I was very lucky though that Thermo Fisher was hiring near the end of my master\u2019s degree and the timing really worked out well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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      1. How did you arrive at your current position?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        Like I mentioned, I was very lucky to stumble into this position posting when looking for jobs. I started just over three years ago as an Account Manager and I have not looked back! I was promoted at the beginning of this year into the senior role and inherited larger accounts and additional duties in the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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        1. What advice would you give to a graduate student looking to follow a career path similar to yours?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

          I think the biggest piece of advice I can give is to be open minded about what industry jobs can look like! I definitely do not feel like I am in a \u201ctraditional\u201d sales role and I really didn\u2019t see myself in this position when I was graduating three and a half years ago. I feel very lucky to see the advancement of sciences in such an up close way (and not have to write a single grant to do it!). It\u2019s a very cool feeling to speak to a customer that has a therapy going to clinical trials due to products I was able to sell to them. I will say that this isn\u2019t a job for everyone, so you need to make sure that you are competitive or driven as well as a self-starter. It is a sales job and we have to hit a quota, but the mold for sales is far less defined than one would expect. I come to work every day and am surrounded by very smart people that are very different than I am. Another piece of advice \u2013 don\u2019t be afraid to take a business course along with your sciences ones or taking on a part-time job that involves selling to learn this new skill. At the end of the day, experience in sales will always look good on a resume.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Samantha Coates MSc in Neuroscience (2016) I work in the biotech field! I am a Senior Biosciences Account Manager for Thermo Fisher Scientific. I am expected to effectively manage a territory with revenues around $7.5M across about 150 biotech, industrial, academic and environmental companies. I sell across a large portfolio of life sciences products while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[28,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career-advice","category-science"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1381,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/gradpd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}