At the moment I am in Guadeloupe on holiday, and I take the opportunity to do the Christmas Q&A as I promised you.

Mamadou,

« Hello, I congratulate you for your dynamism and your commitment to the knowledge and recognition of professions in clinical research. In fact I would like to know if it is possible to get into the freelance, as a young graduate without having had significant experience as a CRA promoter. Are there companies and other structures that accompany this?

Thanks in advance. »

So Mamadou, to answer you, in general, one does not begin a career of freelance by being young graduate. Because to be freelance, one must have knowledge, a good address book. A good address book, that is to say that you have worked in different companies and these people you know will be able to offer you missions because they work in other places or other positions and can offer you missions or they know people who could offer you other missions.

In general, being a young graduate, you first do your experiment and then from 4-5 years, you can start looking for freelance missions and there you will find more easily. Moreover, I would say that what is sought in a freelancer is a person who has experience and to whom they will entrust a mission, and being sure that he will master the mission of clinical research associate, which he will master and that he has the complete skills to carry out this mission.

When you’re a young graduate, in general, you do not have the experience and the knowledge of the clinical research that is expected of you when you are in freelance. So, what I can advise you is to wait a little bit, to prove yourself as a young graduate and as an experienced CRA. And then you can start calmly either by contacting recruitment agencies, there are many recruitment firms looking for freelancers or contacting pharmaceutical companies or CROs. And then, with all the contacts you have made during these years, you can then use these contacts to find a new mission to become a freelancer.

Abir,

« Hello, I would like an advice because I am at a dead end in my career. I did a CRA training in 2010, and then I could not practice in this practice because I had various obstacles. Now I would like to resume my research and I do not know what to do? Recruiters ask for experience and my training dates from 2010, do I need to do another CRA training? Which training organization will be the most complete? Substituted for example. I thought about training as a project manager but the experience is always a problem. I thank you for your answer in advance and would be grateful if you can propose me a solution because I am lost from lost.

Thank you and Happy New Year »

So Abir, thank you and I also wish you good holidays and especially good year.

Concerning your problem, it must be said that you have not had experience since 2010 and you only did one training in 2010. It is true I understand that it can be problematic that you do not have experience. You will have to try to understand what obstacles that prevented you to find even an internship in 2010. You really should try to do a real introspection to understand where the problem is? And what I would recommend to you is to do a competency check-up to see if the CRA profession is really the profession that is made for you.

Doing a competency check-up would help you to know really if you have chosen the right path, if you do not want to turn to something else. In general I think you can do that with the pole job.

Well I hope you liked this video, and that you have learned a little more about clinical research. So here I give you a small view on the beach of Anse Bertrand in Guadeloupe and see you soon.

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