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There are many benefits of beginning a commercial career as a medical representative in the pharmaceutical industry. The pay’s good, and, because you’re often working at home or out on the road, you benefit from a company car and laptop computer.

Although having a degree isn’t absolutely essential, companies prefer to take on graduates as trainees, or people with nursing, marketing or ethical sales experience. This doesn’t mean you need a science degree - far from it – as long as your academic background can demonstrate your ability to assimilate information at a suitable academic level. About 50% of the 9,000 medical representatives in the UK have a science degree, the other 50% are mainly graduates from other academic disciplines.

A common first role in medical sales is that of medical representative, which mostly involves promoting prescription products to GPs and hospital doctors, pharmacists and nurses. You can expect to undergo an initial training course, which will teach you all about the products, therapy area, and how to promote them in a very competitive environment. The PMCPA Code of Practice requires medical representatives to take and pass an examination covering their knowledge of the human body, pathology and pharmacology, body systems and three specialist topics selected from a list of 15. These include disease areas, immunology and pharmacology. The exam must be passed within two years of taking up a position as a medical rep in the UK.

You’ll also need to demonstrate some analytical and planning skills, to enable you to determine where to get the most business from your allocated territory. Teamwork is very important too, as you’re likely to working with two or three other representatives from the same company and sharing the same sales results.

To move on from this position, you’ll need to demonstrate that you’re able to deliver on your sales and activity results. Many medical representatives make their next move in sales training, area management or product management (marketing).

Marketing encompasses such diverse areas as Brand Marketing, Market Development, Market Research and Marketing Communications. Within these areas you might develop positioning and pricing strategies, prepare launch plans, work with agencies, develop and implement promotional campaigns, prepare sales materials for representatives and patient education. As you gain more experience in marketing, it’s possible to move on to roles such as senior product manager, group product manager, marketing manager and marketing director. Alternatively, or in addition, you can supplement your career development by moving back into sales management as national sales manager/regional business director, where you’ll be managing area managers.