Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Archie Stone. He is vice president of product development at Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, and we talk about career development for the MSL and why chasing titles can be fool's gold. So amazing conversation. I love this chat. I think you guys are gonna love it too. Don't forget to join us for MSL talk live, which is on the LinkedIn platform. Please follow me on LinkedIn to get the announcements, and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Hey, Archie. Welcome to the podcast. How you doing? Great to be here, Tom. I'm doing great today. Awesome. Well, I'm excited, guys. Archie is the man. He is definitely someone I've I've been kinda pursuing Archie for a while. And and as luck would have it, we we wound up connecting and found a date, and here we are.
And I gotta tell you, I'm I I don't think I've been this excited about a topic in a while, to be totally honest. And that's no knock on anybody else that I've had on this podcast. Just that this is something that I've talked about a lot, but I haven't actually at all ever talked about it on this podcast. Before we get to that, Archie, why don't you do an introduction? Tell everybody who you are and where you're from and all that good stuff. Thanks, Tom. Well, my name is Archie Stone.
I'm the vice president of product development here at Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, which is an autoimmune company. I've I'm headed up in medical affairs. I've done a variety of things in the industry. I got into this role of medical affairs back in, oh, god, 2,001. So I've been in the industry for, I guess, on my 23rd year now.
But I've done everything from being an MSL to a regional director, national director, head of medical affairs, managed care liaison, medical device companies, pharmaceuticals, biotech. I've done a little bit of everything. So I'm passionate about it. And, you know, one of the things I was very interested in when you when we connected was, I'm very I'm very excited about what you do. Anything that promotes the medical affairs in MSL type career path.
So I was really excited that, you know, you were interested in talking, today in supporting this type of podcast. So thank you for what you do. Yeah. No. And and I think this is a really important topic, guys. We're gonna talk about titles, which we again, is something really, really important because I think there's a lot of misconceptions about titles. And I think we should just jump right into it.
And I I wanna start by asking you, Archie, like, what's what's your feeling on titles in medical affairs? Well, I I think they're kind of a double edged sword. I think I called them fool's guilt when you and I were talking last because they can be a little bit of that. Titles can be important on one hand because they recognize you for the contributions and the experience you bring.
But I will tell you, as being a person that's managed field medical affairs for 16 years now, MSL teams, field medical teams, They can also be a bit of fool's gold. It's easy for me to give you a title. But unless you really understand what that role is about, it may not be what you want. It may come with a a little prettier name on your, on your business card, maybe a little more money in your pocket. But at the end of the day, it may not mean anything.
And so it's really important that you really dig into it and understand what comes along with that type. Before we unpack the fool's gold thing, because I I know what you mean by that, and I'm not sure it's 100% apparent. But, like, I wanna I wanna go back and talk about how do companies come up with titles and levels? And is there a universal agreed upon, you know, standard in the industry for titles?
Well, as I was getting ready for today, I went on LinkedIn, and I just decided, you know, I'm gonna type in medical affairs, and I'm gonna start scrolling through all these people and start looking. Then I dug down. And I kind of stopped after about 18 different titles for just MSL alone. You know, I mean, through the years, I've seen them called regional scientific managers, just with the companies I've worked in regional medical scientists, MSLs, RMLs, regional medical directors.
I mean, they're called everything. And and but at the end of the day, it's all still the MSL role. Just one sec. Sure. Mike. Technical difficulties. Somebody tried to print something from downstairs. I'm sure. But everyone calls it a little bit different. And I think I've come and I've been part of that. I've said, you know what? I don't wanna call them in the cells here.
When I've gotten to a new company, I wanna call them something else to give them a little bit more elevated title for when they're engaging with customers. But as I came back here, I'm on my 8th company now. I decided, you know what? MSL just kinda is something customers recognize. It's got a branding component to it, that external customers realize what that is. Sometimes it's unclear when you start getting with more some of these more exotic names.
Well and and I I I wanna unpack that a little bit from my side, working with a lot of different companies and placing MSLs at different companies. What I've seen is that there is no standard. There is no universal way. So you just explained it beautifully in that MSOs are called a bunch of different things across a bunch of different companies. That means levels are different.
So the the caution and the thing that I want to real if there's one message that I wanna get across on this podcast is that I do appreciate someone that's ambitious and wants to get to the next level and title. But just keep in mind that some companies will give let's call it a senior MSL title to someone who may only have a year or 2 years of experience. And other companies may require 7 to 10 years of experience, and those people are still gonna be called MSL.
So on paper, if you look compare those two people, one might have 2 years of MSL experience and a senior title. The other might have 7 years of experience and an MSL title. Which one is actually more senior? I have someone on my team right now that probably has almost as many years experience, as I do in the industry, 20 plus, and is a senior MSL. And it's not that they couldn't move up.
They just chose the lifestyle, the MSL, because it worked for them, their family, and what they wanted to do in their career. And your point is well taken there. 22 years versus 2 years. And and you see this a lot when people move between companies. It's much more easier to get get that buck up in title because the company that's trying to hire you is like, you know what? We really want this individual because they seem to be a good fit for our organization culturally.
They got the right kind of experience. Maybe we wouldn't want to give them a sale, but you know what? That we want that person. So that's ended up that's where I see it happening a lot. Usually, if you stay within an organization, it takes a little longer to move that up. It's when people start transitioning.
And that's where I kind of come at it as, you know, sometimes titles can be fool's goal, because you're looking at this company, and you're deciding on a title, they're giving you an elevated title, probably a little bit more money if you're negotiating well, but you don't really know what that role is going to entail until you get there. It's kind of always equate interviewing with dating, especially first dates. Everybody's putting their best foot forward, and no one's telling the whole truth.
And so and then you finally get married, and you're there. And you realize, well, wait, this was exactly what I was doing at my previous company. And so it's very important during the interview process, you really understand what what are the responsibilities and what you're being empowered to do behind that type that you're now got. Right? Because it may have been just what you left.
So, you know, again, in preparing for this conversation, I did some research myself, and I don't wanna give people the wrong impression. I don't Archie and I are not trying to downplay chasing or or trying to get a a higher title. We're not saying that. What we're saying is that there should be caution in just in not focus. I think there's other things that you can focus on for career development and not so much worry about when I get my next offer, it has to be this.
So, Archie, can you talk about the career progression piece and what your advice is? My experience, particularly to young people that are just getting into this is early on is to focus on skills, experiences, and and and exposure to things that the titles, believe me, will come. The pay will come with that. But I I don't look at titles so much when I'm interviewing candidates. I mean, I I take note of it, but I really dig into what what are you doing?
What were your day to day responsibilities at your last last job? What is it you were in responsible for? And also to, you know, people love to tell me about all the great project work they do. Okay. Were you a part of that team? Were you leading that team? Or are you just along for the ride? Are you observer? What was your role? Because to me, titles because there's what you alluded to, no standardization. Skill sets are much more important.
And fortunately, for me, that's what I focused on in my career. I'm not gonna say I I have the model path. I but I focused on getting exposure to different things. And I think we'll talk about a little later that, you know, careers are not always a straightforward path right up a ladder. They can be, you know, an alternative or very alternative path. And I can tell you a couple of instances. Yeah. Where I took the path less traveled and it propelled me forward.
Yeah. And I'm gonna, like, I wanna from my perspective, again, speaking as a recruiter, seeing a lot of different types of positions, a lot of different when and just from my perspective, when I'm looking at a resume, client engages us to fill positions. I look at resumes. I'm looking at the body of work, not the title per se. I'm looking at the titles, but like what's most important is I want to see the body of work. What have you done? What areas have you specialized in therapeutically?
How many years of experience do you have? What were the responsibilities? Do you have a a a certain specialty in some area? Are you better on the payer side, or are you the go to technical person that though that skill set is going to mean that when you go to a new team, you could be the go to research when it comes to IT. I'm just throwing that out there. So Absolutely. That's what I think Archie's talking about is develop your resume, and the titles will come. Is that right?
Absolute absolutely. And that's the I'm a firm believer in that. Before and I wanna stay on this career development topic because I I think that that's really the whole crux of this conversation, is more how to develop a career and get to the title. But is there an argument? Let's talk about what it means to have a more senior level title. Does it translate into a benefit in some I'm talking other than the financial benefit or level or whatever might come with it. Is there more clout?
Is there better access? Absolutely. So I'm a vice president. And sometimes, I know for a fact that just opens doors Mhmm. With certain KOLs, particularly in academic centers. The titles can be very meaningful, particularly when you're engaging externally with customers. So I'm not downplaying saying that they're not important. They may just not be as fulfilling as you thought once you get them.
You know, you see that mountaintop, you climb to it and you get there and you're like, was this what I was really killing myself for? Idols do have some benefits, particularly when you're dealing externally with customers or even internally with your cross functional partners.
I think we we've discussed, you know, I prefer my MSLs to work at, like, a regional sales director, regional manager level when their support when they're working cross functionally because many times the geographies of these people more mirror the MSL. So they have a more global view of what's going on within a geography, say, than an individual sales rep. Oftentimes, MSL will support multiple sales reps, maybe up to 10, 12, depending on what kind of company they're in.
Whereas a regional sales director, they see geography in the same terms that maybe an MSL does. So from that perspective, when you have a title that more mirrors the person that I would like you to work for, I think it's a much better relationship in that regard. They see you as a peer versus just another member of, an individual contributor. I love it.
And I and I think that's a I think it's important that we we look at both sides of the equation, and and are thorough in the analysis of of this topic. But let's get back to the career progression piece and the career development piece. Because you had mentioned something to me when we spoke, using the the the analogy of rock climbing and career and career progression. So can you talk about that? Yeah. So like many MSLs, I wanted to manage people.
Mhmm. And so I got that opportunity in, I think, 2005, 2006. I don't remember anymore, but it was a it was a long time ago. More years later. And then after doing that for a few years, there was an opportunity that opened up in the, on the on the payer team as a managed care MSL. So I was managing 7, 8 MSLs at the time. And for me, you know, you talked about everyone kind of has their niche, I was very interested in where medicine and business collide.
And that is no more prevalent than in the payer community where they're making decisions about therapies based on the clinical data, but also the business aspects of it. So I went to my boss. You know, a lot of people on the team thought I was crazy for doing this, but I took a job as a managed care liaison. So I went from being a manager of 8 people down to an individual contributor role. Why? It was something that interests me. It was something I wanted in my skill sets.
And lo and behold, you know, the next job I got, I was head of medical affairs at a small biotech. Why? Because now I had more dearth of experience besides just being a field medical direct or field MSL director. I now understood about payers. And that really makes you attractive to small companies. And that's, to me, one of the biggest arguments. I like small company environments and what a small company environments like, people who can wear multiple hats.
So I've made it a career of trying to acquire as many skills as I can because I like the small company environment. That may not be for everybody. But for me, that's what works. And I know as a hiring manager, they like people who can do a multitude of things, particularly early on when you're hired. Instead of hiring a person that does publications, a published person that does field medical, maybe I can hire one person that can do both for a period of time until we get a little bit bigger.
So that that and and I feel like that that's a huge nugget. I think right there to take a set aside a sidestep. Yeah. To get to take a step forward, I think is key sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes when you're rock climbing, and this is why I use this analogy, you're looking for that next hand hold or that foothold, but it may not be directly in front of you. It may be a step down, but then you can take an alternative path. And I've done that a couple of times.
I've done it when I left pharma to go into medical device. I it was something that interest me. Took a step back to do that, And it propelled my career forward because I gained so much invaluable experience and skills working in a very different environment than I brought back to pharma. Even when I came here to Aurinia, I stepped down as a vice president to be a senior director to manage the field team. Because why? I wanted to this was an area that kind of fascinated me.
And, you know, fortunately, I've bet on myself to be able to get back to where I am. But, it required a step backwards in terms of title. You know, a lot of people ask me, you know, Tom, if I if I take a step backwards in in title, is it going to be career suicide? Or am I you know, is that hurting is that gonna hurt my career? And the answer is no if you're building your resume. If you're building your skills, no. It's gonna And and I long as you can explain it now.
Mhmm. I mean and and I think now it's become more common because Yeah. Someone will take a take a position with a small high risk company as and the company really wants this person. They'll give them as big a title as they can. And then let's say a year later, the company runs out of money or something happens. A lot of times, I've seen this numerous times where people have now gone from being a senior director at this company to an MSL or or, you know, or or associate director.
And I asked them why. As long as they have a good explanation, we understand this is a highly dynamic environment. People people may choose to do that. People may be have it hoisted upon them because of circumstances beyond their control. As long as you can explain it, I think most hiring managers having hired, I don't know, dozens of in the sales, I'm like, yeah. That's very reasonable. Yeah. And so in a nutshell, it's not necessarily always a career ladder. It's not rung to rung to rung.
It's, again, it's more like rock climbing where if if you really wanna build a good resume, you you may have to develop your skill sets in other areas without just continue and some people do go. And, you know, there's there's so many different varieties of how this works out, but I think that this is just a great conversation because so many people ask me these questions. And I wanna clarify how important it is to develop your career.
To be mindful of that, you know, in in in in one of the things I love to do, and I still do this occasionally, is I'll go look at other job descriptions for a role that I'm in. And I'll look at the job responsibilities and say, what is missing? Mhmm. I think I'm to a point now where there's not a lot missing off my resume that I think I need or that I I want to do.
But for a person that's, say, within their first 5 to 7 years, you should be doing that periodically, looking at other companies, looking at roles that you want and say, what do I have now? And what is their job responsibilities? If you tick off the first five boxes, let's say you're doing pretty good. But there may be little things, and that's what sets you apart from other candidates.
Because, typically, when I get a resume or a position, the recruiter is gonna give me the major points that I've highlighted that this is must have. But what really makes the difference between me hiring person a and or candidate a and candidate b is the little things a little further down the list that one may have over the other one. And that's the skill sets they've acquired early on.
And and I will say the more you go up in the ladder, the harder it is to get certain skill sets that you may have that were only available to you when you were younger in your career. So just focus on gathering as much of those up as you can. That's that's such great advice. That's one of the best things anyone's ever said on this show. I I feel like, guys, if you didn't really weren't paying attention to that part, go back and rewind it.
Because what Archie's talking about is that we all have skill gaps. We call them it's there's there's a word there's an expression for this called skill gaps. And the and the problem is or blind spots. And the problem is we don't always know what our skill gaps are until, like, someone points it out or we apply to a position and we don't have it.
So what Archie is saying is by going out and doing the research to see in this next position or for me to get to this next position or this next level or this next title, I need to develop these skills and make sure that I don't have that gap because when I go to interview, then I have something to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. The time to be looking to acquire those skills is not when you're out there actively interviewing. It's right now you're happy in your job. Your boss loves you.
You're looking at other res other job postings of maybe jobs you want in the future and say, I'm really missing this one skill that seems to appear on a lot of these, posts. And then going to your boss saying, no. And as a boss, I appreciate these conversations. This is what I wanna do in my career, and this is my gap. And then I'm gonna think, how can I help you get that? Because I will tell you, I didn't get here online. There's a lot of people that have helped me through the years.
That's great. That's great advice. So let's talk about what about some of the mistakes that you see people make in their careers? And as they're chasing the next thing, what do you see that people probably shouldn't do? Focus only on the title. I think that's what really intrigued me about this, because I said at the onset and I'll say it again, Titles are very deceiving because there's just no universal standard to them across companies.
So you may think you're getting an elevated title, but what you've really done is taken the same job with a different title. And you've not done as much to enhance your career as maybe you thought before you took that job. And you see this a lot when people are moving between companies. Usually, if you're within the same company, there's a standardization to the progression within that company.
But especially when you go from big pharma down to these small biotech companies, and that's where, you know, that's my sweet spot is these small biotech companies. There is absolutely no standardization.
So chasing titles for the sake of titles can put you not no better off than if you just stayed where you were, and then, your boss could have helped you develop additional skills that could have gotten you the same title but in a better company that had the skills and had the responsibilities behind it that you wanted.
Yeah. And, you know, when you look at the looking at small companies, for example, one of the things we always hear when we're recruiting for smaller biotechs is, you know, we need some we need people that can wear a lot of hats, people that are gonna be good team players that are well rounded, that have a vast array of skills because it's not like large pharma where you have departments upon departments that can provide support.
Smaller companies need to make the most with the resources they have. So the, so the more you can develop yourself as a candidate and the more skills you can, you can acquire along the way, the more valuable you're gonna be, not just to a small company, but really to any company. That's your value proposition is here's what I bring to the table. This is how valuable I am. And not only it 100% agree with everything you just said.
And if you decide, and some people do this, and I see this, people romanticize going working for that startup getting in early on. It's a lot of work. I mean, you better even with the big titles, you better be willing to roll up your sleeves because a lot of times they do hire you because you can wear so many hats. Now you gotta wear all those hats. You can always take those skills back to big pharma. Mhmm. Big pharma gladly welcome you back.
Now you you might not quite have the same title you had at a smaller company skin. Some people get here and go, you know what? There's just too much ambiguity, too much uncertainty. Because as we've seen for the last year and a half, money, fundraising in the biotech industry has been tough. And I think it's starting to kind of emerge on the other side, but you you can always go back to the bigger companies.
You may not have a big title, but they'll gladly take you back because while you've acquired all those skills and in many ways, you've accelerated your development by going to a small company versus if you had stayed at one company for a period of time. I do not fault people for moving around. Hell, I've done it, to to acquire the skills I needed, but there was purpose behind it.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's a tough one because in this day and age, we all know with the volatility, especially over the course of the past 2 years, you you just unfortunately, sometimes it's it's not in your it wasn't your doing. You were part of a a downsizing or a layoff. So, you know, companies get that now. But I think to Archie's point, you, you, you wanna develop the best skillset that you can, because it's interchangeable with large and small companies once you're valuable.
So what advice do you have? I'm gonna ask you 2 questions. What advice do you have for MSLs in this day and age and then for MSL leaders? So, one big advice, and I've already shared it, is just focus on skill sets. Mhmm. Getting getting the experiences. And and what I mean by that, just because you participated in a project doesn't mean you're an expert at it. I always believe watch 1, do one lead one. That's how you develop mastery. Be patient. It takes time to master or develop skills.
That's probably the biggest advice I would give to MSLs is just focus on that and be a good cross functional partner. It's typically when you work out into the field and you work remote, as we do now.
You know, bad impressions last a lot longer than you just don't have the opportunity to win someone back over, like you do if you're working in an offsetting where you're seeing everyone 5 days a week, you know, you could really make somebody mad on a Monday and by Friday, you're going out for drinks. It doesn't work that way when you work remote. And, you know, you may be months that that kind of impression, faster.
So you better be very careful about your interactions and protecting your reputation and how you're perceived by others. That's that's probably the one big advice I get people. Yeah. And what about leaders? What if you were if you had to sit down with with a medical affairs leader right now, what might you tell them? Start with the end in mind. What what is going to look like and work your way backwards from there? That is to me, that has always served me well.
And if I don't know what the end in mind looks like, I ask my leaders what that looks like. Is what what one of my favorite questions to ask, particularly when I'm interviewing is, like, a year now we look a year from now, you've hired me. What are you gonna look back and say this guy did a kick ass job? What what would that look like to you? And, and so I always believe in starting with the end in mind and working my way backwards to to to get to the details.
And and leaders kind of have that vision. I think really great leaders have a vision, but they also understand the the tactics that get you there, how to operationalize all that. And in a small company, you kind of learn you have to do both because you're not gonna have all of the build out. You're not going to have a director of operations. You're not going to have a project manager.
You're not going to have usually you're going to have a leader in some field based MSLs and they're going to say, get out there and start, you know, meeting with customers and finding out what they think about a product, what they think about emerging treatment trends. So, you know, it's good to start with the Indian woman with for leaders, medical affairs leaders. I told you guys this was gonna be freaking kick ass. Archie, you're the man. This is so good. I took notes as I was going along.
There were so many good takeaways. I guys, I this is one of the one of these episodes you gotta share with others. You definitely have to share this one, and go back and listen to it again. I know I will. Even I wrote down what was it? Watch 1, do 1, lead 1? Is that what you said? I love that. Yeah. I love that, man. That's just great advice. Archie, thank you for for being here and for joining me. You're amazing. Tom, thank you for all you're doing for the medical affairs field.
I really appreciate that. You know, I remember when I first started 20 plus years ago, it was so easy to get into. Now I got people calling me all the time, and that's a real testament to how much this has grown as a career. I think used to be we were a support function. Now we're seen as a pillar within companies, and it's work guys like you are doing out there to elevate, you know, what it is we as professionals do. So thank you and continue the great work. Awesome.
Well, we're gonna have to have you come back and talk about some other stuff. But, guys, thank you for all your support, and, we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And if you enjoyed it, please subscribe so that you don't miss an episode in the future and feel free to leave a rating or a review or a comment. Thanks again, and we look forward to seeing you soon.