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Getting solid experience in healthcare is a good safety net because there are skills you need beyond just being a good writer with good ideas, of which there are more humans than jobs. (Understanding clinical data, annotating for legal submissions, etc). So healthcare clients are more often in need of people with these skills.
sharing*
I work at a creative agency for pharma/healthcare/wellness and I get more concepting opportunities than I ever had doing consumer—on top of getting paid a tremendous amount more. If you're a writer who can manage annotations, to me, pharma is the way to go. The referencing/annos can get a little overwhelming in the beginning, but once you find your footing, it's really manageable. I do make 6 figures as a 27 year old senior writer.
**my experience only**
Smith 2023/p215/col1/para4/lines2-5; p216/col1/fig1/bullets 3 and 4
healthcare occasionally involves being creative. more often there are footnotes and annotations involved
That’s how it is at its best. It can also get complicated and exhausting, but it depends on the account, workload, and agency.
Just ending an 18 month permalancing gig in tech. It’s been a revelation. Made the most money 💰 I’ve ever made in a 21 year career, with the least amount of stress/politics. And did it remotely. Yes AI 🤖 is coming, but if you can find a way in, you won’t miss agency life or glance at another award show winner’s list ever again.
Omg this is pretty much the comment I was hoping for. I'm trying my best. Are you able to share how you broke in?
Pharma pays much better than consumer. That said, it’s hard to break into, very niche, and not always the most exciting.
I spend a lot of my time as a writer doing fact checks, annotating, reading clinical trials, etc, but I’m pulling in a salary over $170k as an ACD. When I am hiring writers I need to see a demonstrated ability to write for Pharma companies in their portfolio and Pharma experience in their resume. What makes you a great writer in consumer advertising isn’t necessarily the same thing in Pharma. I’ve never hired anyone who didn’t have prior Pharma experience. Not that it would be an immediate deal breaker, but I’ve just never seen someone without the necessary experience be such a good candidate that I’m willing to hire them over someone with demonstrated experience.
Being brutally honest, a lack of experienced Pharma candidates.
Stay away from tech: "As of October 2024, 476 tech companies have laid off more than 141,467 employees in 2024. In 2022 and 2023 combined, 428,449 people working for tech companies were laid off." I was one of them. Focus on healthcare, but good luck since every laid-off copywriter is competing for those jobs now. I have 12 years of experience as a copywriter and recently applied for a healthcare copywriter position. The recruiter told me there were over 6000 applicants for one job opening. It was a remote job, which are rare now, unfortunately. I had no experience in healthcare, just tech, so I didn't advance in the hiring process. You'll need healthcare experience to compete with that many applicants. But if you have it, go for it. I would avoid tech though, too many layoffs.
This. I'm in the same position.
i make six figures in healthcare/pharm
tech is definitely harder to break into, but yeah, traditional consumer advertising is not worth it all imo
Can you elaborate why?
Hahah the meme is on point! I hate when freelancers tell me how they're living it up doing the same job I'm doing but not living the same life I'm living. Following because I'd love to have some info about this too!
Tech can pay, but AI (both as an overestimated market force and an underestimated replacement for human labor) has led to a ton of contraction, so it feels like the salad days are over. Did a bunch of portfolio-worthy work while there though.
Makes sense!
I used to work in pharma and hours were great, pay was good. The downside is that the amount of regulation and lack of creativity means it’s probably one of the first writer jobs to be replaced by AI. So much easier to train a bot around specific legal data, especially when the bar for creative is so low
That might be how it is currently, but will it stay that way? Regulatory could be coded by a human/legal dept and enforced by AI for the cost savings alone (not to mention time) as creativity matters so little. You really only need like one writer in that process to check the final results, and they could just be a medical writer, not a creative at all.
AI is going to play a major role in all copywriting/creative fields no matter what. The real questions we should be asking ourselves is how we can use AI tools make our jobs easier while creating work that’s breakthrough and innovative, that AI can’t compete with. I don’t see that kind of work happening much in pharma now or in the future, but I’ve seen a lot of vignettes and dance routines that I’m sure Chat GPT would love to write.
Of course there are outliers (I saw some cool social recently from Hemlibra) but does the average non-pharma person care about or even remember those? I doubt it. And likewise, I don’t know a single consumer who even saw or remembers that Coca Cola abomination 😂
You can’t generalize tech. Every place is different, just like agencies. The best job I ever had was at an agency and my worst job was at another agency. Then I decided to go tech in-house and I still bounced around until I found someplace I liked that challenges me creatively.
I have been working with a healthcare company as a copywriter and yes it's a lot different than other niches. I don't know if it is long term or not, but it's way different than the others.
Just started in tech. I would say be careful and ask a lot of questions. Teams are smaller than they once were, so a seemingly innocuous role could actually be one that requires working on evenings and PTOs (speaking from experience)
Layoffs plague both fields right now. If you think you’ll love annotating, come join us! If not, find literally anything else.