Read the job ads and you'll notice that good communication skills are mentioned in more than half. Insiders know this is more than standard HR-speak. Employers can’t help but be impressed with good communicators, because anyone who runs a job ad knows these people are few and far between. If someone asked me what the #1 skill is that impacts hiring decisions, it would be this one. And communication skills are critical for moving up the ladder once you have that position.

Ads, job fairs, the Internet, headhunters, networking--don’t miss any of these when you go looking for a new position. But stay particularly close to your networking contacts. Networking is a life skill and not just a job-search tool. Like communication skills, networking can help you get a job--and then help you perform well once you've got it. Those who learn it early and practice it often are among the successful people in science. Years from now, you’ll have new opportunities thanks to the contacts you make today, assuming, of course, that you make those contacts.

Independence rules in academia. Collaboration and teamwork get a lot of lip service, even in academia. And in fact, even there some value it and do it well. Yet a lab of your own, trainees assisting you, your own grants--all these aspects of independence are essential to success at a university. But that's not what industry employers want or need. The biologists and chemists who discover a new drug work closely with the engineers who scale it up and turn it into a product. Both those groups rely on teams of regulatory and clinical professionals to help take the next steps. "Teamwork" is more than a buzzword in industry; it’s a way of life.

Is there any job in the biotech industry where successful people work a normal 40-hour week? I don’t think so. “Normal” was replaced long ago by early-morning meetings, evening work, and Saturdays in the office or lab. Success in either track--academic or industry--starts at 50 hours a week and may average 60 to 65. Wouldn’t it be nice for your family and outside interests if this rule were not true? A recent work-life balance feature in Science Careers featured an article on part-time scientists and another on corporate work/life policies that include part-time work. So this rule may not be universally true, but it almost is.

Let’s hope all your job searches occur while you're still young. Once you're past about 45, searching for a job becomes very difficult, assuming you're approaching it via the usual anonymous application. Although it rarely rises to the level of overt age discrimination, employers often note your years of experience and use words like "overqualified" to describe you. It’s wise to have a large bank of networking contacts, an established reputation, and a head of steam when you face a sudden, unexpected, late-career job search.

It would be great if there were biotechnology clusters equivalent to San Diego, San Francisco, or Boston in all regions. But despite the many states where policymakers promote biotechnology as a future economic-development engine, there probably never will be more than 10 or 12 major biotechnology clusters in the United States. Very likely, in the future as in the present, the great majority of good biopharma jobs will be in biotech centers at the coasts. It's a tough reality for a person wanting to stay in the Midwest. Of course it's always possible that other biotech centers could develop, such as agritech in the Midwest, or nanobio in Texas.

Strong leadership skills are the first thing you’d think of when someone moves up the ladder into a management job. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes the person the most skilled in company politics gets promoted instead of the one with the best leadership skills. Then, there’s that excellent communicator who just talks his or her way into the job, despite their lack of leadership ability.

Many scientists were taught in academia not to worry about a job--to focus instead on doing good science. Unfortunately, for a lot of people this approach doesn’t work. In industry, you have to be able to communicate your strengths, which can be really difficult. You need to stand up for who you are and what you are good at--a type of ethical self-promotion that is very difficult for many scientists to get their arms around. Moving past the ethical point--to self-promotion not grounded in ability--looks like playing politics. That kind of self-promotion is risky.

People skills and scientific skills don’t necessarily go hand in hand. There's a lack of interpersonal-skills training and evaluation in academia, which leaves many technical people believing that decisions about their future will be based upon their scientific credentials and not those "soft skills" I talk so much about in Tooling Up. Of course, it's possible for really brilliant scientists to succeed without social skills--we’ve all known first-rate academic scientists who succeeded via sheer brilliance, never mind the fact that no one could stand working with them. But unless you're really cocky about your science--or totally lacking in social potential--your chances of success will be better if you bathe, communicate, and treat your colleagues with respect.