Changing Direction in Your MedTech Career: A Guide for Experienced Professionals

What You Will Learn in This Post

• How to work out what you actually want to change in your MedTech career
• How to identify the experience that could transfer into a different role, therapy area or function
• Why some career moves are easier to make than others
• How to identify and address the gaps between your experience and the role you want next

After spending years building a career in MedTech, deciding you want something different can feel complicated.

You may have significant industry experience, strong customer relationships and a good track record, but no longer want the obvious next version of the job you're already doing.

Perhaps you want to move into a different therapy area. Move from sales into marketing. Step away from a heavily field-based role. Take on leadership responsibility. Work with a different type of product or customer. Or simply use your experience in a different way.

Being experienced doesn't mean you're locked into doing variations of the same job for the rest of your career.

But the further you move from what you've done before, the more clearly you'll need to show how your experience transfers.

Start With What You Actually Want to Change

Before looking at job titles, get clear about what you want to be different.

Is it:

• The therapy area?
• The product?
• The type of customer?
• The amount of travel?
• The level of responsibility?
• The type or size of company?
• Your working arrangements?
• Your earning potential?
• The balance between commercial and clinical work?
• The function itself?

This matters because changing one part of your career is very different from trying to change several at the same time.

A Territory Manager moving from one therapy area into another may be able to demonstrate a significant amount of directly relevant experience.

A Territory Manager wanting to move into product marketing is making a bigger change.

Someone wanting to change function, sector, level and working pattern simultaneously may find the potential pool of opportunities smaller again.

There's nothing wrong with wanting a significant change.

You just need to understand how big the gap is between where you are and where you want to go.

Work Out What From Your Existing Career Transfers

Experienced candidates sometimes undersell themselves because they describe their background almost entirely through job titles.

Fifteen years in medical sales is more than fifteen years of medical sales.

Depending on your career, you may have developed experience in:

• Managing complex NHS sales cycles
• Working with clinicians and other healthcare stakeholders
• Developing key opinion leader relationships
• Navigating procurement processes
• Managing strategic or national accounts
• Launching new products
• Building an underdeveloped territory
• Supporting tenders
• Training customers or colleagues
• Working across sales, marketing and clinical teams
• Managing distributors
• Introducing products into new markets
• Mentoring or developing colleagues
• Leading projects outside your immediate role

Those experiences may be relevant to opportunities that don't share your current job title.

The important question is:

Which parts of what I've already done solve problems in the job I want next?

Be Just as Clear About What's Missing

Transferable experience matters, but it doesn't make every career move straightforward.

If you want to change direction, look honestly at what's missing as well as what you already have.

For example, moving between related therapy areas may require you to build new product and clinical knowledge, while much of your commercial experience transfers relatively easily.

Moving from Territory Manager into Product Manager may give you valuable customer insight, competitor knowledge and launch experience, but an employer could still reasonably want evidence that you understand the marketing responsibilities of the role.

A move into people management may build on mentoring, project leadership or informal responsibility you've already taken, but that doesn't automatically make it equivalent to managing a team.

The further your target role is from what you've already done, the stronger the evidence you'll need that you can bridge the gap.

Ask yourself:

• What does the new role require that I already have?
• What have I done that's adjacent or transferable?
• What haven't I done at all?
• Which gaps could an employer realistically train?
• Which gaps are likely to be genuine barriers?

That gives you a much more realistic starting point than assuming either that your experience qualifies you for everything or that changing direction means starting again.

Look for Evidence, Not Just Transferable Skills

It's easy to describe yourself as commercially aware, adaptable, a strong communicator or an experienced stakeholder manager.

Those phrases become much more useful when you can demonstrate them.

If you're targeting a different type of role, think about examples from your career that show you've already operated outside the narrow boundaries of your current job.

Perhaps you've been heavily involved in a product launch.

Maybe you've worked closely with marketing on positioning or customer insight.

You might have trained new starters, taken responsibility for a project, supported a national account or represented your team in cross-functional meetings.

Those examples can help an employer see the connection between what you've done and what you want to do next.

Get Closer to the Area You Want to Move Into

You don't necessarily need to wait until you're applying for another job to start making a career change.

If opportunities exist within your current business, look for ways to gain exposure to the area you're interested in.

That could mean:

• Getting involved in a product launch
• Working with another department on a project
• Taking on mentoring responsibilities
• Joining relevant customer or strategic meetings
• Building relationships with colleagues doing the type of work you're considering
• Attending relevant industry events
• Learning more about a neighbouring therapy area or market

If you're interested in moving from sales into marketing, for example, working more closely with the marketing team on a launch may tell you far more about whether you'd enjoy the job than simply reading Product Manager vacancies.

It also gives you something tangible to discuss when an employer asks why you think you could make the move.

Sometimes the Route Is A to B to C

Not every career change can be made in one move.

Sometimes there is enough overlap between your current experience and your target role for an employer to take you directly.

Sometimes there isn't.

In that situation, an intermediate move can make more sense.

Someone wanting to move into management might first look for opportunities to mentor colleagues, lead projects or take on greater team responsibility.

Someone wanting to move into product marketing might benefit from gaining more launch, market development or cross-functional experience first.

Someone wanting to move into larger strategic accounts may need to demonstrate success with increasingly complex customers before moving into a national role.

The intermediate step isn't necessarily a compromise.

It can be the experience that makes the move you ultimately want possible.

Don't Assume a Different Job Title Means Starting Again

One concern experienced candidates often have is that changing direction will mean losing all the seniority or value they've built.

That isn't necessarily the case.

Your sector knowledge, customer understanding, commercial experience and professional relationships don't disappear because the title on your next business card changes.

But neither should you assume that years of experience in one area automatically translate into the same level of seniority in another.

Look at the actual responsibilities of the role rather than the title alone.

A move that appears lateral on paper may give you valuable new experience and open up a completely different career path.

Equally, a more impressive title isn't necessarily progress if the work itself takes you further away from what you ultimately want to do.

Talk to People Who Understand the Role You Want

Before making a significant career move, speak to people who can give you a realistic view of it.

That might be somebody already doing the job, a former colleague, a mentor or somebody within another function in your current business.

Ask what the role actually involves.

What experience matters?

Which parts of your background would be useful?

Where would employers see gaps?

What might you need to do before you'd be considered credible for that move?

Those conversations can help you distinguish between a realistic next step and a move that needs more preparation.

Get a Realistic View of How the Market Will See Your Experience

A specialist recruiter can also give you an external view of how employers are likely to interpret your background.

That's particularly useful when you've spent a long time with one company, therapy area or type of product and aren't sure how your experience translates elsewhere.

A recruiter may be able to tell you whether they've seen people make a similar move, where your experience is likely to be attractive and where employers may expect something you don't currently have.

They may also help you identify parts of your background that are more relevant to your target role than you've realised.

That doesn't mean every career change will be possible immediately.

Sometimes the useful advice is that you're well positioned for the move.

Sometimes it's that you need another piece of experience first.

Both are useful things to know.

You Don't Need to Have the Rest of Your Career Mapped Out

Changing direction after you've built significant experience can feel like a much bigger decision than making a move earlier in your career.

But you don't need to know exactly where the next ten years will take you.

You need enough clarity to understand what you want to change, what experience you can take with you and what gaps you'll need to bridge.

Your previous experience doesn't have to dictate what you do next.

But it should help you get there.