Educational requirements to work as a CRA

Qualifications

Most companies, especially in the US and Europe, will never hire anyone as a CRA withour prior monitoring experience. It’s just to accept it.

If you’re very lucky there are some rare trainee programs you can apply for. After 6-12 months you will then be eligible for a CRA position.

Most people, however, start out as a CTA or CRC to get that highly valued experience.

Educational requirements

A bacheloors degree would be fine. So will a PhD, a MD or whatever. Every degree is sufficient. But having a MDPhD will be totally insufficient if you completely lack monitoring experience. Everyone has to start from square one, no matter what. Of course your education should be related to life science, medicine, pharmacy, nursing etc. However, there are e.g. people with a degree in economy  that work as CRAs. So even that is possible, but be prepared to take some extra courses if your background isn’t related to medicine at all.

CRA training courses

I’ve touched upon this subject before, you can read more about that here.

Getting som basic knowledge in GCP will be highly appreciated once you get to an interview. But it won’t be the critical factor that gets you there. Be aware though, there are several scammers out there. Don’t spend your money on courses that “promise” you a shortcut to the world of clinical research.

Certain courses can’t really compensate for the lack of, guess what, monitoring experience!

How hard is it to find a job as a newcomer with no experience at all?

To find a job as a CRA is extremely difficult. I know only one single person who managed to get the foot-in-the-door straight after university. And he had some tailor-made skills that suited that company perfect.

If you contact smaller companies there might be some openings. But forget the big ones, like Pfizer, Quantiles, Bayer etc.

But don’t let this let you down. Thousands of people actuelly do manage to become a CRA every year. To increase your chances be sure to aim lower, as a start. Once you’ve got that monitoring experience there are plenty of CRA jobs to apply for.

Shortcuts to CRA JOBS

I give my thoughts on this topic here:

• CRA Entry-Level Jobs – Shortcuts and Tactics Revealed

Nothing is impossible, good luck!