There is also an influx of government money to help with this initiative, which is helping fuel the growth of job listings for these positions.  This provides an enormous opportunity for someone who either has prior experience in Clinical Data Management, or people with related experience.  Related experience can include anything from having worked in the medical field before, to have experience with data quality, data governance, master data management, or data warehousing.

The critical key is that you relate your prior experience to the job that you are applying for.  Generally, when you are applying, you will be provided with a job description.  It is imperative that you tailor not only your cover letter, but also your resume, so that you appear to be a perfect fit for the position. You are writing a custom, or at least semi-custom, cover letter for each job, right?

Tailoring your cover letter and resume means making sure you meet all of the ‘requirements’ as well as the ‘nice to haves’ in the job description.  Don’t lie… if you don’t have it, don’t make it up.  But, do be sure to think through all of your experience and ‘spin’ it so that it makes sense for what they are looking for.

In your interview, stress to the hiring managers that you are competent and able to complete the tasks that they have described.  It is always best to answer questions about your abilities by relating previous experience and education that you have.

Not only are there data management jobs in the medical arena, but also in the clinical trials and medical testing fields.  When applying, and interviewing, for jobs that have to do with clinical trials and medical testing, it is extremely important to emphasize your thoroughness and attention to detail.  Do this by explaining how you’ve done this in previous positions, have you’ve caught critical errors, fixed problems, had perfect reviews by auditors, and generally just saved the day.  The fields demand attention to detail and depend on your ability to keep perfect logs and ensure clean data.

The best places to look for these jobs appear to be Career Builder, Monster, and Craigslist.  There are some smaller job listing boards that come and go, so I would primarily focus and keep your eye on the big listing boards.  When you have exhausted all of the opportunities on those sites, target some specific large companies – they almost always have job listings on their own sites as well.  In addition to these jobs being hot, there are many other hot jobs such as roofing, cleaning, and others.  You can even get electrician training and start in a whole new career field.

Depending on the technical level of the job, your experience may or may not need to be tightly related to exactly what you will be doing.  I have found that the less technical the position, the more flexible a hiring manager will be in filling the position.  For instance, if the data management position you are applying for is heavily in the analysis field, experience as a business analyst is very closely related, and thus you would likely be a good fit for the position.  It is your job to convince the hiring manager that indeed your experience is relevant and closely related, and that you can walk right into the job with a solid understanding of what needs to be done.

You can do this by relating all of your past experience with the different items that are listed in the job description.  I also highly recommend that you use specific examples of how you performed a task, rather than speaking generally.  For instance, “I have a large amount of experience performing historical data analysis and data management.  I’ve been doing it for years” is not the best way to talk about this.  Instead, use a specific example to hammer the point home, such as, “I’ve been doing data analysis and management for many years.  A few years ago, my team and I used a data analysis tool to help us determine the best target market for our new product using industry trending and data.  Recently, we developed a model that uses historical data to help guide the decision making process for our marketing group”.  When you use strong scenarios, and demonstrate innovation and success, you become a memorable and desirable candidate to the hiring manager.

Data Management jobs also come in many different forms.  You can find jobs working directly for a company, or working for a consulting firm such as IBM, Accenture, KPMG and others to help perform data management tasks for their clients.  Additionally, there is no medium to large industry that does not have a need for data management.  From the obvious fields, such as medical, aerospace, and government, to the smaller industries such as professional sports, radio marketing, and online collaboration – all of these use and need data management. I suggest you seek out positions in fields that you are particularly interested in; doing this will ensure that you are enthusiastic about not just the job, but also the interview.  This will come across positively to the interviewer.  I wish you the best of luck in your hunt for a data management job.