Where are the biotech employers?

As many know, each program page in the Bio-Link.org website has a link to biotech employers in their state. The link used to connect to a Google search. But, as Google is a dumb aggregator, this link would yield somewhat odd results, like aerospace companies when we'd want biotech companies. So, we improved the link by connecting to data in the Biotech-Careers.org website. 

Last year, as inspired by a biotech careers survey in which many of the participants indicated that they wanted to know where the employers were, we created a database of employers and their locations in Biotech-Careers.org. This database contains employer names, location information, areas of business (as tags), and a brief description of what they do. 

Tools within the Biotech-Careers.org site allow you to view, and navigate, a map of employers. One can also view the employers in a table organized by state. Filters at the top of the table make it possible to view the employers in each state. While useful, we came up with a better way to focus on the biotechnology within each state by creating state specific views. These views have their own links, and these links have been added to all the program and state pages in the Bio-Link.org web site.

Now, when you view a program you will see a Link directly below the program’s location map. Clicking it takes you to Biotech-Careers.org with a map of the employers in that state. On this page you can learn where the employers are in your state. You can also learn about the most common business areas from the list of terms on the right hand side. This list shows the top 20 business areas sorted and scaled by the frequency of occurrence in that state. As the terms link to a maps of all the employers in the US who share that term, so you can see how your state compares to others in terms of general biotech focus (see below).

Call to action - Keeping track of the biotech industry has several challenges. New companies are always emerging, companies close, or get acquired. Another challenge is describing these business with simple terms. As an industry that translates cutting edge science into products and services there are many ways to describe what employers do. You can help us improve the quality of the data by telling us what’s right and what can be improved in your area. Are we missing employers? Do we have employers that no longer exist? Are we missing any places were your students may have been hired? On the first two question, we're interested in getting student teams in local areas to help us keep things up to date. One the last question, keeping your program up to date is a great help. Let us know if you need help.  Finally, these are living data, and, as we know, things that describe the living, evolve.