Many prospective CRAs are told they can choose their therapeutic study area based on their prior experience, which simply isn't true. Instead most get routed to oncology monitoring, since it’s where the money is. The elimination of the clinical monitoring intern role in 2017 made it so Medpace could keep CRAs at an entry-level position (with corresponding low salary) for at least two full years. Whether any CRA level promotion is approved seems to depend solely on the whims of higher-ups. Promotions and earned bonuses are held over your head for months and months and often postponed with no explanation. Medpace’s justification for these level changes and promotional changes was to “align with industry standards”; Funny how this alignment does not extend to industry salary standards. They may insist they regularly review compensation but that does not mean they regularly and fairly grant salary increases and bonuses. Many CRAs tend to get two years of experience then leave for better companies and fair salaries. A lot of Glassdoor reviews echo this reality. The gross discrepancies in pay at Medpace are unjustifiable, especially with CRAs - someone with similar study and site capacity can make substantially more than you.
Keeping your head down goes a long way here. HR exists to protect Medpace, not employees, so I would recommend avoiding them for any complaint or grievance. Just because you are in training does not mean you are guaranteed to stay. They fire you for minimal mistakes or if the Sr. T&D Manager doesn’t like you, which ends up being a waste of everyone’s time. The fear-based motivation doesn’t go far in producing good morale and teamwork because most work friends you make will be gone in a year. The non-compete you have to sign is another manifestation of this type of motivation. To this day, termination is used as a motivational factor which eventually exhausts employees, leading to burnout or looking elsewhere. This only worsened during the pandemic, after Medpace fired a bunch of people with no warning or project handovers.
