I've been mentoring and coaching for as long as I can remember.

The last five years alone — guest lectures at brand-name universities, the ISPOR New Professionals Steering Committee, soft skills workshops at ISPORs, webinars, panels, hallway conversations that ran longer than the sessions they followed.

Hundreds of HEOR students. Hundreds of early-career professionals. One takeaway above all the others:

Very few understand how the real world actually operates.

How recruiting decisions get made. How internships get assigned. How projects get funded. How resumes actually get read — and ignored. How to differentiate yourself in an interview. How to build productive working relationships.

Hell, how to write a resume that gets you past the first ten seconds.

You don't learn this in the classroom. No one teaches it to you at work unless you ask. And most of the time, you don't even know what you're supposed to know.

So how do you operate in that circumstance? How do you navigate situations you've never encountered before? Who is invested enough in you to give you unbiased guidance — guidance not tangled up in their own agenda?

HEOR students are trained to within an inch of their life on methods and statistics. They are not trained on how to survive and thrive in an environment where your success is governed by far more than what you know.

The need to teach the things that don't get taught is unequivocally high.

My desire to make that knowledge available — and usable — is mightier.

That's why Sidebar with Sanket exists.

The Brief is the written companion.

Sidebar is the live room — a free monthly office hours session for graduate students and early-career professionals. The Brief is where I write down what I've learned across years of mistakes, observations, and time spent in the shoes the next generation is expected to step into.

No silver bullets. No "5 hacks to land your dream HEOR job." No corporate polish.

Just the real stuff. Honestly. From someone who has lived it — and is still living it.

Come to a session. Read what I write here. Push back when you disagree. Ask the questions you can't ask anywhere else.

That's the deal.

— Sanket

P.S. Hit reply with the question you've never been able to ask anywhere else. I read every one.