Contractors poaching regulatory, quality and clinical talent, says ZRG
The firm, a recruitment and executive search consultancy, made the claim in its Global Life Science Hiring Index (GLSH) report, which analysed trends in pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry job vacancies and hiring patterns.
“The regulatory, clinical, quality area has been under assault by the outsourcing firms, poaching [in-house drug company] talent and coupled with a general shortage in this skill set. That is why we see this area being high in all markets,” Larry Hartmann of ZRG told Outsourcing-pharma.
He explained that the relatively limited talent pool, coupled with the trend among pharmaceutical firms to reduce infrastructure spending in favour of reliance on contractors, has seen an increase in the number of people with regulatory, quality and clinical trial skills joining the outsourcing sector.
According to Hartmann, the trend is a direct result of pharmaceutical firms seeking the most profitable option in terms of employee investment.
As a consequence, drug and medical device firms are advertising more roles in sales and marketing, and more positions are becoming available in the general, admin, IT and finance sectors of drug manufacture. These roles “drive the bottom line and leverage existing products and infrastructure,” said Hartmann.
However, despite this shift, skills in quality control and clinical trials are still the most in demand with 27 per cent of all jobs advertised in the quarter being in one of these fields, particularly in pharmaceutical industry hot-spots like Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Manufacturing roles plummet
In contrast, manufacturing roles were less sought after in the three months to June, with just 10 per cent of all job searches in the period focusing on this area.
Instead, 28 per cent of current hiring in the Americas is taking place in the ‘general’ category, which includes Accounting, Finance and IT. For Asia Pacific, Japan and Australia, however, sales and marketing is of the greatest need.
The GLSH index also suggests that the outsourcing and services sector are currently hiring five times more employees than life science and pharma, and a 25 per cent more than medical device and supply industries.
Comparing the size of revenue and employees with the strong hiring demand, the outsourcing and services field has shown the biggest projected growth of all areas.
“Today, outsourcing and consulting areas are the hottest area of growth, while pharma is in a bit of a hiring pause phase,” said Hartmann.
“Future [GLSH index] releases will tell us more,” he added, predicting that ”hiring is returning in more sectors and firms are back in the more aggressive hiring mode.”
