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Pharmaceutical hiring: A mix of 'poaching' and outsourcing?

One study reports limited hiring increases in U.S. manufacturing, while another points to greater pharmaceutical job opportunities in outsourcing and in other global locations.

Bright sunshine and 90-degree temperatures were forecast in the greater Chicagoland area, but two pessimistic pharmaceutical hiring reports made for a gloomy start to the August 30 workweek.

In my inbox Monday morning was this e-mail headline: “Only 37 percent of manufacturing business leaders plan to increase hiring in the next six months.” And only one-third of the Grant Thornton LLP survey respondents expected the economy to improve in that time frame. That said, 77% believed that their companies would increase hiring in the next half year. So there's good and bad news for U.S. manufacturing in general.

But what about the pharmaceutical hiring landscape? According to an in-Pharma Technologist.com report, “ZRG Partners says there was a 'fight for talent' in hiring, firing, and vacancies in Q2, with the outsourcing and pharmaceutical sectors battling for employees within regulatory, quality, and clinical roles.”

The article said ZRG's Larry Hartmann referred to a limited talent pool and pharmaceutical firms reducing “infrastructure spending in favor of reliance on contractors has seen an increase in the number of people with regulatory, quality, and clinical trial skills joining the outsourcing sector.”

That said, quality control and clinical trial skills “are still the most in demand with 27 percent of all jobs advertised in the quarter…particularly in pharmaceutical industry hot-spots like Europe, the Middle East and Africa,” said the in-Pharma Technologist article.

The online story said ZRG's Global Life Science Hiring Index “suggests that the outsourcing and services sector are currently hiring five times more employees than life science and pharma, and 25 percent more than medical device and supply industries.”

-Jim Butschli, Editor
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