This article was originally published via OutsourcedPharma.com and has been syndicated with permission.
After our “Biotech Winter” – a period starting circa 2021 with tens of thousands of layoffs throughout biotech and pharma, stagnating investment, slow newco formation, and higher interest rates — the season has finally started to change.
Is it springtime for biotech?
For one thing, says Chris Frew, founder/CEO of BioBuzz Networks, a life sciences talent community/recruitment platform, “We have demonstrably entered a turning point in biotech hiring.”
This ebullience, unfortunately, is partially pierced with the understanding that even during the protracted downturn, we found it challenging to locate and hold onto skilled workers when and where they were needed.
Reductions of professionals in some segments of the industry has not led to appreciable increases in the worker pool in others.
This certainly, if not most representatively, includes at CDMOs.
To be clear, the biotech winter derived fundamentally from macro-economic factors, such as high interest rates (and inflation), and as they say in finance, “money sitting on the sidelines” in anticipation of better days to come.
As the subhead in a Wall Street Journal article described it in April 2022: Biotech Stocks, Once Booming, Enter Bear Territory
Even prior to this recent chill, there had been a growing worry specifically about CDMOs maintaining a skilled workforce. (Covid was a major catalyst.)
What now happens to hiring as the biotech industry kicks back up, and workers are in increased demand because of, for example, an increase in biotech investments?
A New Hiring Model
“Interest rates globally have been falling for over a year. That alone is predictive of more business investment,” says Frew.
“The biotech sector is poised to blossom again. We’ve already seen a return of later stage investing that’s breathing new life into the market.”
But how will companies attract top talent and scale-smart under, as Frew puts it, “the expectations of a new workforce”?
Frew’s premise is the imbalance in our human resources market lies with (a) traditional hiring platforms (you know them by name), and (b) outdated “funnel-based” practices that pour prospective candidates into the top to see which few come out at the bottom.
These formats, he says, cannot meet biotech’s unique needs, especially as companies today look to fill specialized roles and “fractional positions rather than full-time jobs.”
Fractional hiring? We will return to that topic in full force in part two.
For now, Frew explains how he’s solving for our challenges via an emerging “talent-marketplace hiring model.”
This model is “community-driven and focused on long-term, flexible relationships with individual professionals.”
What’s that mean?
Frew describes a hybrid-grassroots marketing strategy to engage and educate professionals (not always those already in our industry), to demonstrate what, for example, a CDMO is and how it performs.
Parenthetically, I’ve been chasing down this topic for years, asking:
Does anyone reach out to individual university students or professionals in other industries to explain how a CDMO serves the biotech industry and patients, and why they might want to work at a CDMO?
Frew’s businesses (he’s also CEO of recruitment firm Workforce Genetics) do just that, and I want to know how that messaging is created and effectively reaches intended targets.
“We wake up every day thinking about that,” he says. “What we’ve come up with so far was proved effective during Covid, when labor was really tough.”
“We worked with companies like Catalent, Lonza, ABL Biomanufacturing, Emergent, and directly with pharma, such as Kite Pharma,” Frew continues.
“Our approach is a combination of storytelling and marketing principles in combination with working collaboratively with local workforce development agencies and universities, and directly with end clients.
“We provide talent logistics, connecting an emerging and existing workforce with the right opportunities.” Storytelling connects the employer to the industry in the minds of candidates.
“It clarifies the positions and skills needed. These stories can be about patients and the impact of the medicines and therapies being developed. Other times, this storytelling includes “a day in the life of a cell therapy specialist,” or programs and initiatives a company has implemented to train employees, such as the Catalent training center.
Open (or soon-to-open) positions at CDMOs are also targeted on the BioBuzz platform, which allows direct hiring and “flexible, freelancer or contract work.” (Again, more on this subsequently)
A Recruiting Success
Frew mentions two recent insights:
- Companies removing specific academic degrees as a requirement for employment.
- CDMOs working with trade schools and bootcamps.
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For the complete editorial, visit OutsourcedPharma.com.
