Just across the Schuylkill River from downtown Philadelphia, an eight-story, all-glass tower rises above the gothic architecture and spacious quads of University City. Inside, faculty-mentors work together with life sciences experts to deploy training programs that teach skillsets for the ever-evolving needs of industry.
This talent shortage, particularly in biomanufacturing roles, has accelerated over the past two years and will remain the top priority for companies in the future. One thing is sure: with industry demand for talent outpacing talent availability, collaboration and innovation will become critical in order to sustain the BHCR ecosystem. It also means that the major ecosystem-supporting organizations like academia, incubators, and economic development organizations all need to work more closely together.
In an industry centered on developing products to improve the way people live, hiring the right talent is essential for driving those innovations. Yet, as life sciences companies see an influx of funding, rapid growth across pharma, medtech, and diagnostics, and the benefits of a recession-proof industry, there is another major trend employers should be mindful of: talent scarcity.
The significant progress and potential for life sciences companies could be jeopardized, given how challenging it is to find qualified talent to drive their key initiatives. After all, research from Randstad reveals that it takes an average of 105 days to fill a non-executive position in the life sciences sector, accounting for a loss of $500 per day. But it’s not just about filling the traditional roles; employers must also account for new and specialized high-demand skills, like AI, machine learning, and data science, alongside the soft skills required for sales, marketing, and customer experience professionals.
In the life sciences industry, the top candidates that you interview typically receive multiple offers. That’s just a reality for hiring managers. Another hard reality is that time is of the essence when it comes to scheduling, conducting and completing the interview process.
With so many unknowns and an ever-shifting recruiting landscape, biotech and pharma hiring managers need all the help they can get to find the right people for their respective companies. One of the most important resources for hiring managers are search and staffing firms.
Can setting workforce diversity goals and posting progress reports help companies move the needle on diversity? This approach has spread like wildfire in the last two years. It’s too soon to tell whether the new fad is working, so we turned to past experience of firms that set goals and posted progress as early as the 1970s. That experience suggests that when done right, goals and regular progress reports can boost diversity even among management jobs.
The current wave of posting workforce diversity data began in the early 2010s, with a group of tech firms. Then, in 2020, prompted by the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and by growing shareholder pressure to disclose diversity numbers, firms across the economy began to set goals and post data. By September 2021, 55% of Russell 1,000 companies had posted workforce gender, race, and ethnicity data, up from 32% in January. By then, more than 70 big companies had set public gender-diversity targets for 2025 or 2030, including Airbnb, Bank of America, Bloomberg, Coca-Cola, GE, Intel, McKinsey, TaskRabbit, and Xerox.
As more life science companies flock to the region a new challenge arises – how do we create a strong pipeline of local talent to support their needs? This pipeline not only includes the high concentration of experienced talent the BHCR is known for but entry-level employees and people without four-year degrees who can be trained on-the-job.
In this podcast episode, Max and James Ellis of Employer Brand Labs debate the impact of application volumes on recruitment efforts. Listen as they tackle how factors like job descriptions and much more can make or mar the volume and quality of candidates that apply for your vacancies.
Watch the entire episode below.
If you assume marketing helps your sales efforts and you say hiring is one of your biggest needs, why don’t you take employer brand marketing as seriously as your sales marketing?
That’s what Stefan Frank says. He is the talent brand director at Comcast NBCUniversal, which as one of the country’s largest companies brings considerable lessons on what investments bring real results.
“There’s a natural tendency for us as humans to gravitate toward stories. We all appreciate and understand stories,” Frank said. “Anything important should be crafted as a story.”
Life science is one of the industries most affected by the constant pressure put on supply chains. As a highly regulated industry, it is answerable to mandates and evolving customer needs, but must have the flexibility to create innovative solutions in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, health tech, and more. This leaves it vulnerable to changes in supply demand and supply access. Having a plan for overcoming the challenges is essential.
Since the pandemic, some life sciences groups have been able to diversify their vendors, but due to regulations this can’t resolve every need. If a life sciences product is regulated or has been specifically tested through clinical trials, a change could completely alter the impact or open the organization up to additional risk.
