Pharma IT Hiring Trends

Pharma hiring managers find tech talent in high demand

By Jim Lanzalotto

There was a time when information technology (IT) professionals needed only technical skills to obtain positions in the pharma and biotech industries. Today, this has all changed. Recently, the demand for skilled professionals in pharma has been hot, and that’s expected to continue as 2007 unfolds.

In today’s highly competitive pharma and biotech environments, hiring managers are seeking candidates with strong technical and domain skill sets, as well as extensive industry knowledge, resulting in a much more critical eye when trying to fill crucial IT positions. But with a tight job market, hiring managers will have a hard time finding candidates with a combination of tech skills and industry expertise, and will need to wade deeper than before into the talent pool.

It’s a simple case of supply and demand. One of the factors driving the demand for talent is a healthy economy and low unemployment across many industries and regions. In fact, the domestic unemployment rate hit a five-year low last year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this year will be just as robust.

In January, the unemployment rate was 4.6%, while total employment was 146 million. The employment-population ratio was 63.3%, essentially unchanged from the previous month.

In the technology sector, the demand for top talent is higher than it’s been in five years, making qualified candidates harder to find and pressuring wages to rise. One area that’s ready to explode is managed services. The total market for IT and communications outsourcing in this sector is expected to reach $23 billion, according to market research and advisory firm IDC, representing a 12% growth over 2005.

Demand Drivers

Our experience has been consistent with this study. It shows that the demand for top talent is being driven primarily by technology service providers and device manufacturers in the hardware space, occupational health and case management in the health-care market, and clinical research and research and development in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotech spaces.

And, while technologies continue to mature, new areas of expertise are entering the business world everyday. With few seasoned practitioners of these new technologies, it puts a further strain on the job market, driving wages up and pressuring corporate budgets.

One example is Duet, a new software application from Microsoft and SAP that has relatively few practitioners, thus few new candidates with the technical skills to fill these positions. A candidate with these skills will probably not need industry expertise to secure a position related to Duet. Hiring managers will likely hire a candidate with those skills, regardless of their pharma background. However, once the learning curve matures, professionals with pharmaceutical experience will have a much better chance at future openings.

A larger scale example can be seen in the rapidly evolving SAP ecosystem, with steady improvements and upgrades, and a shift toward a standardized enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform. SAP shops are introducing a slew of upgrades this year, increasing the need for practitioners that can plan, build, and maintain SAP systems.

As a result, hiring managers in the pharma space are expected to demand candidates with skills in the following areas: biostatistician; business objects developer; CRM project manager; Java developer; MS developer (.NET, C#), Oracle (functional/technical) consultant; Oracle DBA; project manager; SAP (functional/technical) consultant; SAS programmer; and system architect.

Our recent analyses also turned up a demand for candidates in business process- and SAP-associated solutions, indicating hiring managers will focus on the following sectors:

R&D: Organizations with long lead times for new product introductions will require skills in SAP project systems. In some cases, xApps for resource and portfolio management (xRPM) will require strong skills in project systems and xRPM.

Manufacture and quality assurance: Here, FDA-regulated manufacturing and quality assurance will require xApps skills to support manufacturing interface and integration (xMII). This space will also require quality assurance and plant maintenance skills.

Distribution/supply chain: Hiring managers will seek talent to fill SAP supply chain management positions, including managing the organization’s inventory planning and forecasting.

Sales and marketing: Pharmaceutical organizations with large sales teams will require SAP skills in CRM mobile sales and sales force automation. These skills are needed to manage sales calls, sample management and collateral distribution. CRM interaction center (CIC) skills are also in demand to manage inbound service calls and drug topic inquiries from physicians and patients.

Salaries Ballooning

With so many positions available, it’s clear the number of IT positions outweigh the qualified talent available. With many tech professionals closer to retirement, and the IT field not attracting college grads like it once did, the situation is expected to worsen.

Companies have also deferred IT spending during the past five years, but are beginning to invest in new technologies and upgrades. The surge in IT projects has boosted the demand for development, software management and software testing, and has also driven increases in wages for IT professionals.

To gauge where the domestic technology talent market is going, let’s look at where it was last year. According to the Yoh Index of Technology Wages, a quarterly compensation index Fortune 500 companies use to determine salary scales, U.S. wages in the high-tech field grew steadily during mid-year 2006 when compared to the same months in 2005.

While hourly wages for highly skilled technology professionals rose at varying levels during the fourth quarter of 2006, they improved significantly by the end of the year showing a 3.1% increase, when compared to the same period in 2005.

The wage index also determined that high-impact jobs in greatest demand nationwide during the fourth quarter of 2006, and their average hourly pay rates, were:

Analytical Chemist	$35.58
Clinical Research Associate	$46.54
Drug Safety Manager	$54.42
ERP Functional Consultant	$80.76
ERP Technical Consultant	$84.36
Java Developer	$47.07
.Net Developer	$50.58
Project Manager	$58.51

 

Strategies for Securing Top Talent

Due to the current shallow pool of pharma-specific IT talent, hiring managers must employ certain strategies to ensure finding the most qualified talent for their highly specialized positions. One strategy that should always be employed is the accurate determination of the organization’s immediate and longer-term hiring needs, and finding out what resources are at their fingertips for hiring high-impact talent in critical positions.

Another is to offer in-house training and education to current employees. This step depends on how much time the company has to complete the project. If the ramp-up time is too severe, a company could outsource the project to a systems integrator, or enter a strategic partnership to supplement the company’s internal skills with external expertise.

From our experience, the best solution is to expand internal core competencies with additional training, while hiring consultants that can support new technologies. This hybrid approach helps hiring managers get the right candidate in a tight job market.

Additionally, the days of relying strictly on job boards for finding top talent are gone. Hiring managers now need to employ creative strategic maneuvers to attract high-impact talent. One such strategy to consider is partnering with companies that can deliver highly experienced consultants and/or outsourced services.

There are many factors contributing to this growing trend in the business world. Often, a company engages in short-term project work and might only need the skills for a short time. Secondly, the skills that are needed for a given project aren’t readily available internally. Thirdly, hiring managers will look for consultants when they seek to backfill a role. From our experience in working with one of the largest pharmaceutical companies, this model can prove extremely successful in this space. Currently, 15% of its workforce consists of consultants.

Consultants have an advantage over full-time employees. They build their skills in many areas, which can open more doors down the road and allows them greater flexibility in decision-making when full-time positions are offered. Many times, consultants might opt to take a full-time position based on job security and attractive benefit packages many pharma companies offer.

Finding Top Talent

The better brand a company builds for itself, the better chance it has of finding high-impact talent, temporary or otherwise. When sourcing candidates, leverage the company’s credibility in the industry and follow these tips to help in obtaining top-quality candidates:

Have a well-defined job description: First, map out a profile of the perfect candidate and use this to draft a job description. Hiring managers can then match their description against the pool of potential candidates.

Interview thoroughly: Don’t rely on skill-set questioning. Use behavioral interviewing techniques that get the candidate to describe a crisis situation where they stepped in and saved it. Drill into the candidate’s past behavior to get an indication of their future performance. Ask direct situational questions. For example, a candidate’s response to how he would attack a specific project will indicate the level of their problem-solving skills.

Offer strong compensation and benefits: Put together a compensation package commensurate with the job requirements. A package with competitive wages, health-care benefits, and 401(k) plan goes a long way to secure the best talent.

As the demand for high-impact talent in the pharma industry grows, be sure to properly evaluate and analyze needs and positions prior to vetting candidates. In today’s highly competitive pharma world, finding the perfect balance of full-time and consultative help — with the most appropriate blend of technical and industry expertise — is absolutely critical.

Jim Lanzalotto is a vice president of Strategy and Marketing of Yoh, a leading provider of high-impact talent and outsourcing services. He can be reached at [email protected].