Large pharmaceuticals companies at present are facing a sort of mini-crisis vis-a-vis high skill biotech recruiting. There are a number of reasons behind these. One is the sudden and somewhat explosive growth in the pharmaceuticals and life sciences industries.
The growth has meant a sudden sprouting of a large number of startup biotech companies. These are the startups looking to exploit the new opportunities opened up in the sector of drug development and they are posing a stiff competition to larger biotech and pharmaceuticals when it comes to hiring and retaining the top talents in the industry.
A Global CEO Survey report published by PriceWaterhouseCooper’s relates that close to 51 percent of the CEOs in the industry are having a hard time attracting, and more crucially, retaining the top talents.
Another reason for this recruiting challenges faced by human resources departments of large biotech companies is the technological shift the industry has been experiencing in the recent times. Due to the adoption of big data analytics and AI, the biotech employers have no choice but to recruit tech-savvy talents. However, this means that they are being made to compete directly with techno giants such as Google and Apple. And these last names should suffice to indicate that this is a battle that biotech companies will find difficult to win.
This is not all, however. The present recruitment crisis is also owing to the fact that there are not enough candidates with both life sciences and data skills. Many experts in the field opine that the reason for this shortage in skill sets can be traced back to a lack of practical training opportunities in the university level. And this is understandable and only to be expected since it is not possible for educational institutions to keep pace with the rapid growth in the industry and evolve at the same rate.
So, when it comes to biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes, especially those around process development, data analytics and engineering, this shortage of required skill sets is hurting the large biotech farms. This is directly reflected in the long lead times in the industry. It is becoming increasingly difficult for biotech companies to fill a high skill opening in a relatively short time. Often the process takes as much as several months. Now, long lead times mean that they are directly affecting the bottom line of the companies. Since a slow hiring process does not only mean a hike in hiring costs but also that the companies are potentially missing out on truly qualified candidates.
Biotech recruiting crisis: technology to the rescue again
So, how is the industry coping with these new recruitment challenges? Although it still cannot solve the entire problem, many senior HR professionals from the industry have already put their faith in technological hiring processes. In other words, the companies are taking the recourse of AI-based hiring platforms with a bid to offset the challenges mentioned above. For one thing, the AI tools are really efficient, thanks to data analytics, when it comes to matching the right candidates to a particular position. Additionally, these tools have also proved to be a big help in filling up high-volume recruitments.
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