Is Pharma's New HR "Majority" Good For Hiring?
By Louis Garguilo, Chief Editor, Outsourced Pharma
The majority appears to be in their lower or mid-thirties. According to statistics from the US Department of Labor (2014), 76% are women*.
Industry professionals I’ve spoken with the past three years, and who were pursuing new opportunities, suggest this majority values previous industry experience less than others who held similar positions in the past.
Who are we talking about? A growing class of front-line hiring professionals in the human resources departments of the greater biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and contract services industries. Specifically for our purposes, what impact are they having on the employment of drug development outsourcing professionals? Are they part of a societal shift?
Shared Concerns
A consistent and considerable concern for hiring the best of both young and experienced professionals in our industry has been well documented at OutsourcedPharma.com.**
Yet it’s taken some time to get this specific subject out to you for contemplation. That’s mainly because of this countervailing reality: Ours is by far an inclusive, multicultural, multinational industry of women and men. Anyone who knows us, knows we are peopled by personalities of every type from every corner of the world.
Another reason is that it is simply a difficult and controversial subject to get at. No one of our industry or from any other should try to stab us with our own arrows of introspection on our hiring practices.
In fact, the final spur to complete this editorial was an opinion piece I came across from Kelly Dingee, an HR expert and blogger at fistful of talent. Writing on HR managers in general (i.e., not specific to any industry), she expressed this desire and thought process (abridged):
I want HR Managers to be over 40 … I see an industry encumbered by policies, rules and regulations. Get your Bachelor’s, your Master’s and a PHR [Professional in Human Resources certification]. If you’re lucky, you’ll accomplish all of that by 25. But, so often when you read a job description for an HR Manager, the “human” component is assumed and not required. The years of experience account for time in the workforce and don’t necessarily allow for life experience, which shapes us all.
I want an HR Manager who’s well rounded, who’s seen it all—good managers, bad managers, late employees, great employees, lay-offs, terminations for cause, reorganizations and so on.
I also want HR Managers to have life experiences … If I hire an HR Manager who is over 40 in this day and age, I’m getting someone who’s worked through 9/11, survived a recession, probably been or taken a company through a layoff…
Am I wrong? Can you be the best at managing a people function if you haven’t acquired the life experiences your employees faced? I know it’s unrealistic to have every single experience I’ve mentioned… but just a few create the compassion component all HR Managers should be required to have.
Astute readers will point out that hiring (e.g., filling science or technical skill-based positions), and managing employees, are different functions of the HR department. True, and worth noting. And we do not subscribe to an age test for any positions. (In fact, that’s part of our entire premise.) But these points shouldn’t assuage the real concerns set down by professionals in our industry looking for positions, and who feel the value of their experience is diminished by today’s HR personnel serving as job-candidate gatekeepers. Certainly Dingee is striving to raise a discussion. We should, too.
Generations and Gender
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for October, U.S. labor-force participation fell to 62.8 percent. That translates to a further 195,000 people having dropped out of the labor force just since the previous month. A CNBC article comments: “For context these are levels last seen in the 1970s.”
Some of this is the natural increase in the rate of retiring baby boomers. But the CNBC article also quotes Aaron Klein, economic studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, who says, "I pay attention to the structural amount of labor force and people going in and out of the labor market — we're definitely seeing a shrinking, particularly of working-age men.” I’d be surprised if nearly all of you have not heard or somehow know of this otherwise.
A fair share of this shrinking is related to a skills or education deficit. For the experienced professionals in our industry, that’s rarely the case. And the good news is that the individuals I’ve talked with over the past years do end up getting new positions – although in one documented case it took three years and near capitulation. However, even this success illustrates our point: They don’t get hired via this new class of HR personnel. They’ve had to find ways around the majority gatekeepers to get new positions.
Generations perpetually must figure out how to entice and bring in the best young workers available, to renew, replenish and advance companies, business sectors, and entire industries. Our concern at Outsourced Pharma, if anything, has been weighted toward these challenges and our need in attracting the best and brightest new workers to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical outsourcing industry.
We’ve dealt with the question of how contract development and manufacturing organizations specifically can recruit new talent right out of university, or from downsized Pharma and other industries. At a recent conference in San Francisco, we discussed how best to work with Millennials – a cohort expected to comprise 46 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020. Of all the discussions, none generated more interest among the drug development and manufacturing outsourcing professionals gathered there.
At the same time, the best generational changes transpire without locking out those who helped propel us to current heights … and who can still admirably fill positions today.
An educated guess is we still have an imbalance tilting towards more male – and older – workers. It’s a positive then to have areas where that is reversed. But a mature industry can assess openly and from all vantage points what is happening in the society around us, and how that impacts – or we in turn reinforce – those societal trends. Who gets to work with us hinges in the balance.
----------
*According to statistics from the US Department of Labor (2014), 76% of Human Resources Managers in all industries are women.
**Earlier articles on employment/workers in our industry:
Employment A Leading Indicator For Pharma Industry
Is Long-Term Unemployment An Issue For Pharma?
Are There Enough Biomanufacturing Workers In The U.S.?
Who Wants To Work At A CMO Anyways?
Biomanufacturing As Seen From A North Carolina Campus;
More Biomanufacturing Workers, Less Paper Work