Fatal unattraction: how a more flexible approach may lure more people to pharmaceutical sales
by Sue Birch, General Business Manager
Recruiting for the pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a seismic shift. What was once one of British industry’s most attractive sectors has fallen down the rankings as job-hunters’ demands change to suit their lifestyles. Whereas five to ten years ago pharmaceutical companies could take their pick of candidates, the roles have now reversed and candidates can almost take their pick of them. Twenty-first century recruitment is a candidate-driven market, and to succeed within it, pharmaceutical companies must adopt an alternative methodology to identify the best individuals to move their businesses forward.
Historically, the pharmaceutical industry has always been perceived as a secure marketplace and one that could provide substantial opportunity for career development. Candidates who wanted security and permanency knocked relentlessly on the door of a pharmaceutical industry, which, in turn, had the luxury of being able to turn many of them away. The past few years, however, have seen a huge change in mindset. While the industry still enjoys a reputation as being more secure than most, other sectors have started to offer more competitive packages while pharmaceutical’s wave of almost non-stop merger and acquisition activity has forced people to start questioning the likely longevity of a career in pharmaceutical. As a direct result, the queue to the pharmaceutical door has become steadily shorter.
Clearly, the era where people stayed with companies for thirty years has evaporated. In fact in many cases, the candidate market has moved to the opposite extreme: the need for permanency has been replaced by an even greater desire for flexibility. Permanent recruitment has become increasingly more difficult to do and, as a consequence, the process of identifying, attracting and retaining the right calibre of employee is taking even longer. In a competitive sales environment where every second counts, such a lengthening process is something pharmaceutical companies can ill afford. One company’s gap is another company’s opportunity. The need for agility in the corporate recruitment function is therefore imperative.
Primarily, pharmaceutical companies must start to consider the needs of the people they would like to attract. From being accustomed to making demands, companies must be more prepared than ever before to listen to the demands of potential employees. The candidate-base is changing. The industry must change with it.
Interim solutions
So what is the solution? Since the turn of the century, a new phrase has entered fashionable
HR vocabulary – interim recruitment. Driven by a need to respond to the growing
business costs, both financially and operationally, of absenteeism, maternity leave and
secondments, interim cover emerged as a logical mechanism through which companies could
ensure operational continuity with minimised risk.
The uptake in many of the various interim solutions available to the industry is indicative of a new-found flexibility beginning to embed itself in pharmaceutical recruitment. In such competitive times, the inevitability of absence, through long-term sickness, maternity leave or career breaks, forced pharmaceutical to seek a contingency capable of reducing, and in many cases eliminating, its damaging ramifications.
Legislation – law and disorder
Early support for the interim model has been well merited, and companies that have endorsed
its principles in the past twelve to eighteen months are now well positioned to cope with the onset
of legislative change in preference of the employee. Developments covering maternity
leave, for example, can have serious repercussions for the employer. Whereas previously
it was possible to ‘schedule’ maternity cover, under the new legislation
the employer has no idea how long that cover will be needed, yet it cannot recruit someone
else on a permanent basis. This is creating an ‘unknown’ that could well
last up to twelve months. In the sales arena, to have a territory unmanned for twelve months
would be commercial suicide. Not only would it have a detrimental impact upon revenue,
the damage to customer relationships and continuity would be huge. Furthermore, if in
that twelve-month period a competitive product is launched in the same sector, the impact
on market share would be colossal. Failure to respond to even the simplest absence therefore
impacts on the whole remit – not only in terms of continuity of relationships to
sales and achieving territory objectives, but also in realising company objectives within
a much bigger picture.
Legislative change has not only affected maternity leave. Newer rulings have also dictated change in areas such as secondments, paternity leave and long-term sickness. All of these rulings favour the employee and leave the employer in desperate need for greater flexibility in its resourcing process. Interim cover clearly provides such flexibility.
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Responding to the ‘f-word’
So loud is the cry for a new approach that the industry would be forgiven for perceiving ‘flexibility’ to
be a new expletive
– a corporate ‘f-word’. The need for it is not, however, being driven
by legislation alone. The onset of a candidate-driven market is such that, for many, interim
work is steadily emerging as the preferred option, a career choice. Candidates are no longer
attracted to the ideals of permanency but are instead seeking employment that suits the
overall needs of their lifestyle. For them, the regular nine-to-five model has limited
appeal. Candidates, both male and female, want to spend more time with their families and
do not want the demands that permanent roles often impact upon them. Likewise, other individuals
want to pursue further education and so look to build part-time work around that desire.
An ever-increasing pool of people are seeking part-time, term-time opportunities. In all
these cases, high calibre candidates are looking for a degree of flexibility in their working
lives to support the lifestyle choices they have made. Historically, the pharmaceutical industry
has turned them down. In the current environment, it is extremely unlikely that it can
continue to do so.
Interim resourcing is a cost-effective way of managing resource and, crucially, it attracts a superb calibre of people. Accommodating this type of resource requires a radical change of mindset for the industry, but the rewards are huge. In pharmaceutical sales, the industry’s core business is still about maintaining continuity in day-to-day contact with doctors. A fantastic, high calibre pool of experience people exists that can offer great expertise in this cause, yet these people are often not considered purely because they want a degree of flexibility around their lifestyle. This flexibility not only fits into short-term contracts, maternity cover and secondments, but it is also of great value if you are launching a product and wish to hit a certain marketplace for a controlled period of time.
The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to adopt a different approach to recruitment, albeit slowly. People have gradually started to question the old-fashioned approach to resourcing and to ask whether traditional methods are still the right way to go. The industry is under a great deal of pressure at the moment to contain cost and focus on margin improvement. Consequently, the sales function itself is under closer scrutiny than ever before. Implementation of sales strategies and the deployment of representatives in terms of optimum call rates are all issues that require considered thought in the new era. Successful implementation of sales strategies, however, relies upon a measured recruitment process that identifies the best people and puts them in the appropriate job. In a candidate-driven market however, the difference between identifying new talent and attracting it in the first place is huge.
The traditional methodology the industry has used for many years will not always work. The degree of inflexibility inherent within it will deter many high-quality performers from joining – and in some cases re-joining – the sector. The industry must therefore consider alternative approaches to resourcing that will attract top performers back to a top industry.
This article first appeared in Sales Credentials, a Pharmafile publication, in January 2003
