How to Find the Right Recruitment Partner in the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry

Hiring is a challenge for most pharmaceutical manufacturers. Those in leadership positions seldom have the time to find or interview people, so they offload these tasks to their internal Human Resources team. And while HR is an important part of the talent acquisition process, joining forces with a knowledgeable recruitment partner is also hugely beneficial.

Consider that the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is growing at an impressive rate. In May 2021, 154,000 people were employed in the pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry, a 3.76% increase over May 2020.

If your company is experiencing this level of growth, others are, too. As a result, your competitors are scrambling to hire the most qualified talent, just like you are. This gives candidates their pick of whom to work for. You may be short-staffed as it is, creating a catch-22 situation that makes it even harder to spend time on the hiring process.

What’s the answer? Should you leave hiring up to your swamped HR department? Create a dedicated, in-house hiring department? Actually, the best way to save time and money is to outsource your recruitment efforts. Plus, the right staffing agency knows how  to attract top candidates in the industry to join your team. No wonder so many pharmaceutical firms are turning to talent agencies to ease their hiring woes!

The trick to securing effective, highly targeted prospects for the job is to find the right recruitment partner in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. Here’s how to do just that.

Determine Your Hiring Preferences

What kind of positions are you hoping to fill? Depending on when you need workers and for how long, you may benefit from temporary hiring, direct hiring, or contract hiring. Here’s the difference between each option:

• Temporary hiring is best for filling unpredictable, short-term workloads. Project work, seasonal peaks, and leaves of absence are the top reasons to seek out temporary hires. However, the problem with temp hiring is that its short-term nature turns off applicants who want a stable, long-term position with benefits.
• Direct hiring brings on full-time employees right from the start. If your pharmaceutical manufacturing company has permanent or highly skilled job openings to fill, direct hiring is most likely the right solution for you. Candidates tend to prefer this hiring option as well, thanks to its stability and permanence.
• Contract hiring is a hybrid of direct hiring and temp hiring. It begins as a temporary contract to fill a position for a predetermined time. When the contract ends, the employer may give the temp worker the option to join the company full-time. Contract hiring could be a good option if you have both temporary projects and permanent positions to fill. It lets employees prove themselves while testing out the job. If the employer is pleased with their performance, there’s no need to restart the talent search. And if not, then the employer and employee go their separate ways with no hard feelings.

Once you know your hiring preferences, you can use this information to help you find a pharmaceutical recruitment partner that can fill your vacancies in a way that works best for your company.

Know the Three Types of Recruitment Models

Different talent agencies work in different ways. Here are the three most common business models:

• The contingent model is when a company works with numerous recruiting agencies at once. Only the recruiter whose candidates are hired for the job gets paid. This incentivizes recruiters to throw as many candidates into the mix as possible. Unfortunately, this wide-but-shallow approach doesn’t usually work well for specialized industries like pharmaceutical manufacturing and often leads to the wrong fit.
• The contract recruiter model is when you pay a firm by the hour instead of on retainer. Therefore, the recruiter is a temporary contractor rather than a long-term partner. This is only cost-effective if you need to tackle a one-time hiring spike.
• The retained search model is a more traditional style of partnering long-term with a single recruitment company. The firm becomes intimately familiar with its clients and ends up serving in a hybrid role of recruiter and brand ambassador. This increases the chance of matching not just the skillset but the overall cultural fit as well, resulting in better ROI overall.

Consider which business model works best for your needs so you can find a pharmaceutical recruiting firm to match.

Look for a Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Recruitment Specialist

Some recruiting firms are generalists, while others concentrate on certain industries, including highly skilled and specialized ones like pharmaceutical manufacturing. The more knowledge a recruiter has about your field, the better equipped they are to find highly skilled, trained, and qualified candidates for you to choose from.

To test a recruiter’s knowledge of pharmaceuticals, check their track record for hiring within this industry. Pay particular attention to reviews and complaints on third-party, industry-relevant review sites and discussion boards.

Analyze the Logistics

Once you’ve narrowed down your options, the next step is to determine what recruitment agencies can logistically work with you. After all, some pharmaceutical recruiters only work with manufacturers of a particular size. Others don’t have any scale restrictions.

Also, many recruitment companies only provide services to a specific region, state, or country. Others have offices all over the world. You’ll need to make sure your company’s size and location match those of the recruiters you’re considering.

Make Your Choice

Don’t succumb to analysis paralysis. Once you’ve narrowed down your options to a few closely matched companies, make your final choice without delay. The faster you partner with a recruitment firm, the sooner you can start filling those stubborn vacancies costing you real time and money.

Partner with Progressive Reliability

If your company is growing and in need of qualified, permanent employees for specialized positions, Progressive Reliability is the recruitment partner you’ve been looking for! We offer direct hiring and contract hiring services to businesses nationwide. Our specialty lies in hiring for companies in the manufacturing industry, including those in the pharmaceutical niche.

We work on a retained search model while serving as your brand ambassador to find the “work behind the skill” and the “untrainable traits” that make a quality employee. Our track record is unbeatable, with 50 percent of submitted candidates getting interviews and one in three being hired. Plus, 95 percent of the talent we place for direct hire still works for the same company a year later.

If you’re ready to find the right people for the job, call Progressive Reliability at 833-758-0070 or contact us online to get started.