Early-Career Professionals Face Steep Climb in Tight Market

Early-career biopharma professionals seeking employment are facing multiple employment challenges due to employer preferences, a tough job market and an ever-changing industry, according to two recruitment experts.

One key factor affecting those professionals is that some companies prefer job candidates who already have industry experience versus those who just received their Ph.D., according to Carina Clingman, founder and CEO of Recruitomics Consulting, which specializes in talent acquisition and talent strategy for startup biotechs.

“It’s incredibly hard for our new grads and folks trying to move from a postdoc into their first industry position,” she told BioSpace. “It’s incredibly competitive.”

Eric Gaffen, director of talent acquisition and new employee experience at Visterra, which develops therapies for immune-mediated and other hard-to-treat diseases, also commented on how employer preferences affect early-career biopharma professionals. He told BioSpace that some organizations focus on filling current gaps rather than taking a more long-term view that includes employee development.

“My personal opinion is that I think companies should be more willing to look at somebody’s potential and be willing to put in the time, energy and training into developing them into where you want them to be in one, two, three years,” he said.

However, Gaffen noted that he also understands that not every business can do that.

“Some companies do have a lot of pressure to get a specific job done—have somebody come in and just do that bench work, have somebody come in and just do that particular brand of science without necessarily ‘Where will we be a year-and-a-half from now,’” he said.

The challenging job market is also affecting early-career professionals’ job hunts, and not only because it’s an employer’s market where companies can be picky about who they hire, according to Clingman. In addition, she noted, there are fewer job openings, which means there are more early-career professionals applying to a smaller number of roles.

Gaffen agreed. He noted that many talented people who’ve graduated in the past one to three years are competing for an ever-decreasing number of positions.

Major changes in biopharma also affect hiring for early-career professionals, Gaffen noted.

“I think it’s a constantly evolving industry, and so, as such, hiring is always kind of pivoting and always evolving as well,” he said.

For example, Gaffen shared, technology changes are affecting the types of candidates biotech and pharma companies want. He noted that fewer biopharma professionals are working purely in or outside of the lab. Instead, he explained, some work on lab techniques while also leveraging digital tools, artificial intelligence and bioinformatics.

Gaffen also said external factors, such as difficultly acquiring capital for growth, affect how companies hire. He noted that at Visterra, the biotech takes a thoughtful approach to expanding its ranks.

“We use year-round workforce planning conversations and open communications amongst all of our leaders to make sure that we’re bringing on board the best talent possible at the right time and the right amounts,” Gaffen said.

Although the job market is challenging for early-career biopharma professionals, that’s not to say there aren’t roles available. Gaffen noted that he’s seeing a lot of drug discovery, preclinical study and trial management positions in the market. In addition, he said, entry-level roles like research associates and lab technicians are always critical, although there’s plenty of competition for those roles.

To help early-career professionals stand out, Gaffen suggested having experience in areas such as data science and bioinformatics as well as being a lifelong learner who can learn new skills and apply them relatively quickly. He recommended that job candidates demonstrate how—through co-ops, internships or the first one to five years of their career—they learned and applied a skill, the way it was successful and the result they achieved.

Managers get excited hearing about how people identify problems and come up with solutions, Gaffen noted.

“Our research teams, if we find a dead end, we don’t kill a project,” he said. “We say, ‘OK, let’s go back, and let’s think about this. How can we apply our critical thinking, how can we apply our knowledge and find an alternate path?’ And we’ve had some really nice success of keeping research programs moving forward because we didn’t just say, ‘That didn’t work out. Let’s just end things,’ or ‘Let’s just move on to something else.’ Shifting your thought, shifting your processes, shifting the way that you approach a problem is a valuable skill.”

Early-career professionals looking to stand out from the competition also need to tailor their resumes to each position and focus on interviewing well, according to Clingman. She noted that this applies not only to those just getting out of academia but also those who have a few years of industry experience.

“They might have gotten their jobs during that hiring boom that we had immediately during and kind of right after the pandemic, and you didn’t have to be particularly great at tailoring your resume and interviewing,” she said. “We needed people. We couldn’t hire people fast enough. And so now they’re seeing, ‘Oh, this is actually really hard to distinguish myself.’”

Networking is also important for early-career biopharma professionals, Clingman noted. She emphasized the value of making a good impression on people at networking events to get word-of-mouth referrals. Clingman shared that even before she finished her Ph.D., she joined Women In Bio, where she chaired the group’s event planning committee, giving her access to many industry professionals.

“They needed to know me, and so I got to meet and interact with a lot of people,” Clingman said.

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