Evaluating expertise in orphan drug regulatory affairs!
Identifying professionals with regulatory affairs experience is a relatively straight forward exercise when recruiting. However, identifying candidates with exactly the right experience and broader capabilities is a far more complex task. There is a perception that during a time when companies are restructuring and reducing staff numbers, that recruiting good people gets easier. It does not.
During these hard economic times, companies should be looking to maintain a consistently high standard for recruitment, not allowing the bar to be lowered in any incremental way which might reduce the long-term competitiveness of your organisation. If anything, you should always be seeking to raise the bar and drive up recruiting standards, for in difficult competitive times it will be this which differentiates your company and builds skills and prosperity for the future.
Building a real network for your job search
Last week I was able to represent Liftstream at the AstraZeneca’s Career Fair, aimed at helping people impacted by the closure of their Sodertalje site in Sweden. It was revealing to hear how so few people truly understood how to work with recruitment companies and get the best out of them. Maybe this was because they previously had little reason to interact with recruitment companies, and recruitment has certainly changed a good deal in recent years. One of the big changes is the emergence of Social Media in recruitment and a lot of people were keen to know how they should coordinate the two.
Patience is a virtue in career planning #6
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#6 of Getting ready for a job change!
Looking for a job needs patience. Understandably, losing your job or the likelihood of such an event, is likely to put considerable pressures on anyone. These pressures can be severe in cases as the uncertainty of the situation is often very unsettling, and patience is not a behaviour most prominently displayed. People are given to frustration, indecision, optimism and disappointment, while being patient just feels unnatural. You feel compelled or driven to make things happen. But this should come with a cautionary note. In almost every walk of life, from professional sport, to expeditions and discovery, to an office job, everyone is quite clear that under pressure situations, decisions take a different complexion and the judgements you make are often influenced by these circumstances, often to the detriment.
AstraZeneca Careers Fair, Södertalje, 12-13th September 2012
A couple of weeks back Liftstream wrote about the very considerable challenges facing the Merck Serono employees in Geneva as they move towards a full site-closure. Well, this past week, Liftstream has been in another country, Sweden, reacting to the AstraZeneca site closure in Södertalje. AstraZeneca had organised a career fair on September 12th and 13th 2012, for the employees at the site, so they could access a range of different employers and contacts who would help them plan their futures.
Pharma’s emerging markets push creates talent gap
Liftstream looks at how the emerging markets is placing demands on talent and creating gaps in expertise within key functions like regulatory affairs.
5 Trends in Oncology Drug Development for 2012 and Beyond!
Oncology drug development is one of the largest areas within the pharmaceutical industry, addressing a disease area that causes more deaths than all other diseases apart from cardiovascular. The current global oncology market is estimated to be in the region of $55bn and forecast to grow to over $70bn by 2016. The oncology market is often seen as the most diverse with a wide range of indications and there are some 900 estimated clinical programmes currently underway. It is estimated that there are more than 200 different forms of cancer and therefore the oncology market presents a unique set of challenges to the industry.
Merck Serono staff navigate new horizons
The proposal and counter proposals have been submitted and reviewed. The employee protests roll on, although partly muted by legal disputes and management negotiations. Now though, it is decided. The shutters will come down at Merck Serono in Geneva. An estimated workforce of 1250 people will be affected, their lives driven in new directions.
