Contract Employment: A New Paradigm for Pharma and Biotech
The practice of hiring temporary employees for short term, contract-based work is not a novel or new one. IT companies championed this practice in the mid 1990s and have been successfully hiring “contractors” over the past decade. These companies quickly realized that the contract employee paradigm made fiscal and operational sense. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with contract employees, they are typically hired on three (3) to six (6) month-long contracts and are paid an hourly rate. Unlike salaried employees, contractors are not entitled to receive any company benefits like health insurance or 401K plans. Large companies can save hundreds of millions of dollars by not offering benefits to temporary employees. Another financial benefit is that contract employees are only paid when they show up for work! This is in marked contrast with salaried employees who rarely have to account for time spent in or out of the office. Not surprisingly, contractors are carefully scrutinized for the hours they work and must submit weekly timecards (that summarize total hours worked) before they are paid. From an operational perspective, contract employment permits employers to determine whether a particular contractor is the”right fit’ for a company. If a contractor is deemed to be a good employee worth retaining, a company has the option of either offering a contractor a second contract or hiring them on as a full-time employee. On the other hand, if a contractor is not working out, the company can “let them go” without any hesitation because temporary employees have no employment protections.
Unlike many IT companies, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have been slow to embrace the contract employee business proposition. However, over the past few years, there has been a growing reliance on contract employees in the areas medical communications, medical writing and pharmaceuticals sales and marketing. Many big pharma and biotech companies have finally realized that it is more cost effective to hire temporary employees on “as needed” basis as compared with retaining costly full time employees with drastically reduced workloads. The growing demand for pharmaceutical and biotechnology contract workers has prompted temporary staffing agencies like Aquent, Joule, Kelly Clinical Services and others to allocate more resources and increase the amount of money to identify qualified contract employees. That said, I urge those of you who are looking for employment in the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries to consider “contracting” as a viable employment option. We old-time recruiters have a saying that goes something like “Once you have a foot in the door, the sky is the limit!” Until next time….
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!!!
The idea of temp or contract work is interesting to me. I am interested to know is this primarily available for bachelors/masters level scientists or are there companies that specialize in PhD level contractors. I've tried a brief web search and didn't come up with much. Any leads in this direction that anyone could provide would be appreciated.