Competition for Pharma Talent Is Heating Up in Emerging Markets
While R&D scientists and sales representatives continue to struggle to find jobs in the US at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, the competition is fierce to hire and retain pharma employees in emerging markets like China and India. Earlier this week, I posted a piece on big pharma’s continuing expansion of its R&D activities in Asia and the growing need for US-trained PhDs in this region. However, it appears that hiring and retaining pharma sales reps is a bigger problem in China and India for big pharma companies like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Sanofi-Aventis (SA) and Pfizer.
According to a recent article in Bloomberg News about 20 percent of GSK’s sales forces in both countries quits each year in favor of better offers from its rivals including Pfizer and SA. One GSK executive quipped “There’s a huge war for talent. It’s hard to do anything about. If you have a good person, they could find someone else willing to pay twice as much.” This is in marked contrast with the US where almost 100,000 pharma sales reps may have lost jobs over the past five years.
Emerging Asia Pacific markets accounted for roughly 17 percent of GSK’s sales in 2010 as compared with 18 percent for Pfizer and 30 percent for SA. Sales revenues for most major pharmaceutical companies declined in both the US and Europe last year. There is no question that big pharma is turning to emerging markets as a means to maintain and increase sales of drugs after patents expire and generic competition cuts into revenue. Sales in emerging markets are predicted to reach about $400 billion by 2020 which is equivalent to the current size of the US and the five biggest European markets combined!
By its own admission, GSK was “fairly late” in their investments in China and may explain why the company may be experiencing trouble with competing for talent in that market. Employment opportunities in emerging markets will likely resemble those in the late 1990s in the US and Europe, when there was a dearth of talents life sciences professionals and companies were willing to pay large salaries (regardless of whether or not job candidates were qualified) to employees to maintain operations. This trend is driving up labor costs in China and interestingly, China is beginning to outsource work to Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore where labor and raw materials costs are less expensive.
Until next time....
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (Go East Young Man and Woman)
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