With a recent spate of negative press related to pricing, the pharmaceutical industry is more motivated than ever before to show positive steps towards cost efficiency. Some areas of operations have been easier to address than others. In accounting and finance hiring, for example, the current low-unemployment environment of labor availability limits the potential for cost savings, and forces creative solutions to resourcing issues.
To learn how pharmaceutical companies are responding to the challenge, we asked Aston Carter account manager Dan Duddy for insight. He’s specialized in placing niche finance and accounting talent for nearly a decade.
Hyper-Specialized Roles Further Divide The Labor Pool
The pharmaceutical firms are functionally a subsector of many industries at once. Depending on size, any given firm could have a manufacturing wing, engineering and quality assurance, research and development, regulatory compliance and a variety of sales and marketing divisions serving segmented markets, not to mention usual corporate operations such as legal, public relations, logistics and finance.
Each sub-specialty within a pharmaceutical firm needs its own accounting and finance staff, and due to the complexity of the pharmaceutical industry, direct experience in hyper-specific roles is prized, making staffing a challenge.
Duddy says, "As a staffing partner, you may hear a request for a candidate with experience in a billion dollar plus non-generic pharmaceutical company, who focused in dermatology, with a specific set of skills related to R&D finance, and a list of software proficiencies. All of a sudden you're picking from an extremely, extremely small pool. So you have to walk it back."
Hiring on Availability First
Certain specialty skills are so important and rare in the current environment, some pharmaceutical companies are willing to hire candidates as soon as they become available, using those hired to build out an organizational structure based on talent, rather than the other way around.
According to Duddy, "It’s worked well when we have the opportunity to be consultative, and develop a target hiring profile that persists regardless of need." This approach allows companies to be flexible with their resourcing. By knowing that the most important specialty skills will be addressed through a steady trickle of incoming talent, daily operations can be back-filled or pre-filled.
Flexibility on Industry Experience Vs. Revenue Model Experience
Within the relatively tight-knit world of pharmaceutical firms, it’s often difficult for hiring managers to see the financial and accounting requirements of various corporate subdivisions in the larger context of revenue model function.
Companies who are able to expand their requirements beyond their own specific industry to include skills based on the type of accounting done — say from "cost accounting in pharmaceutical manufacturing" to "cost accounting in product manufacturing" — can reap immediate benefits.
"I’ve found success when I can convince hiring managers to judge a candidate’s past experience based on financial activity type rather than product type. Each of the different departments within pharmaceutical companies are analogous to other industries, so taking the bigger picture view opens up the talent pool," says Duddy.
Complicating Factors: M&A, Reporting Changes
If the hyper-specific accounting and finance roles that result from the complex, interwoven structure of the pharmaceutical industry weren’t enough of a challenge for staffing, two major inter-related trends are putting additional strain on an already overtaxed labor pool.
Pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions — in themselves a major demand driver for accounting and finance staff — have been coming fast and furious recently. Mergers often result in staff reductions, which can bring a sudden influx of qualified candidates into the job market. But another result of consolidation is that recently merged pharma firms are faced with a huge backlog of contracts and leases from varied systems of origin, and they all need to be reconciled to new reporting standards.
According to Duddy, the perfect storm that’s occurred between M&A and reporting standards has resulted in lag for reporting standard implementation. "Statistically speaking we know that 70% of companies are in the early phases of addressing Topic 842 lease accounting changes. In my experience that's also accurate within pharma," he says. It seems pharmaceutical firms who’d prefer not to rely on Big Four consultants may be poised to benefit from efficiencies derived from proactive hiring strategies for their leased asset compliance initiatives.
Human Intelligence in a Tech-Driven World
If one trend other than a paucity of available labor is impacting accounting and finance hiring across all industries, it’s the continued evolution of data skills from a "nice to have" to a "need to have" requirement.
Duddy says pharmaceutical companies are leading the way in requiring or training for data visualization software proficiency, noting, "Based on the complexity of the pharmaceutical world, there is a huge push for Big Data skills, such as business intelligence technologies, like Tableau or Microsoft BI, or other data visualization software."
While it’s always good to be at the forefront of new trends, potential market inefficiencies emerge when everybody moves in one direction at once. One major inefficiency may be appearing in the area of finance and accounting hiring within the pharmaceutical industry, and it has to do with tech-based solutions to human resources issues.
"Pharma is very tech-reliant, but cost control technologies like vendor management systems emphasize speed over candidate quality, and can create a greater need for outsourcing models or more costly consulting companies to get certain work done. The savings might not actually be worth it," says Duddy.
If you’re curious about maximizing operational efficiency through a staffing partnership that delivers quality by emphasizing candidate experience, contact Aston Carter now to find out how to match your needs with available talent.
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