"Fractional Hiring" At Your CDMO. Okay With You?

This article was originally published via OutsourcedPharma.com and was syndicated with permission. 

We need a flexible hiring marketplace – a new ecosystem – to generate increased awareness by professionals and students of positions in the biopharma industry.

“It’s no longer about simply posting full-time jobs,” says Chris Frew, founder/CEO of BioBuzz Networks.

“Those jobs still exist,” he says, “but there are tens of thousands of independent freelancers and consultants who might take on positions, but nobody's consolidated them into a talent community.”

That's part his mission at Biobuzz.

But along with his helping drug sponsors and CDMOs hire within a new “marketplace model with an emphasis on building community,” he is intent on creating “a destination for freelancers and other talent with a desire for fractional roles.”

Fractional Hiring Supports The Industry

For example, Frew starts us off, along with those looking for scientific, technical, and project management roles, there are executives and senior directors who have been laid off  (see part one) and decided they don’t want to go back to a full-time role.

As one such professional put it to Frew, “I’m interested in working with your hiring platform to take gigs I can’t find through my own network.”

Many of these “gig” opportunities may in fact be at CDMOs.

But let’s interject here: Do you want “gig workers” at our service providers?

Frew says you should.

The alternative – the status quo – he’ll explain, will result in the continuation of longer project timelines, or worse, an inability to place work at a CDMO at all.

Today, sponsors and CDMOs can more efffectively promote “contract jobs,” for a sales manager, technical writer, or a nights-and-weekends technician/engineer.

These adaptive openings in biopharma are providing access to a growing number of professionals who simply will not apply for a full-time role.

And it’s not just current professionals. Students are looking for hiring platforms to help get part-time work in fields such as bioinformatics, engineering, or in the lab.  

Frew cites a CDMO client that hired a student as a cell-culture technician to work on weekends, in an effort to increase their capacity to better serve their biotech clients.  

“When we talk about frational or flexible hiring,” he says, “it’s a benefit to the student acquiring experience, and also helps an organization grow at scale.”

And, conversely, these roles can lead to full-time employment down the road.

Education The Goal

But the starting point for all of us, as we learned in part one, is getting that student’s attention in the first place. We won’t rehash those stratagems here.

Let’s jump to some of fractional hiring results.  

BioBuzz has hired into a biotech fractional bioinformatics workers, and fractional biochemists as well, “which was really cool,” says Frew.

“This organization was stuck on a certain assay they couldn't figure out. They had someone come in on a fractional basis, less than a hundred hours, and it proved very helpful.”

“This particular hire was a recent PhD who didn't have a job yet. There are many like this coming out of academia into a market that was not very friendly the past two years.

“Until now, nobody has consolidated this talent pool into a talent community, and that's part of our mission. We are not a transactional platform simply to monetize a job.”

Frew explains that today, the industry, individual professionals, and rising students want to use a marketplace model emphasizing building community “to create a destination for freelancers or any others to find fractional or flexible roles.”

Like It Or Not

Those roles, says Frew, are indeed increasing, and when pressed, he says they do not come with any stigmas or negative connotations that “temporary” or “part-time” might once have included.

But that, dear reader, as I’ve interjected, is subjective. How many “flexible workers” before you get a bit nervous about the development and manufacture of our clinical material at a CDMO?

...

For the complete editorial visit OutsourcedPharma.com.