First appearing in “Tooling Up” column from SCIENCE careers, circa 1990-91.
By Dave Jensen
I recently attended the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) meeting in Houston for a career seminar series, along with fellow speakers Dr. Mark Dibner (President, Institute for Biotechnology Information) and Judy Heyboer (Sr. VP of Human Resources, Genentech Inc.). Our presentation was entitled “Our Future in Biotech — Where the Jobs Are.” In this column, I would like to describe for you how the presentations unfolded and a few of our group’s projections for the future of biotech hiring.
The seminar series was brought together to put three different slants on hiring trends in today’s biotechnology industry. Dr. Dibner, whose company provides specialized information for market studies, presented the “macro” view of biotech employment. He chose to discuss where individual industry sectors have been going, and how these niches will affect global hiring trends. Judy Heyboer took the opportunity to discuss various disciplines and to detail “what’s hot” from the Genentech perspective — (If there are any new trends developing in biotech employment, they will generally show up at this major firm first).
Lastly, it was my job to add some of the “softer” issues to our seminar session — the components of successful career management. Because many of those issues are written about regularly in my “Tooling Up” series for AAAS, this section will not be duplicated here.
Mark’s Numbers
As an information specialist, Mark Dibner was the one who came prepared with hard data. Here are some of the major points he made during his presentation. His numbers are for the U.S. biotechnology industry:
- 55% of our biotechnology firms are healthcare related. This sector of the industry currently has 65% of the total employees and is composed of companies in the therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics categories.
- Only about 20 of the companies in the therapeutics sector have a drug on the market. The others are split 50/50 between firms which have a candidate in the clinic and those which are still in early-stage R & D.
- The average number of employees is 115 employees but is skewed by firms like Amgen and Genentech (Amgen has almost 5000 employees). The median number of 29 is a better number.
- Approximations of total staffing numbers include 125,000 in the biotech firms, 56,000 employees doing biotechnology related work in the larger corporations, and 25,000 researchers in academia who are working cooperatively on industrial biotechnology projects.
Mark’s comments about the future trends he has identified: “There will be continued consolidation among these firms and half of today’s companies will not exist in their present form in five years. But there will be constant formation of new companies. For the next few years, therapeutics companies will continue to be the top area for biotech. However, as the agricultural and food biotech companies hit their stride in the next decade, that niche will skyrocket.”
Judy’s Views of Current Trends
As the Senior VP of Human Resources in a biotech company which employs thousands of people, Judy Heyboer’s comments about the changes her firm has seen in employment trends were certainly appropriate for our audience.
One trend she identified, confirmed by both Dibner and I, is the demand for “multi-specialty” employees. These are people who not only have completed their own rigorous training in some specific discipline, but who have added another separate area of interest. Many recruiters and human resources professionals have found that the toughest scientist to find is the person who has both the Ph.D. along with an MBA, JD or — often preferably — significant business experience.
“The whole concept of hiring a person with multiple areas of specialty is rather new. It is a definite trend here at Genentech. Three of them we find to be constant are Biology with Chemistry, Science with Business, and Everything with Computers.” This last one is a trend in itself. She spoke not only about the increased demand for bioinformatics, evidenced by any issue of Science, but also about the general need for computer skills in just about any type of biotech position.
“The use of computers is no longer a ‘plus’ to have in your background. It is a requirement. You are expected to have a hands-on expertise with somewhat more than just the basics.” She advised the audience that they would be rudely awakened someday if they didn’t have the skills to sit down and do some lightweight programming, or set up an Excel spreadsheet. “It’s too late at that point to pick up a copy of “Excel for Dummies” once you’ve landed your new job,” Judy warned.
Judy’s comments about some of the other trends at Genentech included:
- A kind of teamwork has emerged, due to multi-company partnerships in many areas, and the effect of working globally on product development. She feels that with the need to work across multi-disciplined teams, there is no longer any room for those who wish to build their own turf. “There are no independent bench research positions any longer, they just don’t exist,” Judy commented.
- The hardest kind of employee to find? “Technicians . . . we continue to hire them as fast as the University of California system can churn them out.” One trend: Genentech and other major employers are attempting to make the technician job into a separate career track instead of the first notch on the research ladder. The company is building a manufacturing site and is considering hiring other types of technical people, perhaps from the wine or high-tech industries, due to the shortage of technical staff in certain areas.
- Employers and local colleges will be working closely together in the future to help the schools provide future employees with skills of specific interest to industry. Some companies are working with community colleges to develop training programs for prospective technicians.
In Closure
Although the numbers that Mark presented showed an increase in total research personnel, the actual percentage of research as a component of total biotech hiring was down. There was a consensus at this meeting that many other types of positions have eclipsed the basic science area for current biotech hiring (although Judy’s company still has a strong demand for molecular biology).
This slowdown in basic science hiring is the result of a changing biotechnology landscape in which the emphasis has shifted to development. This means that jobs in manufacturing, clinical research, and in quality/regulatory will outpace the growth that research sees for some time yet.