Life Sciences Jobs: Is There A Future?

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By Peter Pekos, President and CEO, Dalton Pharma Services

We, in the biotech industry excel at what our society and economy need so desperately - the creation of stable, high paying jobs. The biggest hurdle however, is filling these jobs with qualified people with the right skill set for our industry. The deficiency in skill sets is across the board and extends from bench positions to senior management. For me, this paradox is not just an interesting case study in supply and demand but rather a sizeable issue which my company has to deal with day in and day out. Let me assure you the 30 chemists we hired in the past fourteen months, as part of our current expansion, was a considerable challenge.

Dalton, like many other North American CROs competing in the offshore-oriented global environment of today, is not immune to the economic pressures these conditions create. I have no choice but to recruit and retain the best, high-performance project teams in the world. Dalton’s clients expect this. As a result we spend a great deal of time and money finding and training new hires so they not only function but thrive in teams of this caliber. At Dalton, all the people we select through our rigorous hiring process come on board with good basic technical training but generally do not have the complete skill set that we look for.

The 3 biggest problem areas for us are the following:

These are my top three wishes for skill set upgrades. You may have others. This is a shared problem in the life sciences industry which persists and is only getting worse. Improvement will only occur when we, as individuals, we as an industry, and we as a society address this issue with strong, coordinated and cooperative action. The creation of BioTalent Canada is a great start. I am very impressed with the quality and commitment of its Directors and embrace BioTalent Canada’s strategic initiatives.

Here we are seeing the alignment of industry, academia and government focused on developing the talent we desperately need not only to sustain but to also grow our industry.

I strongly believe that we can not only survive but prosper in today’s intensely competitive global environment. In Canada we have a great advantage with four powerful anchors: the momentum of natural resources; a strong educational system; a leading health care infrastructure; and as everyone now knows, the most stable banking system in the world. All that is lacking is a high level of alignment to a common purpose – a deep awareness that we will all move ahead faster and stronger if the focus centers on collective benefit rather than individual benefit. In order for our industry to remain competitive with the rest of the world we need to generate creativity-oriented and innovative-oriented occupations. The real progress will come only if creativity is accompanied by a unified and concerted effort by industry and government.

Canada has what it takes for a promising future. Let us align with academia and government to agree that our common purpose is to create a vibrant and sustainable life science industry and move forward – together.