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Trends like women joining the field force of pharmaceutical companies, especially in tier-II & tier-III towns, are a result of corporates tying up with institutes to churn out industry-ready candidates, and even some companies resorting to hiring through in-house assessment centres. For example, Ahmedabad-based Cadila Healthcare has become the first non-IT company to recruit through in-house assessment centres, a move that it feels would enable it to function more efficiently in cross-cultural environments.
Around 500 people are hired every month by pharmaceutical companies every month, says Hussain Tinwala, assistant vice president, pharmaceutical vertical of Teamlease, a recruitment consultant firm. He adds that with the drug price control order (DPCO) getting implemented, which has brought down the prices of drugs significantly, companies are now looking at volumes to drive growth. "This has necessitated them to move into tier-II, III and IV towns to hire field force. As such the attrition rates in field force is high, around 25-30 per cent. As such the field force hiring has gone up by 10 per cent year-on-year during the April to July period this year," Tinwala says.
As of now, 60 per cent of the field force still comes from metro towns, however, smaller towns are catching up fast. And what's more, increasingly women are joining the field force in pharmaceuticals. "Companies are encouraging women to join the pharmaceutical space, with jobs in the field, even as service engineers in medical device companies. Currently, only 5 per cent are women candidates; over the next six months we expect that to touch 10 per cent of the total pharmaceutical workforce," Tinwala explains.
Skill enhancement councils like the Life Sciences Sector Skill Development Council (LSSSDC) that have been set up by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) along with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), are working closely with industry as well as academia to churn out industry-ready candidates. Ranjit Madan, chief executive officer of LSSSDC, said that employment in the lifesciences sector (pharmaceutical, biotechnology companies and clinical research firms) is growing at 16 per cent CAGR. It currently employs around 800,000 people, and it's expected to double every five years.
A significant portion of a candidate's cost to company (CTC) is spent on re-skilling the person before he/she can start performing at par expectations, Madan says. In order to train candidates LSSSDC has already designed content manuals for the job roles specific to the lifesciences industry and have also tied up with training institutes who would train the candidates. "Leading companies have come forward to train the trainers, ones like Lupin and Sun Pharmaceutials. This would significantly enhance the skills of the freshers before they join the workforce," he said.
Leading pharmaceutical companies like Cadila Healthcare have gone on to design their own recruitment as well as training process. It is the first non-IT company in the country that has started recruiting through an in-house assessment center for any candidate, from entry level to the senior levels. Prashant Sharma, president, human resources and corporate communications at Cadila Healthcare explained that "We created six competencies, each of which were further sub-divided into three elements, and tried to evaluate the candidate, and see if apart from being a role-fit, he or she is also an organisational-fit, a motivational-fit as well as a location-fit." Location fit is increasingly becoming an important consideration in hiring candidates as companies go global. Cadila Healthcare, for example, employs 16,500 people worldwide.
Tinwala highlights that while big pharma can afford to train the candidates, smaller companies usually depend on hiring from other firms or hiring freshers. "Of the 500 positions filled up every month, only 30 per cent are freshers, as everyone wants people with at least a couple of year's experience. This creates the need gap between industry requirements and the available talent pool," he says.
