Dive Brief:
- As big pharmaceutical companies are looking to recruit, they’re more often turning to the tech industry to hire top talent, reports CNBC. With healthcare and tech merging and evolving on an almost daily basis, the trend shows no sign of slowing down.
- CNBC says that companies like Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline are aggressively recruiting from companies like Google and LinkedIn. They hope to hire engineers to help them streamline the process to discover and ultimately develop new drugs.
- The industry admits it has been slow to embrace technology from within, CNBC reports. A spokesman for GSK said the challenge for recruitment is to build awareness for tech recruits of the opportunities in healthcare. He hopes to eliminate the intimidation factor for those who are tech savvy, but have no health background or education.
Dive Insight:
As tech and healthcare continue to merge, the opportunities for growth are immense. In addition to drug development, the potential exists for machine learning to analyze health data. Another area in development is finding candidates for clinical trials; using mobile technologies, pharmaceutical companies are finding a more efficient way to recruit.
Previous broad-targeting or ads in papers and on the radio are being replaced with searches that are less expensive, easier and that are proving reliable. The recruitment ad market is strong enough that even Google has gotten into the game via Google Hire, their answer to the job board.
With the pressure already on tech companies to fill jobs, the competition will be fierce across almost every industry (though perhaps not as fierce as some fear). For many recruits, the chance to see their work contribute to better health outcomes for individuals may be a tipping point in favor of pharma. The challenge will be for the industry to raise awareness of opportunities available in a field many tech recruits hadn’t considered before.