Pharma Hiring After the Boom: Why Quality of Hire Matters More Than Ever

For a period during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry had an obvious hiring problem:

It needed more people, quickly.

Production was expanding. Supply chains were under pressure. Research, manufacturing, quality, regulatory and commercial functions all needed talent.

In India, the scale of that demand was significant. In June 2020, The Economic Times, citing staffing firm Xpheno, reported around 30,000 vacancies across the pharmaceutical sector, spanning sales, R&D, formulation and analytical development, regulatory affairs, production and quality control. Hiring had already increased, with further recruitment expected as companies expanded production.

The immediate challenge was capacity.

Could organisations find enough qualified people? Could vacancies be filled fast enough? Could companies expand their workforce without slowing down operations?

A few years later, the hiring environment looked very different.

And that transition may have implications for pharmaceutical recruitment that go well beyond the number of vacancies being advertised.

Pharma hiring did not simply slow down—it changed

A useful way to understand the transition is:

Boom → correction → more selective hiring

By 2023, the exceptional recruitment environment of the previous two years was moderating.

Data compiled for Moneycontrol by Biojobz, a specialist biotech and pharmaceutical staffing firm, indicated that pharma talent demand during January–July 2023 was approximately 20–30% lower than during the same period in 2022. The report also noted that recruitment had been particularly strong from the second half of 2021 through 2022.

The correction became even more visible internationally.

Fierce Biotech recorded 187 biopharma workforce-reduction rounds in 2023, compared with 119 in 2022. It subsequently recorded 192 rounds in 2024.

BioSpace separately estimated that at least 24,000 people were affected by biopharma workforce reductions during 2024. Its employment marketplace also recorded a 46% decline in average jobs live between Q4 2022 and Q4 2024.

But there is an important qualification.

This is not a story about pharma having stopped hiring.

India's pharmaceutical employment market subsequently showed renewed growth. Naukri JobSpeak reported 14% year-on-year growth in pharma and biotech hiring in April 2025, led in part by life sciences and R&D roles.

The demand remains visible in 2026. Sai Life Sciences, for example, announced plans to recruit more than 700 scientific, technical and management professionals during FY27 across medicinal chemistry, biology, analytical and formulation development, quality, manufacturing, engineering, business development and programme management. The company linked the expansion partly to the increasing complexity of work being entrusted to Indian CRDMOs and higher scientific expectations.

That is why describing the industry's journey simply as boom followed by slowdown misses something important.

The more interesting transition is from an extraordinary period in which speed and scale dominated the hiring conversation to an environment where organisations have greater reason to focus on who they hire, for what role, and on what evidence.

From volume hiring to quality of hire

During periods of rapid expansion, recruitment teams understandably focus heavily on throughput.

Vacancies must be advertised.

Candidates need to be screened.

Interviews must happen.

Offers have to go out.

Positions need to be filled.

When recruitment becomes more selective, another question becomes more prominent:

What evidence do we have that this candidate is suited to what this particular role actually requires?

That sounds obvious, but it represents an important shift.

A candidate may hold the appropriate degree.

They may have several years of pharmaceutical experience.

They may have worked at respected organisations.

They may perform very well during an interview.

All of these are useful pieces of information.

But none, by itself, provides a complete picture of role fit.

A CV primarily tells us what someone has done.

Qualifications tell us what someone has studied and successfully completed.

Experience tells us where and in what capacity someone has worked.

An interview gives us additional information about the individual, including how they understand situations, communicate and respond to questions.

The hiring decision may still require answers to another set of questions.

How does this person approach unfamiliar problems?

How effectively do they process information?

How do they work within structure?

How do they respond when priorities compete?

How are they likely to approach responsibility, collaboration or ambiguity?

And perhaps most importantly:

Are the characteristics we are evaluating actually relevant to the role we are filling?

There is no single personality, aptitude or competency profile called a “good pharma employee.”

The demands placed on a quality professional are not identical to those placed on a medical representative.

A research scientist does not do the same job as a production supervisor.

And the qualities that help someone become an exceptional individual contributor may not be the same qualities required to lead other people.

A good performer does not always make a good manager

One of the clearest examples appears when organisations promote high-performing individual contributors into management.

The logic is understandable.

Someone performs exceptionally well in a technical, scientific or commercial role. They demonstrate expertise, achieve targets and become highly valued by the organisation.

Management appears to be the natural next step.

But management is not simply a more senior version of the same job.

It introduces different demands: delegation, judgement, communication, coaching, conflict management, prioritisation and accountability for the work of other people.

Research provides a useful warning here.

Alan Benson, Danielle Li and Kelly Shue examined performance and promotion data from sales workers across 214 firms. They found evidence that organisations strongly rewarded individual sales performance when making promotion decisions, even though some characteristics associated with strong individual performance did not translate into stronger managerial performance. Their findings were consistent with what organisational researchers describe as the Peter Principle.

This research was not conducted in the pharmaceutical industry, so it should not be treated as evidence specifically about pharma managers.

But the underlying organisational lesson is relevant:

Evidence that someone can perform Role A exceptionally well is not automatically evidence that they will perform Role B exceptionally well.

Past performance matters.

But selection and promotion decisions also need to consider the demands of the position the person is about to perform.

Where organisations specifically want additional structured information about managerial competencies, an assessment such as Psychometrica's Managerial Skills Profiler can form one part of that broader evaluation. It should complement evidence from performance history, interviews, organisational context and other relevant information—not replace them.

In pharma, role fit can have wider consequences

Poor hiring decisions are expensive in almost every industry.

They can contribute to lower productivity, additional managerial effort, team disruption, attrition, replacement costs and another recruitment cycle.

Pharmaceutical organisations operate with another layer of responsibility.

Depending on the position, employees may work within systems involving:

quality, documentation, manufacturing processes, laboratory practices, data integrity, regulatory requirements and products that ultimately affect human health.

This does not mean that regulatory failures or quality problems can simply be attributed to recruitment.

They cannot.

Quality outcomes can be influenced by organisational systems, processes, leadership, training, incentives, technology, supervision, workload and culture, among many other factors.

Hiring is one part of a much larger system.

But pharmaceutical regulation itself makes clear that the capability of the people performing the work matters.

Under 21 CFR §211.25, people engaged in manufacturing, processing, packing or holding drug products must have appropriate education, training and experience—or a suitable combination—to perform their assigned functions. The regulation separately addresses supervisory qualifications and requires an adequate number of qualified personnel.

The ICH Q10 Pharmaceutical Quality System similarly places responsibility on management for maintaining an effective pharmaceutical quality system, including appropriate resources, defined responsibilities and organisational processes.

Real regulatory findings provide useful context for why the human component of pharmaceutical operations deserves attention.

In a February 2025 warning letter to Granules India, the US FDA documented significant CGMP and documentation concerns. Among the root causes identified by the company were insufficient clarity in documentation and data-integrity protocols, inadequate provisions in procedures and employee misinterpretation of existing procedures. The FDA stated that the quality system did not adequately ensure the accuracy and integrity of data supporting drug safety, effectiveness and quality.

It is important not to draw a conclusion the evidence does not support.

This warning letter does not show that recruitment caused the problem.

What it illustrates is something narrower but significant:

people, processes, training, supervision and organisational systems interact in pharmaceutical work where errors can have consequences beyond an individual's performance review.

That gives quality of hire a different context.

Qualifications matter. So does what they do not tell us.

The discussion around better pharma hiring can easily become a false choice.

It should not be:

Qualifications or assessments?

Nor should it be:

Experience or psychometrics?

Pharmaceutical organisations need technical expertise.

Many positions require specialised education, scientific knowledge, regulatory understanding, professional experience or specific certifications.

No personality questionnaire or aptitude test can substitute for those requirements.

The better question is:

What information does each part of the selection process contribute?

Technical evaluation can establish whether a candidate possesses relevant knowledge.

Experience can demonstrate previous exposure and responsibility.

Structured interviews can explore how candidates have approached relevant situations.

Work samples can provide evidence of how someone performs realistic tasks.

Background and reference processes can validate appropriate aspects of a candidate's history.

Relevant psychometric assessments can contribute structured information about specific abilities, competencies or behavioural tendencies when those characteristics are genuinely connected to the role.

For organisations that use combinations of assessments across different recruitment situations, Psychometrica's Pre-Recruitment Packages provide one example of how assessments can be incorporated into a broader selection process.

The important point is not the assessment itself.

It is the principle behind it:

better hiring comes from bringing relevant information together rather than expecting one source of information to make the decision.

Psychometric assessment should add evidence, not manufacture certainty

Psychometric testing is sometimes presented as though an assessment can identify the "perfect candidate."

That is not a useful standard.

Human behaviour is considerably more complex.

A high score on a particular personality characteristic does not guarantee strong job performance.

A different profile does not automatically make somebody unsuitable.

Even conscientiousness—one of the most extensively researched personality dimensions in occupational psychology—illustrates the need for caution.

A meta-analysis by Watrin, Weihrauch and Wilhelm covering 102 studies and more than 23,000 participants found a positive but modest relationship between conscientiousness and job performance. The researchers also highlighted an important limitation: only a small minority of the research involved actual job applicants in predictive selection settings. They consequently called for greater attention to incremental validity and cautioned against assuming findings from incumbent samples automatically translate into high-stakes applicant settings.

Broader personnel-selection research points toward the same principle.

A major re-evaluation by Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens revisited validity estimates for commonly used employee-selection methods and challenged some long-standing assumptions about the strength of particular predictors.

For employers, the practical implication is straightforward.

Psychometric assessment should not mean:

“Give every candidate the same test and let the score decide.”

A more defensible approach is:

Understand the role → identify what matters → determine what can reasonably be assessed → choose appropriate methods → combine the evidence.

That is much closer to evidence-based hiring.

Assessment should follow the role

This principle is particularly relevant in pharma because the industry contains dramatically different kinds of work.

Consider just a few examples.

A laboratory analyst may work with highly structured processes, technical information and detailed procedures.

A medical representative works in a communication-intensive commercial environment.

A research scientist may encounter complex analytical and exploratory problems.

A regulatory professional works extensively with detailed information, interpretation and compliance requirements.

A production supervisor combines operational responsibilities with people management.

A functional leader may need to combine domain expertise with strategic judgement and leadership.

These roles should not automatically be assessed in the same way.

Nor should an organisation begin with:

“Which psychometric test should we give our pharma candidates?”

It should begin with:

“What does effective performance in this particular role actually require?”

What decisions does the employee make?

How complex is the information they handle?

Where can errors occur?

How much independent judgement is required?

What kinds of problems must they solve?

What interpersonal demands does the position create?

Which capabilities distinguish effective performance in this role?

And which characteristics can reasonably be evaluated during selection rather than developed later through training, supervision and experience?

For roles where reasoning, information processing and problem-solving are demonstrably relevant, a structured measure such as Psychometrica's Cognitive Ability Test may contribute an additional source of information alongside technical evaluation and other selection methods.

The assessment follows the role.

The role should not be made to fit the assessment.

Quality of hire is really about better evidence

The post-pandemic change in pharma hiring presents an opportunity to think about recruitment differently.

During the most intense period of expansion, the industry's immediate concern was understandably:

Can we find enough people?

As hiring becomes more targeted, another question deserves equal attention:

How much do we actually know about the people we choose?

This is not an argument against experience.

It is not an argument against qualifications.

And it is certainly not an argument that every pharma candidate should undergo a battery of psychometric assessments.

It is an argument for better-informed selection.

Qualifications can establish eligibility.

Experience can establish exposure.

Technical assessments can evaluate professional capability.

Structured interviews can generate relevant behavioural and contextual evidence.

Psychometric assessments can, where appropriate, provide additional structured information about particular abilities or behavioural characteristics.

None necessarily needs to stand alone.

The opportunity is to design a hiring process in which the information being gathered corresponds more closely to what successful performance in the role actually requires.

From hiring fast to hiring right

The pandemic demonstrated that pharmaceutical organisations could recruit at extraordinary speed when circumstances demanded it.

The correction that followed created a different challenge.

Hiring volumes can rise again—and in parts of Indian pharma they already have.

But the lesson from the cycle should not be forgotten.

Hiring more people is not the same problem as hiring the right people.

As pharmaceutical work becomes more specialised, scientific expectations increase and organisations continue to operate within demanding quality and regulatory environments, selection decisions deserve careful attention.

The most important evolution in pharma hiring may therefore be:

from filling vacancies to understanding fit,

from relying heavily on credentials to combining relevant evidence,

and

from asking whether someone can get through the recruitment process to asking whether the recruitment process tells us enough about their suitability for the role.

For pharmaceutical organisations, that is not simply an HR question.

It is an organisational-quality question.

Frequently Asked Questions About Pharma Hiring

How has pharma hiring changed since the COVID-19 pandemic?

Pharmaceutical hiring expanded rapidly during the pandemic as companies increased production and responded to unusually high workforce demand. Parts of the industry subsequently experienced a correction, including lower hiring demand and significant biopharma restructuring.

However, this should not be interpreted as a permanent decline in pharmaceutical hiring. More recent Indian employment data show renewed recruitment in pharma, life sciences, R&D, manufacturing and specialised scientific functions. The broader shift is better understood as movement from exceptional pandemic-era expansion toward a more selective and specialised hiring environment.

Why is quality of hire particularly important in the pharmaceutical industry?

Quality of hire matters in every organisation, but many pharmaceutical roles operate within systems involving product quality, manufacturing processes, documentation, laboratory practices, data integrity and regulatory compliance.

Recruitment alone does not determine pharmaceutical quality outcomes. Training, processes, management, organisational culture, supervision and systems all play important roles. Selecting appropriately qualified and capable employees is therefore one component of a much wider quality system.

Are qualifications and experience enough for pharma recruitment?

Qualifications and relevant experience can be essential, particularly in scientific, technical and regulated roles.

However, they may not answer every question about suitability for a particular position. Depending on the role, organisations may also need evidence about technical performance, reasoning ability, job-related competencies, interpersonal requirements, behavioural tendencies or managerial capability.

The appropriate combination depends on the job.

Can psychometric assessments be used in pharma hiring?

Yes, relevant psychometric assessments can form part of a pharmaceutical recruitment process when the abilities, competencies or behavioural characteristics being assessed are genuinely connected to the requirements of the role.

They should generally complement—not replace—qualifications, technical evaluation, experience, structured interviews and other appropriate selection methods.

Can a psychometric test identify the best pharma candidate?

No single psychometric assessment should be treated as a definitive measure of whether somebody will succeed in a role.

Assessments provide information about particular constructs. Better selection decisions come from interpreting relevant assessment results alongside other evidence and in the context of the job being filled.

Does a high-performing pharma employee necessarily have managerial potential?

Not necessarily.

Strong performance as an individual contributor demonstrates success in that person's current role. Management introduces additional requirements such as delegation, coaching, communication, judgement, prioritisation and responsibility for other people's performance.

Research from other sectors has shown that organisations can over-rely on individual performance when deciding whom to promote into management. Managerial potential therefore needs to be considered against the requirements of the managerial role itself.

What is evidence-based hiring?

Evidence-based hiring involves defining what successful performance in a role requires and then using structured, job-relevant information to evaluate candidates.

Depending on the position, that evidence might come from qualifications, experience, technical assessments, structured interviews, work samples, reference processes and appropriate psychometric assessments.

The aim is not to collect more information simply for the sake of it. It is to collect better information about the things that actually matter for the role.

Should every pharma role use the same assessment process?

No.

Pharma encompasses scientific, manufacturing, regulatory, quality, commercial and managerial positions with very different requirements.

The selection process for a medical representative should not automatically be identical to the process used for a laboratory analyst, research scientist or production manager.

Assessment should follow job analysis and the requirements of the specific role.

References

1. The Economic Times. Pharma, life sciences companies scale up hiring as production increases. June 16, 2020.
2. Moneycontrol. Talent demand in pharma industry drops 20%, newer skills get a boost. August 11, 2023.
3. Fierce Biotech. Layoffs rise 57% YOY in a good, bad and ugly 2023 for biotech. January 2, 2024.
4. Fierce Biotech. Big Pharma layoff rounds jump 281% in '24, but overall industry rates similar to '23. January 3, 2025.
5. BioSpace. 2024 Q4 Job Market Report: Biopharma Job Postings Slowed as Layoffs Continued. February 12, 2025.
6. Naukri JobSpeak. Understanding Hiring Trends With Naukri JobSpeak Report – April 2025.
7. Sai Life Sciences. Sai Life Sciences to recruit 700+ professionals in FY27. April 24, 2026.
8. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. 21 CFR §211.25 — Personnel Qualifications.
9. International Council for Harmonisation. ICH Q10 — Pharmaceutical Quality System.
10. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Warning Letter: Granules India Limited. February 26, 2025.
11. Benson, A., Li, D., & Shue, K. Promotions and the Peter Principle. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2019.
12. Watrin, L., Weihrauch, L., & Wilhelm, O. The criterion-related validity of conscientiousness in personnel selection: A meta-analytic reality check. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 2023.
13. Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2022.