If you have been laid off from the marketing department of any medical device firm and believe that you will land another job in the same field, be it full time or part-time contract work, perhaps you also believed in the May 21 rapture.
Get a clue and find a way to retool.
That’s the primary advice of Paula Norbom, founder and president of Talencio, a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based staffing company that provides contract professionals to fill various roles in the life sciences industry. The company, which works with 1,200 professionals, most of whom are independent contractors not employed by Talencio, recently changed its name when Norbom became its sole proprietor. Previously it was known as Vallon Life Science.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
As an example of how laid off marketing or human resources professionals can reinvent themselves, Norbom pointed to a Baby Boomer who had been in sales for most of his career. Understanding the current trends in the marketplace, he went and got some training and education in regulatory affairs. That helped Norbom’s company to place him in a junior regulatory affairs role as a contractor with a client firm. Talencio placed a second professional with regulatory credentials with the same company.
“The client could have taken three (people),” Norbom said, underscoring demand for such experience. “We gave them two.”
Regulatory affairs is not the only function that is hot right now, she said. Another is reimbursement. Previously, companies would focus on reimbursement issues after getting their products cleared through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Now this is happening earlier and earlier, Norbom said.
“They want to make sure that if they design a clinical study, that it meets not just the FDA’s needs, but that it would fill the needs of CMS as well,” she said.
Another area of market need is in quality assurance. Talencio was recently unable to find a supplier quality assurance professional for a company that needed someone to make sure that its suppliers were producing products according to spec. While demand for such experience is high, supply is not as robust. Unlike in marketing, people well versed in regulatory affairs, reimbursement or quality assurance, don’t have professional degrees.
“Those folks don’t necessarily go to school to become someone with that type of expertise,” Norbom said. “Lot of them come up through the ranks of big companies and they go through the on-the-job training.”
Now things are changing and people in the life sciences industry can take advantage of that. For instance, St. Cloud State University offers a degree in regulatory affairs that Norbom highlighted.
As some companies look to fill positions in regulatory reimbursement, clinical research and quality assurance broadly, certain other companies have very specific requirements when it comes to finding a contract worker. Last year, a company came to Talencio looking for a “non-woven, thin-film, polymer expert with heat seal experience.” Luckily, Talencio was able to fill that need with someone with the relevant experience. What’s more, the contractor’s input helped the company develop a better, more competitive product, Norbom said.
One piece of advice she had for anyone laid off and looking for meaningful work be it a permanent position or as a contractor, was know thyself and thy skills.
“We meet so many people who we ask what are your marketable skills and sometimes they don’t even know what their marketable skills are,” Norbom said.
