The Cure for Hiring Pains: Finding the Finest Creatives in Pharma
Creative Staffing Case Study | Pharma Industry
Overview
Onward Search helped a top biopharmaceutical company build industry-leading creative teams to support contemporary brands, launch novel products, and boost cost savings.
The Challenge
Surpassing industry standards at scale.
With products that treat over 50 million people each year, our client is one of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical conglomerates. The corporation’s 30+ brands create innovative medicines and solutions for patients, physicians, and healthcare clientele.
As the organization developed products, received FDA approvals, and grew through acquisition, it needed to scale its healthcare professional (HCP) and patient-facing marketing efforts. The corporation’s growing portfolio of brands had to launch and market new identities, branded drugs, generics, treatments, and indications. To support the company’s rapid growth and reduce agency spend, our client set out to expand its in-house production capabilities.
Determined to surpass the pharma industry’s creative standards, the organization required strategic consultants, fractional leaders, and entire teams of niche experts at all levels. However, they lacked the bandwidth to recruit the needed talent, and other staffing suppliers didn’t understand the intricacies of the industry or their open roles. Moreover, it isn’t easy to find skilled creatives with the capacity to thrive in pharma.
The Solution
Tailoring every talent search for success.
Through collaborative strategy sessions, extensive research, and market analysis, we quickly gained an unmatched understanding of our client’s then present and upcoming hiring challenges. Next, we formed a specialized recruitment team with deep pharma advertising knowledge and niche practice expertise to support the company’s staffing needs.
Contract and full-time. Executive and entry-level. Individual roles and entire teams. We leveraged recruitment best practices, thorough pre-qualification processes, and our expansive network of Top 100 MM+M agency veterans to provide our client with the ideal candidates for a wide variety of positions. From proven creative directors to medical legal review (MLR) experts and marketers with knowledge of oncology, neurology, and rare diseases—we delivered.
We even helped one of our client’s new brands gain 3M+ patients in its first 6 months by bringing in top beauty industry designers to market medical aesthetics. Our talent’s multi-channel campaigns won industry awards for the organization. And by moving creative production in-house, the company was able to yield major cost savings. With our dedicated support, our client continues to build contemporary brands, produce leading marketing campaigns, and launch life-changing products.
Onward Search intuitively understands the talent we’re looking for. I love the people they send us and the work they do.
Executive Director, Creative & Marketing Operations
Biopharmaceutical Client
By The Numbers
Relevant achievements and statistics to date:
Recruited 80+ hard-to-find experts for client
Submitted 1K+ pre-vetted job candidates to client
Helped new brand attract 3M+ patients in 6 months
Empowered client to win awards for multi-channel campaigns
By The Experts
Examples of roles we filled for our biopharmaceutical client:
Partner with us to hire talent, build teams, or engage on-demand advisors.