A Pharmaceutical Company's Journey to YoY Hiring Success with a Unified Platform

A global pharmaceutical company aimed to digitize its recruitment process to support its ambitious growth plans, but it faced several familiar hiring challenges. A successful partnership with a new platform paved the way for some resounding results.

Challenge 01: Vendor Management Friction

The company was manually managing a network of over 20–30 vendors, a process that was time-consuming and inefficient. This decentralized approach made it difficult to maintain consistent vendor curation and communication, often leading to a “long tail of low-performing agencies.”

Solution 01: A Centralized Communication Hub
By using a built-in communication tool, the company achieved improved results, spending 7x less time on vendor management. This centralized communication hub organized and controlled the influx of calls and emails, allowing recruiters to respond on their preferred schedule and make more confident hiring decisions. A single platform eliminates the need to use multiple channels like emails and phone calls for communication with vendors.

Challenge 02: Sourcing in Tough-to-Hire Regions

The pandemic shrank the candidate pool for on-site roles like machine operators, QA/QC, and R&D in tough-to-hire regions. These hard-to-fill roles often led to longer turnaround times and higher recruitment costs.

For this company, locations such as Fall River, MA; Central Islip, NY; and Hauppauge, NY posed particularly tough sourcing challenges. The positions they needed to fill spanned across critical areas of pharmaceutical operations, including:

• QA/QC, Quality Assurance, Analytical QA Associate, and QA Inspector
  
• QC Glass Cleaning Technician, QC Lab Tech
  
• Manufacturing Operator (FBD, Encapsulation, Coating), Packaging Operator
  
• Warehouse Operator, Facilities Maintenance Engineer
  
• Senior Accountant
  

These roles, spread across technical, operational, and support functions, required a broad spectrum of specialized skills—making traditional hiring methods even more complex.

Solution 02: An AI-Powered Matching Engine
By leveraging a platform with an AI-matching engine, specialist vendors were automatically mapped to open roles, leading to a 58% job-fill ratio. The platform acted as a “one-stop-shop” for posting positions across all levels and skills. This curated network of specialist agencies, combined with a multi-level screening process, ensured that only qualified candidates were presented.

Challenge 03: Skyrocketing Hiring Costs

Hiring costs, particularly for executive search roles, posed a significant challenge. Without a unified view of vendor performance, it was easy to pay high fees for low-quality candidates.

Solution 03: Bottom-Line Savings
The partnership helped the company reduce vendor costs by 31%, resulting in significant bottom-line savings. Vendor consolidation helped optimize recruitment spending within an automated system, providing more granular control over costs. It also enabled more favorable rate negotiations and improved operational efficiency.

The Outcome

Today, a significant share of the company’s vendor hiring in North America is managed through the platform’s VMS, setting the stage for a global VMS model. From QA/QC specialists in Fall River, MA to manufacturing and packaging operators in Central Islip, NY, and analytical QA associates in Hauppauge, NY, the platform has proven to be a reliable partner in filling both volume and niche positions.

By digitizing recruitment across diverse job categories—from lab technicians to accountants—the company was able to improve hiring speed, cut costs, and ensure consistency in quality. This unified hiring approach now enables the company to staff even its toughest roles with confidence and efficiency, laying the groundwork for scalable global growth.