Period: 06 January to 12 January
Positions applied to: I applied to 25 positions this week. Total jobs applied to/opportunities investigated are 56 unique positions.
Rejections: I was rejected for three positions, two within a week of submitting to the position. The third one was a six hour turnaround, which is my new record.
Conversations: I had one phone interview and one phone screen.
The phone interview was an initial interview with the hiring manager for a position in New Home consisting of 30 minutes. I should know soon if I advance to the next round. I will confess I am ambivalent about the position. Based on what I heard, it sounds there is a tangled mess of overdue actions they expect the position to come in and sort out.
The second was for a 1 year contract position. It was with recruiters - recruiters are always gamble as they are super excited and hurry-hurry to get you interested and in line, and then you may never hear from them again. I always take it with a large grain of salt.
Job losses: This week in my industry, job loses were announced at Organon, Affimed (German company), Exelixis, C4 Therapeutics, and Nevro: 283 Job losses confirmed plus "percentages" of others. Possible layoffs were announced at Lifescan. Angiodynamics announced closure of their Queensberry, and Glen Falls NY plants in Q2 2025 with up to 350 workers impacted - interestingly, they are closing down a corporate owned site and moving to a outsourced manufacturing site, something which I suspect will become more widespread this year..
Mood: Although I have had my down periods this week (Thursday afternoon was bad), on the whole it has been an okay week. Partially, of course, being up here at The Ranch has been therapeutic and seeing "my people" has been refreshing (as I often joke, 90% of my in-person social group is here, not in New Home).
Sending things off into the InterWeb sphere is not a very rewarding process. Things go off and the feeling that nothing is happening is oppressive at times. Things are happening of course; it is just that I cannot see them going on. Sometimes just waiting for the process to work and trusting God feels like the bigger struggle than just not having a position.
Well, sounds discouraging. I know that isn't a surprise, however, and I'm glad you have an environment and people to help, even if it's only part time.
ReplyDeleteBeing in the "retired" category of folk myself, I feel really out of the loop in understanding such things, but I have to ask why your particular industry seems to be struggling so. I mean (probably naively), it's in the medical/health care arena, and people always need these things, so it would seem it that the demand for the supply should keep the industry thriving. I'm guessing the answer is extremely complicated, but it's one of those things that just doesn't make sense.
Leigh, it has been an up and down week - for example, yesterday I received no rejections at all. Does that mean I am moving forward, or that rejection is simply delayed?
DeleteYour question is a good one and got me to thinking, and is probably worth a post next week. The drug discovery/approval process is probably one most folks do not know a great deal about.
In short: it is long, it is expensive, and it is fraught with failure. If you are not a commercial company with a product, you are reliant on investor's money. If that money stops coming in because of undesirable results or simply poor management or a bad market, you are done.
A bit disconcerting to see the downsizing happening in your industry TB, yet a fair number applied for this week. Yah, the InterNet process is so impersonal, not much face-to-face, guess that's progress.
ReplyDeleteIt is expected in general Nylon12 - it is the beginning of the year, and budgets are starting to be implemented. Also, depending on the market, investment that was anticipated may not have appeared, thus forcing companies to act proactively.
DeleteIt is odd - it is impersonal and much less face to face, yet I suspect we spend no less time in the hiring process.
Have a son with advanced degree in his field and he only deals with Head Hunters. There must be some like that in your fields?
ReplyDeleteAnon - There are some, but unfortunately I am not at a level or with an advanced degree enough to merit their attention, overall.
DeleteThere are two sorts of recruiters. The first have direct contracts with the companies in question and are directly working with them. The second are the vultures of the recruiting world, who see positions and try to present candidates for them without having the exclusive contract. The conversation mentioned above fell into the second class.
Thanks, I didn't realize that. I know that son's recruiters always kept in touch with him.
DeleteAnon - If your son has a degree that is in demand and is a good "find", likely they are very much in contact as that is precisely the sort of client a recruiter would want.
DeleteInterested in your thoughts about outsourcing, as I worked for a time for a bulk pharmaceuticals/fine organics outsource manufacturer. It was a somewhat precarious business as contracts came and went, we often got the start-up manufacture whilst the partner assessed the viability of moving production in-house, or canning the product if sales were disappointing. The one in-house product that was our specialty was destroyed by Chinese competition, they were selling the finished product for less than our main raw material, so we had no chance.
ReplyDeleteWill - If helpful, I will start with my "street cred": I have worked at 6 companies that had manufacturing facilities for bulk drug substance, implants, and in-vitro diagnostic manufacturing. I have been involved in building out two bulk plants for GMP manufacturing from bare walls.
DeleteI would be the first to admit there is a cost advantage to owning your own plant. In my previous previous job, we could manufacture for about half the cost of a full on contract manufacturer for a bulk drug substance lot. And we could schedule our manufacturing as we would, not try to fit into someone else's schedule 9-12 months later.
That said, manufacturing plants are expensive. They are expensive to build, they are expensive to qualify, they are expensive to validate equipment, and they are expensive to maintain. Whether or not there is manufacturing going on, environment has to be maintained, cleaning has to be performed, equipment calibration and maintenance has to be tracked and performed, utilities have to be kept up, and the facility has to be kept effectively in operating order as if manufacturing was going to occur. Add to that the cost of individuals in manufacturing, Quality Control, Quality Assurance, Facilities, Metrology, Supply Chain - who have to be trained and ready even though manufacturing is not occurring - and it can be quite expensive indeed.
Sure, there is an exchange of cost and timing for moving with a contract manufacturer - but the company does not have the daily, weekly, monthly annual drain of a facility they are not using at X% capacity.
It all works for the company if they have a commercial product that they are regularly manufacturing. It works much less well when the company only periodically manufactures the product.
That said, my sense of the raw materials market is much of it has moved overseas (China is a huge supplier of raw materials) due to cost. There are still a number of plants and facilities that do bulk GMP Drug Substance and Drug Product fill (as well as device, although I have much less direct experience in that). The good ones are booked solid and even the less good ones can be pretty selective about their clientele.
It is a very capital intensive business. Most small companies that build a manufacturing plant think they are saving money; in my admittedly limited experience, the math does not work.
For two years, I shared half of a building with headhunters and that was certainly an eye opening experience since from my desk, I could hear several of them in their day to day work. From what I gather, their business model went something like this:
ReplyDeleteCompany: We need someone to fill this position and will pay $120,000 per year.
Headhunter: Joe, I just got a call from Company with a job that is just perfect for you skills and it pays $80,000 per year. Are you interested?
You could tell which office worker drove which vehicle because the headhunters all had much nicer vehicles than us lowly engineers on the other side of the building.
Ed, that does not sound wrong for that time. I will say that I think for the major firms and/or reputable firms, they get a percentage of the salary of the position, not money directly from the position. That said, sometimes the percentages can be rather high.
DeleteLike most things, I think 20% of the recruiters have 80% of the business and the rest are scrambling for the remainder.