AstraZeneca celebrates success of FMCG marketer recruitment
pharmafile | April 26, 2006 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
Targeted campaign pays off as the number of candidates joining the company from outside the pharma industry increases by five-fold in one year.
AstraZeneca says a new strategy of recruiting many of its UK marketers from outside the pharmaceutical industry has been a great success, bringing in fresh talent and helping to cut costs at the same time.
The drive to bring new blood into its marketing department has produced a huge increase in the number of marketers recruited from major retail brands.
The company's marketing division has around 500 posts to fill each year, and in 2005 15% of this intake came from outside the industry, up from just 3% in 2003.
AstraZeneca's Luton-based marketing team made a conscious decision to look outside the industry for talent, and says marketers with experience in the consumer world will help it transform its business model.
Head of talent development and resourcing Andrew Armes said: "AstraZeneca and the whole industry face new challenges that people born and bred into pharma haven't seen before.
"The future for the pharmaceutical industry is higher sales and lower margins and we're looking to attract people with the experience and skill sets to meet this challenge."
Focusing on the FMCG sector, AstraZeneca has taken on marketers from companies such as Diageo, Unilever and Nestle to prepare itself for the way the industry is changing.
The company's campaign focused on FMCG companies because of their fast-moving pace, Armes said.
Despite the strategy to diversify its marketing recruitment, Armes stresses that AstraZeneca still fills 85% of vacancies from healthcare industries – a level the company expects to remain more or less constant.
Armes says there are three strands to the recruitment drive: switching the majority of recruitment advertising for an ongoing PR campaign, changing the way the remaining advertising is used and raising its profile among the wider recruitment community.
AstraZeneca engaged workplace communications consultancy CHA two years ago to run a PR and media relations campaign targeting potential candidates and the HR community.
The company briefed the agency to raise candidate and recruiter awareness of the benefits of working for AZ, and shift perceptions of pharma away from 'white coats and lab technicians.'
In its first two years the combined results of the PR campaign and Armes' focus on raising awareness of the corporate profile allowed AstraZeneca to reduce its marketing recruitment advertising budget by 95% to around 20,000 pounds in 2005.
"We don't really advertise specific job vacancies anymore," Armes commented. "Any advertising spend we have is used in a more generic way to talk about the capabilities and skills of the people we need, as opposed to 'we need to fill a sales representative role.'"
Armes believes AstraZeneca's recruitment campaign has tapped into a desire among employees for a career that has a positive social impact.
"Increasingly, people recognise that the pharmaceutical industry's focus is to improve the quality of life for millions of people who suffer from major illnesses; this is what sets our industry apart from others.
"You really do feel that you are making a difference here. Obviously it's not completely altruistic, but there is a strong sense that we help people and thats something you cannot help but feel good about."
Research conducted by MORI last summer found the general public rated pharma higher than a number of other leading UK industries.
The opinion poll questioned more than 2,000 people and pharma received the highest favourable opinion among a selection of comparable industries, including food manufacturing, chemicals, rail transport, banking and tobacco industries.
AstraZeneca plans to expand the focus of its campaign – raising awareness within the organisation of the positive impact on company culture from recruiting outside the pharma industry.
