Drop off your CV/Resume
We'd love to hear from you. Send us your CV/Resume and one of our team will be in touch.
Life Sciences Talent Trends: 5 Key Takeaways from the First Half of 2025
28 Jul, 20256+ minutes
For the past three years, the life sciences industry has endured challenging circumstances. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, significant macroeconomic fluctuations had a knock-on effect which left the recruitment and hiring landscape in a turbulent and unpredictable state.
Now that we’re halfway through 2025, we can look back and note that a positive shift has finally begun to take place. The industry has seen a notable uptick in hiring, particularly in permanent roles – and this surge is expected to grow even further in the second half of the year.
To hear more about the hiring landscape from both permanent and contract perspectives, we interviewed two experienced and tenured team members from Meet Life Sciences: Paul Panks, Senior Division Director, and Kaitlyn Sumner, Account Manager. With many years of experience working in the life sciences job market, they’ve explained notable trends and shifts in H1 of this year as well as touching on their predictions for H2.
In this month’s edition of our #LifeSciencesAffectsUsAll newsletter, we’ll be covering five key takeaways following our discussion. From the prevalence of contract hiring to increases in time-to-hire, we’ll touch on busy markets, emerging trends, and the benefits of working with a talent solutions agency in the current climate.
1. Permanent Hires on the Rise with Time-to-Hire Slowing
In a market that’s been highly volatile and slow moving, there have been several positive shifts in the first half of 2025.
Firstly, it appears that permanent hiring has been on the rise. According to Kaitlyn, who focuses on permanent hiring for mostly mid to large organizations, there’s been “an uptick in hiring that I do think will continue into H2. Historically, it is a busier time of year from a permanent perspective due to budgets and organizations trying to gain headcount before the end of year".
Paul was in agreement, saying that he’d also witnessed a bigger uptick in the market than expected. “I think it will still take time before we see more real consistency in the recruitment world, but with that being said, we have seen more investment in biotech in the first half of this year”.
Paul is one of our Division Directors who solely focuses on contract recruitment. He works mostly with small to mid-size biotechs across all areas from molecule to market. While this boost in investments doesn’t parallel that of the post-Covid boom, it’s certainly positive to witness more companies receiving funding compared to the last few years.
While the market sems to be on the rise, one thing that’s slowed is time to hire. We have seen an increase in interview stages – across both permanent and contract roles – with clear indications that companies are putting more steps in place to make sure they lock in the right candidate.
2. The Impact of Layoffs and a Continued Shift Towards Contract Hiring
Anyone in the life sciences industry will have noticed an increase in company-wide layoffs since the start of the year. While this is not uncommon in the industry – there are often more downs than ups when developing groundbreaking drugs – it does have an impact on the hiring and recruitment landscape.
An increase in layoffs means an increase in strong, available job seekers on the market. According to Paul, “it makes clients get better applicants to their direct job listings, so they effectively are in less need of recruiters”. From the recruitment side, it’s vital to deliver 10/10 candidates who can rival the excellent applicants who are applying for roles themselves.
So, there’s more quality talent on the market at the moment – but what type of hiring is more commonly taking place?
In the past few years, companies have been taking on more contract than permanent hires. While this disparity has started to stabilize, we are still seeing more of a shift towards contract hiring. In Paul’s words, “In my world, I can see that the majority of biotech companies are conscious of their runway.”
Essentially, businesses are more short-term focused, so there’s still some hesitancy when investing in people on a long-term basis.
3. Commercial Roles and Medical Writing Positions the Rise
In H1 of 2025, there has been more demand for later stage positions, such as commercial, sales, and medical affairs roles. According to Kaitlyn, these types of positions are where “the majority of our bulk hiring” has taken place.
The reason for this is largely due to an increase in upcoming launches and products moving into later phases. These roles are crucial for maximizing the success of new drugs and medical devices and ensuring they reach the right audience while also driving revenue and growth from a business perspective.
Paul also highlighted that, although it wasn’t hugely surprising, medical writing had been very busy in the first half of the year. “Medical writing has always been a good contract market, but we're definitely seeing a lot of our best medical writers at full capacity. So medical writing, that space in general, remains very busy”.
The main reason for this trend is that as life sciences sectors grow and advance, it’s vital that businesses can provide precise, impactful, and regulatory-compliant documentation. And as the Pharma industry grows exponentially, the need for quality writers increases in parallel with the complexity of global compliance.
4. Predictions for Hiring Trends and Demands in H2
As we enter the second half of 2025, we asked Paul and Kaitlyn about their H2 predictions for the hiring and recruitment landscape.
While he doesn’t think it’s going to peak just yet, Paul is expecting to see an uptick in US manufacturing. “I’m expecting more CDMO – and that space to do with tariffs in the US – to be happening in the drug development space. I would predict more of a planning stage in H2 with a real increase in hiring taking place in 2026”.
On the permanent side, Kaitlyn predicts that H2 will see an increase in positions, but more generally because companies need to spend their 2025 budgets.
“We typically see an increase in jobs across Q3 and Q4 as many company budgets tend not to roll over into the next year. As for a specific vertical, it is quite hard to pinpoint as it’s company specific. One thing that I have noticed is that larger pharma businesses are starting to rely more on global hiring rather than just US."
With there being somewhat more of a financial burden in the US, there seems to be a shift towards hiring clinical development teams in Europe – particularly as salaries tend to be lower.
One final point to add is that both expect growth in the health tech space, with more positions being added in the health tech and med tech sectors in H2 of this year.
5) The Benefits of Partnering with a Talent Solutions Provider
Finally, we asked our experts what their last words of advice would be to life sciences companies right now. Both suggested trying to find new hires through a talent solutions agency.
Paul’s reasoning was that: “Although lots of companies fill positions through their internal network or through direct applicants, this isn’t always best practice in the long run. While there is that additional cost when working with a talent solutions partner, finding a 10/10 candidate who’s the right person for the role and company leads to an overall return on that investment in the future, which works in both parties’ best interests.”
Kaitlyn was in agreement. For her, a major point to add is that working with an agency doesn’t mean an additional source for resumes and candidates – it’s having a true partner that has a genuine understanding of your business’ goals and needs. “As industry experts, we are here to consult you based on what we’re finding in the market. Global talent providers like Meet can offer solutions to any and all your problems”.
Most importantly, we can work together in partnership. We have a huge team of experts who genuinely want to see your business succeed and bring new drugs and devices to market by having the right people on board because, ultimately, life sciences affects us all.
