Salary rift emerges across pharma

There is a growing divide between what some companies are willing to pay and the salaries workers will accept with outdated salary bands, an increasing number of roles with bigger responsibilities and a fast-changing employment market to blame, according to an expert industry recruiter.

PPD Search Founder and CEO Elizabeth Pettit has spent 18 years at the coal face of Australian pharma recruitment and said all organisations want to hire "superstars" for their team but there are those that "don't want to or can't pay market rate". She warned paying mediocre salaries attracts mediocre talent.  

"One of the most difficult conversations in recruitment is telling an organisation that the role it has designed and the salary it has approved belong to two different markets," she told Pharma in Focus.