Hiring delays rarely stay confined to HR. In life sciences, they can affect clinical timelines, team performance, funding milestones, and ultimately the pace of drug development.
When organizations talk about hiring delays, the conversation often centers on recruiting metrics. How long has the role been open? How many candidates have been interviewed? Is talent acquisition moving quickly enough?
Those questions matter, but they miss the larger picture.
To explore the broader business impact of hiring delays, we sat down with Adam Kaner, General Manager of PharmaLogics Recruiting, and Ann Corkum, an independent HR consultant who has spent years partnering with biotech and pharmaceutical organizations. Their conversation revealed a consistent theme: hiring delays are operational challenges that deserve the same attention as any other risk to a drug development program.
Drug Development Depends on More Than a Recruiting Team
One of the first observations Ann shared was how quickly organizations frame hiring as an HR problem once someone leaves.
“What’s clearly an organizational, often management, sometimes culture issue quickly becomes an HR and recruiting crisis.”
From her perspective, that shift oversimplifies the issue and often delays meaningful action.
Hiring decisions involve multiple stakeholders. Recruiters can identify and engage qualified talent, but hiring managers determine how quickly candidates move through the process and whether decisions are made before strong candidates accept opportunities elsewhere.
Adam agreed that accountability needs to be shared across the organization.
“When organizations view talent acquisition as a strategic partner rather than a service function, the conversation changes,” he explained. “The goal isn’t simply filling an open position. It’s making sure the organization has the people needed to achieve upcoming milestones.”
That distinction becomes especially important in drug development, where every hiring decision influences execution across the business.
Hiring Delays Create Operational Risk Long Before Deadlines Are Missed
Many of the costs associated with an open position never appear on a financial report.
Ann pointed to the impact on the employees who remain.
“When a position stays open, someone still has to do the work,” she said. “The longer the vacancy exists, the more responsibility shifts onto the rest of the team.”
Over time, those additional responsibilities begin affecting productivity, engagement, and morale. Teams adapt because they have to, but sustained pressure often produces new problems.
Adam sees those downstream effects frequently.
“As workloads continue to expand, organizations begin facing burnout, lower productivity, and eventually attrition,” he said. “Now you’ve created an even larger staffing challenge than the one you started with.”
What begins as one vacancy can quickly evolve into multiple talent gaps that are harder to recover from.
Drug Development Timelines Leave Little Room for Hiring Delays
Throughout the discussion, both Adam and Ann returned to one area where hiring delays carry particularly significant consequences: clinical operations.
“In a drug development scenario, everything is about execution,” Ann said. “Clinical operations isn’t on the critical path. Clinical operations IS the critical path.”
Without the right people coordinating trials, activating sites, managing vendors, and driving execution, timelines begin to slip. Delays at one stage ripple into the next, affecting regulatory submissions, manufacturing readiness, commercial planning, and future funding opportunities.
Adam also noted that today’s funding environment raises the stakes even further.
For many emerging biotech companies, hitting development milestones is directly connected to securing additional investment. Delayed hiring can slow the work required to generate clinical data or reach regulatory objectives, placing additional pressure on already limited cash runway.
Viewed through that lens, hiring becomes part of operational planning rather than an administrative task.
The Hidden Cost of “Not Having Time”
One of the most common patterns Ann encounters is hiring managers delaying hiring activities because they’re overwhelmed with day-to-day responsibilities.
Reviewing resumes gets pushed back. Interview feedback waits another day. Interview debrief meetings move to next week.
Those delays often feel reasonable in the moment.
The problem is that they extend the very situation creating the extra work.
“The less time and attention a hiring manager devotes to hiring,” Ann explained, “the longer it’s going to take to hire well.”
Longer hiring timelines also increase the likelihood of settling for a candidate who isn’t the right long-term fit. That decision often results in repeating the hiring process months later, adding more disruption to the business.
Investing time in hiring early frequently saves considerably more time later.
More Applicants Doesn’t Mean Easier Hiring
Many life sciences organizations assume today’s market should make hiring easier because more professionals are looking for opportunities.
Ann challenged that assumption.
A larger applicant pool creates a larger screening challenge. Hundreds of resumes still need to be evaluated before identifying the relatively small group of candidates with the right technical expertise, leadership capabilities, and organizational fit.
“The funnel has become much bigger,” she explained. “That doesn’t make it easier to find the right person.”
Adam added that this is where specialized recruiting partners increasingly provide value.
Instead of simply sourcing candidates, experienced life sciences recruiters can help organizations evaluate existing applicant pools, identify qualified talent more efficiently, assess both technical and interpersonal strengths, and determine whether additional search efforts are actually necessary.
That consultative approach reflects how PharmaLogics Recruiting supports clients. Rather than relying on traditional commission-driven recruiting models, PharmaLogics Recruiting tailors its engagement to each organization’s hiring goals, helping life sciences companies efficiently identify the right talent while reducing unnecessary hiring costs and maintaining momentum across critical business initiatives.
Hiring for Readiness Instead of Potential Alone
Toward the end of the conversation, Ann introduced another question she encourages hiring managers to ask before every search.
Can your team realistically support an investment hire?
An investment hire is someone who has long-term potential but requires significant coaching and training before they can independently perform a role.
In some situations, that’s exactly the right decision.
In others, particularly when organizations are approaching key development milestones and when existing resources are already stretched thin in a small biotech, success depends on someone who can contribute immediately.
Understanding that distinction early helps organizations define realistic candidate profiles and avoid extending searches unnecessarily.
Looking Beyond the Open Position
Hiring decisions influence far more than headcount.
They affect project execution, team capacity, regulatory timelines, funding milestones, and ultimately the speed of drug development.
Organizations that recognize those connections tend to approach hiring differently. They involve hiring managers early, treat recruiting as a collaborative business function, and make talent decisions with broader organizational objectives in mind.
At PharmaLogics Recruiting, that’s exactly how we approach every search. Our team brings deep life sciences expertise, transparent communication, and flexible engagement models designed around each client’s business goals. Whether supporting a single critical hire or a broader team build, we focus on helping organizations secure the talent needed to keep drug development moving forward with confidence.
Ready to strengthen your hiring strategy? Connect with PharmaLogics Recruiting to discuss how a strategic talent partner can help you reduce hiring delays, protect critical milestones, and keep your drug development programs on track.
About Adam
Adam Kaner is the General Manager of PharmaLogics Recruiting. He has over 18 years of recruiting experience in Life Sciences, with almost 17 years at PharmaLogics. Adam has provided recruitment support across North America and the EU, partnering with companies from seed-funded startups through big pharma, on individual searches through large-scale build-outs. He has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration with a focus in Healthcare Management from the University of Connecticut.
About Ann
Ann is in her ninth year as an independent HR consultant, with over 20 years of in-house HR experience in private biotechs to global pharma companies prior to that. Her consulting practice is focused on helping CEOs and executive teams at small biotechs to lead their people organizations more effectively. Whether that’s helping existing teams to function better together, identifying obstacles, or overseeing the parts of the HR function, her work enables these small companies to feel secure, without having full-time HR leadership in place before they really need it. Ann’s approach combines practical, fit-for-purpose business solutions with subtle coaching to help leaders sharpen their skills along the way, minus the typical 6-month coaching commitment.