Smith Hanley Associates’ Eda Zullo, is a Principal in the firm and the leading recruiter in the field of Commercial Analytics within pharmaceutical manufacturers as well as consulting organizations that support pharmaceutical manufacturers. Here are her thoughts on what happened in hiring in 2024, and 2025 Commercial Analytics trends.
2024
Over hiring during the pandemic and shortly after the pandemic ended meant a slowdown and reset in the market in 2023 and 2024. Salaries were inflated during the pandemic so offers to change jobs in 2023 and 2024 did not come with big increases. While employees did hear about opportunities elsewhere, insecurity about changing positions as the industry awaits the impact of the recent presidential election, and retention bonuses being offered to keep the status quo has kept the job market quiet.
The cost to borrow money was very high in 2023 and most of 2024 and this limited drug development and the buying and selling of businesses. This limited opportunities for movement for commercial analytics professionals. It did open some options for financially savvy analytic professionals to work within the investment community assessing buy and sell opportunities in pharmaceuticals. These openings are expected to continue to be one of the 2025 commercial analytics trends.
Working from home/remotely continued to be a priority for most people. Two days a week in the office has evolved into being enough time for Commercial Analytics professionals to interact with their internal client groups as well as satisfying the desire of employees for less commuting and a more flexible work schedule. Consultants have more flexibility in home location but then are required to visit in-person as need be.
Director Positions
The aggressive salary increases at the end of the pandemic drove Director salaries to be consistently at $200K and above. Along with this increase in salary the Director positions have evolved from managing staff and internal clients exclusively to also doing hands-on analytic work. Some of this is evolution of the position and the greater need for data expertise but also cost saving measures for the business. Directors need to continue increasing and honing their hands-on skills to remain viable experts as well as good assessors of the direction their staff is moving. Increased hands-on skills for Directors will be one of the 2025 commercial analytics trends.
Commercial Analytics Specialties
Forecasting
New drug forecasting, pipeline and in-line forecasting and timing of going off patent all impact this recruiting area. Most firms have segmented therapeutic areas for forecasting, so keeping an eye out for openings in your therapeutic specialty can pay off. The fourth quarter is always the busy time for forecasting skills as budgeting is a priority. Job searching in this time period is ideal for forecasters as hiring managers are already laser focused on budgeting needs and skills.
Sales Analytics, Sales Force Effectiveness, Sales Operations
Incentive compensation analysis has typically been outsourced to consultants but now pharma companies want to bring this analysis in house. Presenting to senior leadership with an interesting and informative “story” is a critical skill in this specialty area.
Data Science, Decision Science, Data Management
Programming skills in SQL, Python, SAS and/or R are often a must and a personality that likes digging deep into the data is a minimum requirement and is certainly one of the 2025 commercial analytics trends. There is constant pressure to make sure the “right” data is getting analyzed so that there is a fine-tuning of analysis that impacts business requirements.
Market Access, Brand, Sales Analytics
Brand analytics and sales analytics are becoming more and more omni channel analytics – the new hot thing. The ability to do segmentation and targeting was always part of this role but now even deeper dives into what channels customers are looking at and when in the process they are doing this is becoming essential information for the business.
