Talent Knows No Geographic Boundary. Why Does Pharma Still Hire Like It Does?

The short version: pharma is filtering out experienced commercialization talent by ZIP code while automating the desk work that geography was supposed to protect. Hire the best person for the problem, build teams around capabilities rather than locations, and bring people together deliberately when the work requires it.

There is a group of people in our industry that I think we need to talk about more.

They are experienced. Highly specialized. They have launched products, built patient-support programs, negotiated access strategies, managed GTN, designed distribution networks, led Finance organizations, worked through regulatory complexity and solved problems that sometimes take decades of experience to recognize.

Many of them are also not living within commuting distance of Boston, Cambridge, New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco or one of the other traditional pharmaceutical hubs.

And increasingly, that second fact is outweighing the first.

This is not just anecdotal. In 2025, a BioSpace poll found that roughly eight in ten respondents living outside major biopharma hubs struggled to find work because of their location. In the survey covering that year's hiring plans, only 20 percent of responding employers said they would recruit and hire regardless of location.

There are signs of improvement. BioSpace's 2026 employment research found that figure had risen to 28 percent, and that 35 percent of organizations acknowledged relocation requirements cause them to miss candidates.

That number should make every pharma leader stop for a moment.

What Exactly Are We Optimizing For?

There are jobs in our industry that absolutely require physical presence.

You cannot manufacture a biologic from your kitchen table. You cannot run a laboratory experiment over Teams. Certain clinical, manufacturing, quality and operational activities are inherently tied to a physical environment.

But that does not describe the entire pharmaceutical enterprise.

Many of these functions spent years proving that meaningful work could happen across geography.

And yet we seem to have arrived at an odd moment.

We are simultaneously talking about using AI, automation and RPA to perform entire workflows without a human being sitting at a desk, while telling an extraordinary human expert that we cannot hire them because their desk is in the wrong state.

There is something inconsistent about that.

Presence Is Not the Same as Engagement

Being in person does not equal being engaged. And being remote does not equal being disconnected.

I have seen both sides throughout my career.

I have seen people sitting 20 feet apart who barely understand what the other person's function does.

I have also seen teams distributed across the country come together around an important problem and accomplish more in two days than an organization accomplishes in months of standing meetings.

The difference was not geography. It was purpose.

We Have Been Asking the Wrong Question

That is the distinction I think we lost somewhere in the debate between remote and return to office.

And I am certainly not arguing against being together. Quite the opposite.

I think people are yearning for connection.

Something changed after COVID. Teams became more distributed. Relationships became more transactional. Calendars filled with video calls. Some of the informal mentorship, hallway conversations and human connection that helped many of us grow in our careers became harder to find.

Simply mandating three or four days in an office does not automatically bring that back.

Proximity is not the same thing as connection. Connection has to be designed.

Bring People Together When There Is a Reason

• Bring the commercialization team together to make a consequential launch decision.
• Bring Finance, Market Access, Patient Services and Commercial together to understand the same patient journey.
• Bring leaders together to challenge assumptions.
• Bring teams together for workshops, planning, problem-solving, mentorship and relationship building.

And when being together matters, be together. Fully. Intentionally.

Then allow people to go back and do the work.

The Knowledge Base Is Spreading. The Hiring Model Is Not.

There is another consequence we should consider.

Life sciences talent remains heavily concentrated in traditional clusters. CBRE's 2025 research continues to rank Boston-Cambridge, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington-Baltimore and New York-New Jersey among the country's dominant R&D talent markets. But the same body of research identifies meaningful life sciences talent in places including Raleigh-Durham, Houston, Indianapolis, Denver-Boulder, Seattle, Madison and Dallas-Fort Worth.

And experienced people have moved.

They moved during COVID. They followed spouses. They wanted to raise families somewhere different. They became caregivers. They discovered different communities. Or after twenty years of building expertise, they simply decided that where they wanted to live should not determine whether they could continue contributing to an industry they love.

Some are now being asked to choose between relocating and continuing their careers. Recent cases show this is not theoretical. When EMD Serono began requiring R&D staff at its Billerica, Massachusetts institute to work on site at least three days a week, roughly 70 previously remote employees living more than 50 miles away were given three options: commute, relocate with company support, or resign with severance.

The Contradiction I See From the Outside

I see this from the outside now, too.

As an advisor, I can sit with a pharmaceutical company, help solve an extraordinarily complicated commercialization problem, work alongside its executives, fly in for the moments when being together matters, and then continue the work from somewhere else.

Companies routinely accept that model from external experts. Yet sometimes they will not consider essentially the same geographic arrangement for an employee.

That contradiction is worth examining.

Expertise Without Boundaries. Presence With Purpose.

Because the future does not have to be remote versus office. There is a much more interesting model.

• Hire the best person for the problem.
• Build teams around capabilities rather than ZIP codes.
• Use technology for what technology does well.
• Use AI and automation to remove work that does not require human judgment.
• Use our offices for what people do exceptionally well together: debate, create, mentor, challenge, decide and connect.

Then bring people together deliberately at the moments that matter.

An Industry Built on Finding Rare Things

Pharma is an industry built on finding extraordinarily rare things.

Perhaps we should recognize that extraordinary talent can be rare, too.

And when we find it, the first question should not be whether it lives close enough to headquarters. It should be: what could this person help us accomplish?

Talent knows no geographic boundary. Maybe our organizations should not either.

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Sources and Notes

 

The views expressed are my own and are not made on behalf of any current or former employer. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.