Common Misconceptions About Life Sciences Consulting Jobs
By Kelsey Fish, Orbis Clinical Chief of Staff
Our Orbis Clinical team members speak with life science professionals all day, every day. As Orbis Clinical places both consultants and permanent talent, our recruiters take a consultative approach to ensure we understand the career objectives of the candidates we are supporting. When we speak with those who have only ever worked in permanent roles about consulting opportunities, we hear quite a few common misconceptions:
“I can’t take a consulting role, I need benefits.”
This is the most common barrier to consulting we hear. Many people are hesitant to take consulting positions for fear of not having benefits – a very real concern. Our candidates are often surprised when we explain that Orbis Clinical provides access to benefits, including health, vision, and 401k that covers individual consultants and their families. Life sciences staffing companies are always competing for top talent – providing great benefits to our employees is one of the ways we position ourselves as an employer of choice, allowing our employees to secure fantastic opportunities without concern of benefit instability.
Our advice: Don’t automatically assume a consulting position doesn’t provide benefits.
“I can’t take a consulting role, I need the stability.”
While permanent roles in other industries are absolutely more stable than consulting work, the life sciences industry is a completely different animal. As a life sciences recruitment company, we closely follow the ebbs and flows of the industry, which is chock full of mergers, acquisitions, failed products and lost funding, leading to laid-off employees searching for their next career move. We’ve also been through two recessions in recent history (2009 and 2020) and during those times, our clients froze permanent hiring but continued to hire consultants.
The other great advantage to working as a consultant through Orbis Clinical is our extensive network. Meaning, if you are a consultant with us and your project is wrapping up, we have multiple other clients with opportunities that we can help you transition onto a new assignment, typically without any stoppage of work.
Our advice: There is no certainty with permanent life sciences positions in this industry we’ve all chosen – why not give consulting a try?
“I can’t take a consulting role, I need PTO.”
One of the biggest benefits to being a consultant is higher compensation and being paid for every hour you work. Permanent roles and even some consultant agreements offer PTO, which most people consider to be a better benefit than agreements that don’t offer PTO. Orbis Clinical has a different opinion on this approach. Our agreements do not provide PTO – we pay our people a highly competitive hourly compensation for the time they worked. We believe our employees would rather have the money in their pockets up front and plan for their own unpaid time off, versus being an employer that takes money at the top and banks on their employees not taking all their PTO time. In addition, when we determine the best hourly rate for you, we factor in time-off on the front end. We have a history of understanding how many hours the typical consultant will work, and will walk through with you what your annual compensation will look like.
Our advice: PTO in an agreement isn’t automatically better than one without, especially with high compensation in your pocket and the flexibility to take unpaid time when you need it.
Myths Busted
We ultimately want what is best for the candidates we support, and we often encounter individuals who have misconceptions about consulting which prevents them from exploring fantastic career opportunities. Hopefully, this article has helped clear up a few of those! If you’d like more information on the benefits of consulting with Orbis Clinical, you can learn more about our consultant experience here.
About the Author:
Kelsey Fish is the Chief of Staff with Orbis Clinical and PharmaLogics Recruiting, the Epic Staffing Group’s Life Science Division. Overseeing systems, technology and administrative operations, she excels at uncovering inefficiencies, setting strategy, driving projects, problem solving and process improvement. In her spare time she’s usually whipping up something new in the kitchen, reading, or on a hike with her fiancé and dog.
