360 Degree Human Resourcing

They are quite happy not to be the biggest player in healthcare resourcing, but after nearly thirty years in the business, PanMedica are certainly considered to be one of the wisest. John Harper, founder and Managing Director of PanMedica, holds up his newly designed logo. He is very pleased with it. “360 degree resourcing really sums us up,” he says. “In whichever healthcare direction you care to look, from sales to marketing, training to management, clinical appointments to board level appointments, our mission is always to be the one single, knowledgeable point of contact for both our clients and our candidates.”

Why PanMedica works so well for employers.

John Harper and the PanMedica team have been around for a long time, and all that experience has refined their operation to a high level of skill and efficiency. Employers always seem to really relish the fact that complicated issues become simplified once they are on board.

One of the main reasons that things become so easy is that PanMedica is a client facing operation. Every employer who uses PanMedica is assigned to a consultant who becomes their own dedicated Account Manager. This then becomes a very real, business partnership when dealing with ongoing resourcing requirements. And PanMedica never, ever, see it as merely a matter of recruiting people. Those Account Managers really immerse themselves in their client’s business environment and culture so that they can truly understand their needs, rather than just fill a hole. Their knowledge of the healthcare industry, people resourcing and the NHS gives them a real ability to actually talk business and even innovate completely new ways of marketing products. Time and time again PanMedica have set up initiatives which have lead to the creation of market-leading products.

In today’s changing and evolving market PanMedica’s thorough “360 degree” approach certainly makes them stand out from their younger, brasher competitors. You somehow know that this experienced company don’t promise what they can’t deliver. That’s probably why their initiatives constantly prove to be so effective and, more importantly, help their clients to maximise their profitability.

PanMedica have a great track record in outsourced, fixed-term contracts, from vacancy management to speciality sales or educational teams. A measure of how well they get to understand their client’s needs is that they have actually placed people who, in just that one short period, have risen to be ranked the national number one sales representative in the whole team. Many clients who work closely with PanMedica surprise themselves by coming up with totally new and refreshing marketing models. And that’s when PanMedica really come into their own, by selecting, motivating and rewarding exactly the right people to deliver those models. Sounds easy, but any Marketing Director will tell you it isn’t.

Steve Waller, Business Director of PanMedica has a good point. “Many companies have to hire Contract Based Personnel, but there is a long held belief amongst them that they are downgrading quality as a result.” He goes on to say: “That’s always based on bad previous experiences. At PanMedica we simply encourage companies to hire to the same standard as their own headcount employees, that’s why our candidate resources are only selected on that basis.”

That quality-focused approach seems to be part of the very fabric of PanMedica and successfully carries right through into the recruitment of all headcount positions. As rival consultancies know only too well, it has often lead to PanMedica coming out as lead supplier in multi-agency briefs to build new teams.

“It always works back to that Account Manager/client relationship,” says Steve. “Working so closely with our clients allows us to really understand their business needs. So we can then go out and handpick candidates who truly fit the bill, be proactive, rather than just offering an off-the-shelf solution like so many agencies seem to do. We don’t complicate resourcing by deploying large infrastructures with multi-levelled approaches. They only seem to baffle most of the people I talk to in the pharmaceutical industry.”

You get what you see with PanMedica. A friendly, down to earth and straight talking style, and often, it’s what you don’t see that really counts. These unsung heroes have recently built a number of successful sales teams by actually advising clients not to advertise their expansion plan needs… thereby not alerting competitors to the fact that they are building a new infrastructure. So often PanMedica are the silent, secret weapon behind effective resourcing campaigns.

Candidates. People not pawns.

Candidates really seem to like PanMedica. Probably because those thirty years of experience have forged another of their invaluable company ethics – to be good listeners. The company seems to know instinctively what a stressful experience changing employers can be for many people and their families. But PanMedica candidates will tell you how much they were made to feel like a human being, not just an item for sale. Of course PanMedica Account Managers have to listen. They have to understand their candidates just as well as their clients. They have to know their wish lists, appreciate their skills and advise them on their options. And those Account Managers, by design, only work with a small, non-competing set of clients. That means that they can answer any number of precise questions or concerns that the candidate may have about the career opportunity at hand. That’s something you just don’t get with the sort of agencies that work on a regional basis, often with upwards of 300 clients to promote.

There is one thing, however, that PanMedica does not do, and it makes them rather special. They do not focus their efforts on supplying the healthcare industry with trainees. Their real strength is in sourcing and moving industry experienced talent into more specialised positions, mostly in secondary care, NHS liaison, Management, Marketing or above. They can, and do, handle GP sales vacancies easily but their fine reputation in speciality recruitment means that they tend to handle the industry’s more pivotal positions.

Something that always pleases the people at PanMedica is how often a candidate will recommend them to a colleague. To risk the future career of a friend by recommending a consultancy shows real confidence in their caring, hands-on approach.

“I like the way they only contact me when they have something relevant to say,” is a sentiment echoed both by candidates and clients of this impressive recruitment company. Busy industry personnel especially seem to hate being bombarded by junk mail, email and gimmicky promotions. They register for serious reasons… life plans, career patterns… and PanMedica respect that, preferring to concentrate their efforts on overall job satisfaction.

The future.

Managing Director John Harper is certain: “To simply keep doing what we’re doing, because experience has taught us how to do it well,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean standing still, because we never stand still. We are always evolving as a company, learning how to create new and innovative ways to help our clients market their products, and we’ll keep doing just that. Frankly, we’d rather build on our expertise and remain the intelligent choice of consultancy than concentrate on being the biggest player in the field”.

T: 01494 461001
E: resourcing@panmedica.co.uk
www.panmedica.co.uk