Researchers to create 2,500 jobs

Science nerds and computer geeks, it's payback time.

If you think your skills with algorithms and beakers -- not to mention your familiarity with what some might consider eye-glazing jargon -- are already your ticket to a bright career, it's about to get even better.

Drug researchers that contract with pharmaceutical companies to test new medicines plan to create 2,500 jobs in the Triangle over the next three to four years.

These will be jobs that pay well. Generally, salaries start at $40,000 -- above the Wake County average salary of $35,672 per year -- and can go as high as $150,000 before benefits, recruiters say.

The companies doing the hiring, known as contract research organizations, are stepping up recruiting of biologists, chemists, engineers, nurses, pharmacists and software programmers.

The companies will tap into local universities, community colleges, local staffing services and competitors. And they will be looking for employees from out of state.

Gabe Farkas, 28, moved to the Triangle from New York to join Quintiles Transnational in Durham as a biostatistician in June.

"This was a match made in heaven," Farkas said after four months of working and living in the Triangle. "I feel like I could stay here a long time."

Despite their increasing labor demands, employers will be selective.

Quintiles, which is doubling its local work force to 2,000, receives about 10,000 applications each month for company job postings worldwide. About 600 of the applicants are hired, said David Cooper, Quintiles' vice president of global staffing.

"The main thing is to have an understanding of medicine or the biological process," Cooper said.

Bad news for some

Not everyone is looking forward to the hiring wave.

The demand is expected to increase acute shortages in some professions.

Triangle hospitals are already competing with contract drug researchers and pharmaceutical companies, said Jill Radding, human resources manager at Rex Healthcare in Raleigh. Radding expects retaining and recruiting employees, especially nurses and pharmacists, to become even more difficult.

The Triangle has one of the biggest accumulations of drug research companies, also known as contract research organizations or CROs, in the world.

Most of the 90 CROs that are based in North Carolina have operations in the Triangle, according to the N.C. Biotechnology Center.

After a few lean years at the beginning of the decade, the CRO industry started to pick up about two years ago.

In 2005, CROs generated about $14 billion in revenue worldwide, according to Thomson CenterWatch, an industry trade publication. By 2010, CROs are projected to generate $25.9 billion worldwide.

Stricter regulatory requirements, growing research and development budgets, and drug makers' increasing reliance on the outsourcing of drug testing are fueling the good times, said David Windley, a Jefferies & Co. analyst who tracks the CRO industry.

To recruit and fulfill the rising number of contracts, local CROs hold job fairs, partner with universities and community colleges, post job openings on the Internet and contact staffing agencies.

INC Research, a Raleigh CRO that plans to add 1,100 employees, is partnering with Wake Technical Community College to train new hires.

Durham Technical Community College, which has a training partnership with Quintiles, offers four programs to train about 50 students every year who are interested in working at CROs. In January, a program will add 20 training slots, said Melissa Ockert, who oversees Durham Tech's clinical trials research assistant programs.