AUG. 12–CAMBRIDGE, MA — HELP WANTED: Growing global biotechnology company looking to fill 150 job openings, starting immediately.
While unemployment is hovering at 6 percent nationally, the field of biotech is one that is worth exploring.
Cambridge-based Genzyme, with annual sales of $1 billion plus, has advertised 150 available jobs — from office temporaries, to business and manufacturing personnel, to PhD’s in protein chemistry and molecular biology.
Genzyme’s name combines “genome” and “enzyme,” two words that are becoming increasingly familiar in the workplace as the biotech industry enjoys extraordinary growth.
“It wasn’t too long ago treating genetically-based diseases was inconceivable,” Stephen Ernst, editor of Bioscience Technology Magazine (Morris Plains, NJ) told Reuters. “Now, if we can find what causes disease, we can develop a genetic therapy.”
Spokesman Peter Wiley of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, which has 412 corporate members, says that in the past three years the state’s biotechnical work force grew from 23,600 to 28,000 “as new start-ups continue to form and biotechnology firms add manufacturing and marketing skills.”
When Genzyme’s director of recruiting Jo Norton started in 1995, the enterprise had 2,200 employees. Today, it employs 5,500. Founded 21 years ago, Genzyme now ranks on both Business Week’s Global 1000 list and Standard & Poor’s 500.
Similarly, Amgen Inc., a biotech leader based in Thousand Oaks, CA., has nearly tripled in size, from 3,400 employees in 1997 to 9,700 employees today. The company’s drugs are used in the treatment of illnesses such as cancer, kidney disease, and rheumatoid arthritis, among others. Amgen sales leaped from $2.2 billion in 1997 to $3.5 billion last year.
At Genzyme, a scientist with a doctorate can earn from $75,000 to $95,000 and a research associate from $25,000 to $35,000, a spokesman said. A university degree is not necessarily required for the latter, as many are trained on-the-job.
Genzyme’s mission statement says it seeks employees with a “sense of urgency” about making “a major positive impact on the lives of patients with difficult diseases.”
“We’re working to fight genetic disorders and kidney disease, doing therapy research in the cardiovascular area and developing anti-cancer vaccines,” Norton says.