Mapping a regulatory affairs market that everyone insisted did not exist.
A UK life sciences group was told repeatedly that senior regulatory affairs talent was unobtainable. A full-market map counted the population and found the constraint was the job specification, not the market.
Sector: Life sciences. Market: Cambridge & the Golden Triangle. Services used: Talent mapping, Talent intelligence.
A UK life sciences group was told repeatedly that senior regulatory affairs talent was unobtainable. A full-market map counted the population and found the constraint was the job specification, not the market.
The situation
A mid-size UK pharmaceutical group needed to build a regulatory affairs function of nine people over eighteen months, ahead of a submission programme. Two agencies had worked the brief for five months and produced four candidates between them, three of whom withdrew. Both agencies reported the same conclusion: the market was empty.
What we did
We were asked to count it rather than to fill it. The boundary was set at senior regulatory affairs professionals across the UK, deliberately including adjacent sectors — medical devices, veterinary medicines, CROs and consultancies — that the previous searches had excluded. Every identified individual was verified against primary sources, with qualification and therapeutic-area experience recorded separately rather than collapsed into a single seniority judgement.
What the research found
Four findings that changed the decision.
The population was not empty
The full market contained substantially more qualified people than either agency had reported. The difference was almost entirely adjacency: roughly a third of the identified population sat in devices, veterinary and CRO settings rather than in pharmaceutical companies.
Three requirements were doing the damage
The specification asked for continuous pharmaceutical-sector service, a named therapeutic area and a specific submission type. Removing the first alone more than doubled the qualified pool; the third turned out to be a preference that no one could defend when asked directly.
Geography was a larger constraint than seniority
A significant share of the population clustered around Cambridge and the wider Golden Triangle, but the client's site was outside comfortable commuting range under a four-day office policy.
Reward was competitive; the proposition was not
Base salary sat comfortably within the market range. What deterred candidates was the office requirement and the absence of a clear route beyond the submission programme.
The outcome
The client revised the specification to remove the continuous-service and submission-type requirements, reduced the office requirement to two days, and re-pitched the roles as a function build rather than a programme staffing exercise. Hiring resumed against the population we had identified. The map itself — the full population, the organisation list and the structure work — transferred to the client and was reused twice more over the following year for adjacent roles, at no additional research cost.
The point of it
“The market is empty” is a hypothesis, not a finding. It becomes a finding only when somebody counts, and in our experience the count contradicts it more often than it confirms it.
A note on confidentiality. Clients are never named without written consent, and we do not publish project values, candidate records or commercially sensitive figures. These accounts describe real engagement patterns with identifying detail removed. Where a specific number is not stated here, it is not a number we have published — please do not infer one.
How this engagement was structured
The commercial and methodological shape of the project, for readers assessing whether a similar approach would suit their own situation.
| Service | Talent mapping |
|---|---|
| Scope | A defined engineering function across a named set of UK and international employers, mapped to individual level with structure analysis. |
| Commercial model | Fixed project fee in pounds, agreed against a written scope before work began. No commission and no percentage of salary. |
| Data ownership | Every record produced transferred to the client permanently at the close of the project. |
| Lawful basis | Legitimate interest under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, documented for the project with an agreed retention period. |
Method
What we actually did
The decisions that determined whether this project produced something usable.
Boundary agreed before research
Function, seniority band, target organisations and geography written into the proposal. The client’s original list was expanded during scoping to include two adjacent-sector employer groups that turned out to hold a significant share of the relevant population.
Organisation-by-organisation coverage
Systematic research across every target employer rather than opportunistic searching, so the population count could be stated as complete against the agreed scope rather than indicative.
Title normalisation
Seniority normalised against evidenced scope — team size, reporting line, decision rights — because titles at the organisations in scope were not comparable as written.
Accessibility segmentation
Every individual assessed for realistic mobility using tenure, recent structural change and, at senior level, notice and deferred compensation.
What this engagement demonstrates
The accessible population was materially smaller than the headline count, and the difference changed the hiring plan. Counting the market is only useful if you also count how much of it can actually move.
A note on how we present client work
Client identities and commercially sensitive details are withheld unless we hold explicit written permission to name them. Where figures are quoted they come from the engagement itself. Where an example is constructed to illustrate a method rather than describe a specific client, we label it as illustrative rather than presenting it as a case study. We would rather publish a less impressive page than an unverifiable one.
Questions we are asked about this work
Can we speak to a reference client?
In many cases yes, subject to the client’s agreement. Some engagements are confidential and will stay that way — which is itself a reasonable indication of how we would treat yours.
Would this approach work for our situation?
That is exactly what a scoping call establishes. Thirty minutes is usually enough to tell you whether the method transfers to your market and what the right scope and fee would be — including telling you if it does not transfer.
How much would a comparable project cost?
It is quoted as a fixed fee against a written scope, driven by market breadth, seniority and the depth of validation required. Because scope drives the fee, a meaningful figure needs a short conversation about what you actually need.
Recognise the problem?
Most of these engagements began with a client describing a symptom. Thirty minutes on a call is usually enough to work out what is actually causing it.