As scores of pharma companies present at the Citi Global Healthcare Forum this week in New York, there’s still plenty of activity in California.

At last week’s Global Partnering Conference in LaJolla, San-Diego based trade group Biocom brought together executives from life sciences companies, R & D start-ups and big pharma to share knowledge and network. A big part of the agenda: To help smaller companies understand the needs of big pharma.

Jennifer Cayer, a member or Biocom’s advisory committee says, “Mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry have left the surviving companies with more projects than they can handle.”

In Northern California, construction crews in Novato, California are busy doubling the size of production facilities at BioMarin to deliver products for testing and sale. The North Bay Business Journal reports that BioMarin will hire “at least a couple hundred more employees.”

We see over 140 jobs at BioMarin now, including positions in corporate finance, medical writing, and quality assurance.

Scores of pharma companies have announced their participation in next week’s Citi Global HealthCare Forum in New York, Pfizer’s made a big play to show they intend to stay in Manhattan.

On Tuesday, Pfizer unveiled plans for a New York Center for Therapeutic Innovation in partnership with seven major research-based medical centers in the city, including NYU’s Langone Medical Center, Columbia University Medical Center, and Sloan-Kettering. (Pfizer’s first Center for Therapeutic Innovation is in San Francisco).

The Center will be housed in the brand new Alexandria Center for Life Science on East 29th Street and FRD Drive. Pfizer will join IMClone Systems and Kadmon Pharmaceuticals in the first of three towers to be built at the Alexandria Center.

No jobs listed yet, but we recommend you keep your eye on Pfizer and the Alexandria Center in the coming months if you are looking for pharma-related R & D jobs.

The pharma community is filling news sites and the Twitter Stream with press releases for next week’s Citi Global Healthcare conference, to be held in New York next week., March 1 – 3.

Do a Google search on “Citi Global Healthcare,” and you’ll find over 150+ press releases of companies participating in the conference. The list of participants reads like a “Who’s Who in Pharma.” Conference events and programs appear to be taking place at both the New York Hilton and the New York Place Hotel.

What’s missing? Registration information and a general website for the conference. If you can find one, we’d love to have you share it with us.

In the interim, if you’re seeking a new job in the Pharmaceutical industry, research who’s going. 
Many participants are releasing access information on their session through their corporate websites—so you don’t have to miss all the news.

Hill & Knowlton, ranked #7 on the most recent Holmes Report Global Rankings of PR firms, announces that they’ve made a big new hire for their Chicago office.

“Randy Krotz, an expert in guiding food, agriculture and healthcare companies in the advocacy arena, has joined Hill & Knowlton Chicago as a senior counselor.

Krotz will lead key accounts and spearhead new business development initiatives for the Midwest region.  He will report to Gene Reineke, general manager of the Chicago office and US chief operating officer.”

Reineke says, “Randy brings extensive expertise and insights for two very complex industries – pharma and biotechnology – with a deep knowledge of the online and digital landscape.”

While there are no advertised positions in the Chicago office of Hill & Knowlton, this leadership announcement tells us two things:

1. Hill and Knowlton is aggressively working to grow account business in biotech and pharma.

2. Knowledge of the online and digital landscape is an important criteria for hiring

So if you want to work in PR and have a knowledge of the biotech/pharma industry, you may want to send Mr. Krotz a welcome note.

According to a recent recruiters survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admission Council, this year’s crop of newly minted MBAs are receiving more inquiries from employers than 2009 or 2010 grads.

In a poll of over 2000 companies, including 34% of the Fortune 500—fifty-five percent of survey respondents said they planned to hire MBAs. Among the findings:

“The strongest hiring this year is expected in consulting and health care, with 80 percent of health care and pharmaceutical companies and 73 percent of consulting firms planning to hire MBA graduates according to GMAC’s survey.

Additionally, graduating MBAs will see a large number of opportunities in marketing and sales. Almost half of all the companies surveyed planned to hire in these areas followed by financial areas other than investment banking.”

Not an MBA? Looking at MBA hiring trends may help anyway—since demand in industry sectors often translates across experience levels.

Source: NY Metro

This just in. Novartis-backed pharmaceutical company Viamet has just received $25M in funding. This just weeks after Viamet named former FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbah to their board.

There are no open positions listed at Viamet (based in Research Triangle Park, NC), but check back in a couple of months. In the interim, Novartis is hiring for 1,000+ positions nationwide.

Source: City Biz List Raleigh

Tokyo-based Daaichi Sankyo pharmaceutical company has announced plans to establish the company’s first manufacturing and packaging facility in the U.S. in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The move is estimated to bring 80+ jobs into Pennsylvania over the next three years, and will involve refurbishing an existing packaging facility. Daaichi Sankyo’s goal for the facility: Produce all packaging for products sold in the U.S.

Daaichi Sankyo also appears to be making a strong concerted effort to grow their U.S. customer base. They have over 360 posted positions in the U.S. with a high concentration of positions in Sales and R & D. A majority of positions are located near their U.S. headquarters in Parsippany, NJ.

(Source: PR Newswire.)

Looking for a job in Pharma R & D or patient outreach? Here’s a trend to pay attention to: Personalized medicine, or the process of getting the right medicines to the right patients at the right dose. While this may sound like something your physician works does for you already, it’s a bit more complicated: The process often involves studying a patient’s individual genetic make-up as personal medicine is designed to work against specific genetic mutations driving disease.

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development recently surveyed pharmaceutical companies about their work in personalized medicine. The results: 94% of surveyed companies reported internal investments in the field; 100% of companies surveyed said they “use personalized medicine approaches such as biomarkers to evaluate compounds in the discovering process.”

Personalized medicine gained big press this month after Biotech PR exec Adriana Jenkins died from cancer shortly after penning a piece for Forbes about the benefits she received from personalized medicine—and her wish for increased use of the approach.

We see over 550+ posted positions nationwide which include the keywords “personalized medicine.” Given the number of companies and physicians exploring this practice, expect for more jobs listings in pharma to include skills and knowledge of personalized medicine in their qualifications wish list.

Source: PhRMA

Japanese company Eisai is putting a strong bet behind Cambridge, MA based H3 labs, an R & D lab for Oncology Research.

Eisai has pledged $200M in funding to H3 over the next ten years. We only see two Eisai listings for Massachusetts right now, but predict more later.

(Source Xconomy)

Want to break into the pharmaceutical industry? It’s a challenging place to find opportunities, especially when you consider that most drugs submitted for evaluation never even make it through the pre-clinical testing phase required by the FDA.

According to PharmaLive, your best bet for work in the pharma industry today may be a job in regulatory, quality or clinical jobs—hiring is up over 16% since the second quarter of 2010.

You can find a sampling of positions available here. Many household names are hiring—from Becton Dickinson and Abbott Laboratories to Novartis and Johnson & Johnson. Jobs are available in cities and metro areas nationwide, from Boston, Philadelphia, and New York to Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.