When companies say a regulatory role is hard to fill, they usually mean one of two things: they cannot find enough people, or they cannot tell which of the people they found can actually do the work. Both problems come from the same place. Regulatory affairs is not one job. It is a cluster of adjacent specialisms that look similar on paper and are very different in practice.
Know which regulatory role you are actually hiring
Before a search begins, it helps to be precise about the discipline, because the talent pools barely overlap:
- CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls) specialists live close to the product and the science. Strong CMC people are often happiest in technical depth, not people management.
- Labelling is its own world of precision, process and global coordination. A great labelling lead is not simply a generalist who has done some labelling.
- Submissions and regulatory operations are about systems, timelines and flawless execution across regions.
- Advertising and promotion review sits at the intersection of regulatory, legal and commercial.
Hiring "a regulatory affairs manager" without naming the discipline is the first reason searches stall. The second is seniority drift, asking for a director's strategic range at a manager's budget, or the reverse.
The best regulatory specialists are not on a job board. They are doing the work, and they move when the right conversation finds them.
Reach people who are not looking
Because the pool is small and specialised, the people worth hiring are usually employed and content. That changes how you reach them. Job adverts mostly surface people who are actively searching, which in a scarce field is a self-selecting minority. The rest have to be mapped and approached directly, discreetly, and with something specific to say about the role and the business behind it.
This is slower than posting and waiting, and it is the only approach that consistently works for scarce roles. It also protects confidentiality, which matters when a hire signals strategy to competitors.
Calibrate on the work, not the keywords
A CV can list every relevant acronym and still belong to someone who has never owned the thing you need owned. We calibrate every regulatory search on the actual deliverables: which submissions, which regions, which stage of the product, and what "good" looked like the last time this person did it. That conversation, had properly at the start, is what makes a shortlist short.
Set realistic timelines
Specialist regulatory searches take longer than volume hiring, and pretending otherwise helps no one. A director-level, hard-to-fill mandate can run several weeks from brief to signed offer, sometimes longer when the pool is genuinely tiny. The way to protect the timeline is not to rush the search, it is to start it with the right definition so no time is lost chasing the wrong profiles.
In short
Name the exact discipline, map the people who are not looking, calibrate on the real work, and be honest about time. Do those four things and a role that looked impossible becomes a search you can run with confidence.