In the fall of 2024, the Life Sciences industry is clearly in an employer’s market. We’re hearing about company restructurings, unaddressed attrition, and employees taking on additional responsibilities to preserve capital. While this might seem like a prime opportunity for talent acquisition, it comes with unique challenges in securing top candidates. The common modus operandi is to choose a favored job board and post your job opportunity. As an executive recruiter and consultant who assists clients through these conditions it is important to be mindful of the following potential challenges when recruiting for your mission critical mandates:
CHALLENGES:
Overwhelming number of Applicants: Initially, the large volume of responses may seem like a positive sign suggesting that finding the perfect hire will be easy. However, sorting through these resumes often reveals a wide range of qualifications, with many candidates lacking relevant experience in Life Sciences. Working with clients, we often hear of hundreds, sometimes thousands of applicants responding to job posts. What’s worse, we consistently hear from strong candidates describing a “black hole” where their resume submitted to a “perfect fit” on a job board simply disappears with no follow-up.
Lack of qualified candidates: During an employer’s market it is common to receive over-qualified candidates applying to your posts. From their perspective, it only makes sense to land a secure job now, wait for the market to turn and then resume the job hunt for a better positioned role. It is tempting to take on such experienced, yet over-qualified talent. But unfortunately, you are liable to be back at square one engaged in another search (possibly alienating a well positioned qualified talent from the initial search due to the black hole effect) as you find that your over-qualified candidate has made little to no impact in their role with their resignation letter on your desk. In regards to under qualified candidates, it is common for some to inflate their resumes, exaggerate their experience and accomplishments and in some cases, misrepresent their educational qualifications. This requires your talent acquisition team to stay on their toes through the vetting process that can become unmanageable if you don’t want candidates to slip through the cracks.
Soft/No motivation to join your company: If you are out of work or you believe your job is about to be restructured, your job becomes finding a new job. I recommend job seekers to only apply to companies that they genuinely admire based on exhaustive research. But, during the interview process an employer will find some candidates lacking in enthusiasm or passion and an inability to describe exactly why they are interviewing with you in the first place. This becomes especially problematic when initial interviews are handled by less experienced interviewers, only for you to find yourself conducting a final interview with an unenthusiastic candidate eight to twelve weeks into the hiring process.
Lost opportunity: You may also find that now, deep into the interview process with other candidates, you find a strong fit that had applied some time ago. Upon your follow-up, you then find that the candidate is no longer on the market as they have been scooped up by a competitor who prioritized this candidacy. On the other hand, if you are in a senior role, odds are you will not “find this out” as it is a detail “management doesn’t need to know.”
Indeed, challenges abound, but with proved strategies, careful planning and strong SOPs you can be the one who attracts and beats the competition to the top talent for your mission critical roles.
SOLUTIONS - audentes fortuna iuvat:
These challenges are not new. Recruiters faced similar challenges at the beginning of Covid, during the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008/2009 and beyond. During these times MMGI assists our clients recruit mission critical talent employing a number of bold strategies:
Avoid Over-Reliance on Job Boards: Every day, companies spend vast sums promoting platforms like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, and Monster, all promising to deliver the perfect candidate straight to your inbox. If this were truly the case, there would be no need for such heavy marketing, and you'd already be a loyal advocate! Instead, reflect upon your past best hires. I know all of my top hires were due to exhaustive networking research, as well as, meeting individuals face to face, seeing them in a presentation or learning of them based on the quality of their work. Teach your talent acquisition team not to rely on job boards for mission critical mandates especially in today’s market. Instead, focus on your own channels. Posting in the career section of your website will catch the eye of job seekers who are specifically interested in your organisation. As well, utilize sites like LinkedIn for proactive candidate searches and ensure your team is building and maintaining a robust CRM database. Once the need for a new role develops the first step is to mine your database to identify and reach out to qualified candidates to gage their interest and then take the time to understand why? …and make sure your team is ready to pitch your prospective candidate when interest is expressed!
Networking: Encourage your talent acquisition team to go to networking events and conferences to build their network of candidates. It is common practice for companies to conduct Job Fairs at Universities to find new talent because it works. Your senior talent acquisition people need to get out and network. The Canadian Life Sciences industry is not that vast, actually quite small compared to the US. Before long, your team will immediately know they are speaking with top talent and understand the tremendous value of this effort and approach.
Screening Process: It is imperative to develop a comprehensive screening process’ and to leverage a variety of interview questions and assessment tools to help identify a candidate’s character, motivation, skills, strengths, weakness’, EQ, creativity and fit to contribute to your company. These efforts will make your final interview/offer presentation a delight!
Invest in your Talent Acquisition Team: Leaders understand that a primary responsibility is attracting top talent to the organization. But, why is it that, during these markets, and when cost reductions need to be found, acquisition teams are amongst the first to be restructured? Value your Acquisition team, value the leadership of your HR and acquisition team. In many cases they and a small number (maybe one!) of your leadership team have the hand on the rudder of the company as C-level employees work with investors and other partners on mission critical objectives during these challenging times.
Active Recruiting vs passive recruiting
audentes fortuna iuvat: Fortune favors the bold.
Active recruiting gets results. In our first few years of recruiting, MMGI utilized job boards, job posts and waited for top talent to appear on our screens. It was hit and miss and much more miss than hit…and time consuming. Yes, there is room for job boards. I would suggest to continue to use them for your less than mission critical positions and positions where there is an abondance of talent that fit the requirements of the role. For mission critical roles in MRNA, drug manufacturing, or a CFO role with taking a start-up company public for example, a customized, “high-touch” approach is best to find the candidates and to differentiate yourself from the pack in your efforts to secure them.
I have learned that top talent is usually “buried in excellence” delivering on their KPIs and getting top results with their current employer; they are not searching job boards as they have no time for it. So, just go out and find them! Reaching out to candidates, networking, engage in f2f conversations, investing in your talent acquisition team, and as required at times, utilize an Executive Recruiter with a strong track-record in your industry will help you find mission critical talent to drive your companies’ objectives and growth.
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