This month’s article is for the department head and not the recruitment team. It’s about building a reputation for your organization that helps you land the kind of talent your team needs to succeed, as those expectations lie squarely on your shoulders. Sure, you post your open positions through the HR department, but there’s no one quite as visible as you for getting the right people into those open slots. And we’re not talking about warm bodies here; you need hard-to-find experienced people with skills that fit well into your department and that keep things humming.

Finding those experienced people has been a lot easier in the past, because right now many of the job categories required by the biopharma industry are in short supply. Believe me, they are hotly headhunted. That’s why it is important to consider the process you are using. Don’t fall into the trap of blindly going along with the latest Zoom or Teams approach to interviews without thinking about how to differentiate your department and your opportunity.

What’s different about today
I’ve been in the biopharma marketplace for nearly 35 years. There has always been a shortage of certain kinds of talent, but those shortages tended to go in cycles. First, a category would be hot and there would be lots of open positions and not enough talent. Then, the supply would loosen up as schools began to churn out more of that particular skill. Soon, another job-type entirely would take its place as “the” hot job category. The industry would bemoan the lack of Microbial Physiologists, and then later say that we had plenty of those, but where were those darn Protein Chemists!

Of course, in any field of science or technology, you also have the flux of the technology itself, creating new fields and putting old ones into the recycle bin quickly on.

But today, it’s almost every single job category that’s hot. Any open role you have could be tough to recruit for. Whether it’s a Cell-Based Potency Assay Specialist or a Bioinformatics addition to your team, the competition is intense.
Every company wants to have their positions first and foremost in the candidate’s mind, and HR/Recruitment teams try to determine the best way to build a brand for their company’s hiring process to attract the top fliers.

Finally, on top of this intense competition for talent, you have a general pandemic-induced reluctance to relocate. People have been hunkered down for what will shortly be two years, and that’s long enough to build a serious reluctance to relocation. As a result, you are likely to be much more dependent upon your local talent market than ever before.

How top candidates view your department
Think about how the hiring process has changed since the pandemic began. Does a Zoom or Microsoft Teams interview really bring the same results as an old-fashioned, in-person visit to your department? Do you remember how nice it was to see each of your prospects for a technical seminar, a nice lunch or dinner, and then have all the quality back-and-forth discussion that you’d need with people who want to feel comfortable with their future boss before deciding?

Today’s process stinks, to put it bluntly. How does one really differentiate their department, their open position, when the candidate compares your Zoom interviews with a set of Zoom interviews from another company? It’s tough, that’s for sure. But there are a few things that you can do to set the stage to ensure that your department stands out.

First off, remember that the best candidates want to know more about both the workplace environment as well as their prospective boss. These are the two biggest concerns that people have when considering a move, often eclipsing salary and total comp as decision factors. So, if these are positives that you want to tap into, you’re going to need to interject yourself. That’s right. In an age of impersonal video interviewing, you’ll need to bring more personal involvement.

From pre-screen to new employee
Every company has a process by which they “pre-screen” their applicant pool. Generally, that’s done via HR and the CVs you get have already passed muster—they’ve proven that they communicate effectively enough to make it to the next step. But if you go directly to an interview from there (as many employers do) you’re missing a special opportunity. The future boss doesn’t need to do a second “screening” call, but it sure helps the recruitment process to have contact made in advance of a formal interview. I love it when the hiring manager I’m working with offers to talk to each of my early candidates for 20 minutes or so, as it does wonders in making it a more effective series of video interviews.

It’s just a call that says, “We’re looking forward to meeting you next week. I just want to introduce myself and see if there were any special areas of need that you had, so that I can assemble the right team members for your Zoom meeting.” It releases so much of the tension that builds up when someone is preparing for their interview with a company that they’ve had little or no contact with yet. Just talking to a headhunter about your department doesn’t do much, despite how well-informed your vendor.

Of course, if you run into someone you feel isn’t worthy of professional advancement with your team, it’s been only a 15-minute time investment for you but a savings of hours of the team’s time. Still, it’s far more likely that your initial call to your candidates will set the stage for a more effective interview process for all involved.

Planning, preparation and identification of a champion
For some reason, doing a Zoom or Teams interview seems to demand less preparation than our formerly in-person interviews required. Meeting times are determined, and schedules aligned, but that’s about it. Whether these are individual meetings or a series of group sessions, there is generally not much discussion in advance about expectations and “who does what” in the process. This often leads to repetitive interviews where everyone asks the same questions. (“So, why is it exactly that you left ABC Biotech after six months?”). The same interview being conducted repeatedly is a good way to ensure little or no interest in your opportunity.

Instead, ensure that each person asks a few unique questions of their own and that they are prepared to answer questions about the company and what it’s like to work in your department. If you’ve got a team member who just doesn’t “get” the message that things need to be presented positively, for heaven’s sake, don’t put that person on the interview schedule. I know of one employer that is a great place to work, but they have a senior team member who believes it’s his job to be gruff and nasty during the interview process. They know he’s like this, but he keeps getting placed on interview schedules. They’ve lost great candidates as a result.

On the other spectrum, that same employer has a wonderful person who is the “champion” of employment in their organization. Put her on an interview schedule and you can pretty much be assured that the result will be an interested candidate at the end of the process.

Who’s your champion?

Hire the best and keep moving up
You want your career to move forward, right? To keep that process moving, you’ve got to attract the best people to your open positions. And in the employment market we have today, you’ll have to find a way to differentiate yourself from every other opportunity those same candidates are applying to. The only way to do that will be to become more personally involved in the hiring process, and to build excitement about working on your team. Candidates must be able to feel some enthusiasm about your team through those they meet in the interview process.