A few weeks ago at the CalBio Meeting in San Diego, a major threat to the biotechnology industry was discussed at length.  It is the increasing difficulty in finding properly trained employees.  The biotech industry has recently been increasing its use of H1b visas to help alleviate this problem, especially for Ph.D. scientists and engineers, but because of the political restrictions in the number of these visas allowed per year, this is not a long term (or even short term) labor strategy for the industry.  This problem is primarily due to the fact that fewer and fewer recent college graduates are interested in careers in math and science and our homegrown pool of potential candidates cannot keep up with the industry’s growth.

Some of the top biotech companies in conjunction with industry association groups have begun to aggressively address this problem by reaching out to students and teachers to create a systematic approach to channel high performing students into advanced math and science programs, hopefully creating the biotech workforce of the future.

This proactive approach is vital to keeping up with the anticipated growth of the biotech industry.

All indications are positive for the U.S. biotech industry including a significant increase in capital funding, drug approvals, and patent applications over the past three years.  This certainly bodes well for continued strong hiring trends in our industry.

However, there is one force so powerful that it can almost single-handedly bring all of this good news from one of the United States’ great industries to a screeching halt.  That force…the politician.

Although we are all for improving our current health care system in terms of making quality health care more accessible for all, we can only hope that the politicians take into account the incredible contributions made by the biotech industry in terms of improving the quality of life for vast numbers of people worldwide and the risks undertaken by these companies to achieve these improvements.

I’ve been reading more lately about the misuse of public information posted by job candidates on the major online job sites such as Monster.com, HotJobs.com, and CareerBuilder.com.

A few years ago, most of the reports of misuse centered around the unauthorized use of resumes and candidates receiving calls trying to sell them services instead of legitimate career opportunities.  However, it looks like the recent trend has taken this misuse from being a nuisance to being criminal.

The Better Business Bureau and the FTC have seen a major rise in complaints about the misuse of personal information obtained from job boards; mostly where scam artists used this information to obtain bogus credit cards and loans.

The major job boards have been expanding their efforts to attempt to prevent the misuse of this information but it is the ultimate responsibility of the job seeker to be very wary of posting their personal information on any public website.

First off, let me say that I believe that objective, professional talent assessments can have a very important place within the recruitment process.  However, they must be used wisely with the candidate being comfortable with the process and with the company only using these assessments as one piece of information in the overall evaluation of prospective employees.

A recent article on ERE by Todd Rogers does a very good job of describing some of the pitfalls of using these assessments from the candidate’s perspective.  More companies have begun the practice of sending out questionnaires which can take up to a few hours to complete as a first step in the interview process.  This is a great way to turn off some potentially outstanding more passive candidates before the process even starts.  I have always recommended to clients that they send out these assessments after an initial phone screen when mutual interest has been determined.  Not only does this benefit the candidate in feeling like it is certainly worth their time and effort to complete this questionnaire, but it also benefits the company since it will allow them to evaluate this candidate with more information than just the questionnaire alone.

Much has been made of the expected qualified personnel shortages in the biotech industry over the next decade, but there are some functional areas which already are experiencing these shortages.  They include:

Biostatisticians

Nurses for Clinical Research and Science Liaison roles.

Medical Affairs Management

Certified Project Managers

Biostatisticians seem to be in particularly high demand at this time and I believe that this demand will only increase in the coming years. 

A few months ago, we were ready to begin work on a Senior Marketing Manager position where the HM initially insisted that he required a candidate that had their MBA from one of the top five business schools and had worked at one of the top three companies in our industry.  Rather than just going off and searching for this proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’, we decided to have a detailed discussion with this HM regarding his actual position requirements and also gave him our frank assessment that his schooling and company requirements would severely limit his candidate pool and would certainly exclude some very well qualified candidates.  Although he was still reluctant, he finally agreed to interview candidates that met his position’s qualifications but did not necessarily come from his list of schools and companies.

I’m sure you can guess how this story ends..six weeks later the HM hired a candidate that had neither come from one of his top five schools nor had worked for one of his top three companies.

Sometimes an upfront discussion regarding the HM’s true requirement priorities and a candid evaluation of the ramifications of certain limiting requirements can be a huge determining factor in the subsequent success of a search.

Yes, that’s right, it is all about the ‘O’!

Opportunity, that is.  (Probably not what made you click on this link)

As a recruiter, it is extremely important to cease upon opportunity when it presents itself.  These include:

Doing a great job in qualifying the open positions you have in front of you.  Which hiring managers are eager to hire, are providing you with prompt feedback, and are being constructive in moving the search forward.  Working with these hiring managers creates an Opportunity!

Doing a great job in qualifying the sourced candidates for your open positions.  Which candidates are responding to you in a timely manner, are motivated for a new opportunity for the right reasons, and are actively researching their potentially new company and possible relocation.  Working with these candidates creates an Opportunity!

One of the more underappreciated skills that a good recruiter brings to the hiring process is their ability to sell their candidates to the hiring managers.  There have been many times when a candidate that I felt very positive about was initially rejected by the hiring manager.  Many times this is due to the fact that the hiring manager is busy and sometimes not entirely focused on resume review. 

The key to getting that candidate re-reviewed and hopefully interviewed is to present this candidate back to the hiring manager with a concise list of reasons why this candidate should be considered, ideally citing specifics in the resume, pre-interview notes, and the job description to back up your case.

Many times this has led to successful interviews and, in some cases, led to hires.

A great recruiter is a great salesperson!

Recently we received a job specification which included the following statements:

Position requires analytical skills to characterize complex proteins using SDS-Page, IEF, and HPLC.  In addition, candidates should have strong working knowledge of M-ALS, MALDI-TOF MS, ESI/MS and LC/MS.  Capability to operate multiple MS platforms such as OqTOF, TOF/TOF, and ion trap-FT is highly desired.

While it is extremely important for a recruiter to know the meanings of these acronyms, it is just as important to know what each of these techniques are, what they are meant to achieve and how they would fit together in the eyes of the researcher.

A while back I invited an R&D hiring manager out for coffee and spent about half an hour discussing a wide variety of research techniques and how each is used during the R&D process.  This more in depth knowledge of the techniques and goals in the use of these techniques has proven invaluable over the years in recruiting R&D candidates.

Needless to say, it was the best $10 I ever spent (yes, we went to Starbucks).