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Life sciences recruitment advice: discover how to compete for talent

September 13, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles, Video

Life sciences recruitment advice: discover how to compete for talent

Content Team

September 13, 2019

Life sciences recruitment is tough. Incredibly so. How can you compete more effectively for talent in today’s life sciences environment? Watch our video, or read below for advice from a senior life sciences recruiter.

Life sciences recruitment: a competitive landscape

Change seems to be the one thing you can count on in life sciences recruitment.

Even compared to two years ago, candidates are better informed and prepared to make fast decisions.

Perhaps more than anything, today’s candidates know their value.

In this environment, talent acquisition leaders and hiring managers must continuously deepen their understanding of the candidate market, says Gary Jones, director of life sciences recruitment at Hudson RPO in the Americas.

To hire top quality talent when you need it, make sure you have a well-defined employer brand and streamlined recruitment processes.

Hiring decisions need to be informed, but designed to be delivered more quickly than in the past.

If you haven’t hired in the last several months or a couple of years, the candidate market and recruiting world of life sciences has changed and will require that you change with it to successfully compete for top talent.

Create the vision, or candidates will

For top candidates, great roles are like buses. Another will be along in a minute.

There’s an abundance of compelling opportunities in today’s market. In-demand life science candidates are making quick decisions about taking new career opportunities. The risk is low. They know if they choose the wrong role, it’s easy to find another.

Plus, these well-informed candidates are better positioned than ever to make quick decisions. Using social media and sites such as Glassdoor, they’ve studied the market and a range of companies. This includes you and your competitors’ employer brands, cultures, and employer reputations. They’ve talked to their networks and have formed opinions.

Put simply, if you aren’t deliberately creating and sharing a compelling employer brand story with candidates, candidates are creating another version.

In life sciences recruitment, don’t delay the job offer

I can’t state it enough. When you’ve got a match, make an offer.

Some hiring managers decide they want to interview a certain number of candidates before the interview process even begins.

The number always seems random, such as “I need to see seven candidates,” or “we’ll make our choice after 10.”

If candidate number two is perfect, why add several months to the recruitment process to meet some arbitrary number?

In this market, the candidate hiring process is like a hot home-buying market. Before you begin your search, you determine your preferred criteria, such as neighborhood, price, etc.

You have your ducks in a row so that when you find a home you love, you can make a quick offer. You don’t say, “I’m in love with this house, but let’s look at eight more just in case.”

In a hot home-buying market, any delays in making an offer pretty much guarantee you’ll miss out.

That same sense of urgency permeates today’s candidate market in the life sciences sector.

Be reasonable in your requests during the process

Don’t tap candidates on the shoulder and then make them jump through hoops.

If your recruitment team reaches out to a passive candidate and sparks interest, be mindful of how much homework you give the candidate early in the interview process.

Yes, you want to ensure he or she is the right fit, but expecting people to complete a lot of outside assessment work when your company approached them, may not leave the best impression or increase early interest or engagement from a passive candidate.

I’ve had candidates say to me, “You guys approached me, and now you want me to do all this extra work?” See it from the candidate’s view. Then, encourage hiring managers to make reasonable adjustments.

Don’t forget to sell the job to top life sciences candidates

Yes, life sciences sales jobs are usually demanding. However, you can set that expectation while also highlighting the benefits of the role.

I scan the job boards and see opening lines such as, “This position is 24/7 with 100% travel.”

Whoa! Why would anyone read past that? Most life sciences sales roles are demanding. That’s a given. You can communicate the dedication required while also highlighting the benefits of the role and company’s mission.

Excel in life sciences recruitment with strategic innovation

New innovations make competitive markets more competitive.

Flexibility and scalability are important to keep up with new innovations, products, and strategies.

For example, the CEO of a company I support decided to invest significantly in robotics. Naturally, other life science companies are adopting the same strategy. It’s where the industry’s headed.

Such developments make an already competitive talent market even more so.

In that example, the CEO’s new strategy meant a massive hiring drive. Sales and R&D requisitions grew by 300% each, year over year. We had 60 to 90 days to prepare for some incredibly niche positions critical to the company’s growth strategy. Our RPO team was able to flex up resources and support quickly to meet the demand and then scale down once the hiring needs were met.

Sales hiring is always a challenge in the life sciences, pharmaceutical, and medical device fields. Given the product mergers and acquisitions, territory changes, and general turnover, you need fluidity in your recruitment teams and processes, in order to meet shifts in hiring demand.

Great life science candidates are out there, but in this market, you need a strong employer brand plus speed and flexibility built into the life science recruitment process to win over top candidates.

Click through for more information about life sciences recruitment.

Hudson RPO

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The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

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Business innovation: hire great people, then let them experiment

September 12, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles

Business innovation: hire great people, then let them experiment

Content Team

September 12, 2019

Business innovation can be a major influence on competitive advantage, particularly within the talent space.

A lack of innovation bears on an organization’s ability to stand out in a crowded marketplace for great talent.

A lack of innovation can also make talent acquisition less effective and more costly.

Lori Hock, CEO for the Americas, recently spoke with TALiNT International for their September cover feature on organizational innovation, which you can read here.

Alongside other Hudson RPO leaders, Lori addressed what businesses should consider when developing a culture of innovation.

To continue driving that conversation forward, we asked Lori for more of her insights, which she has gained from more than 30 years of experience in the talent sector. During that time, she has pioneered a range of innovation initiatives, including implementing a Recruitment Center of Excellence. Discover her insights below.

What does a company need to do to be innovative?

Hire the best people. Assess candidates for creativity and innovation. Train hiring managers on behavioral interview questions that indicate high performance and innovation.

Give permission. Fear crushes innovation, so employees must feel empowered to try new things. If an organization has a culture of blame, it will be safer for employees to stick with their day jobs.

Educate employees on how innovation goes beyond product or service innovation. It extends to business models, operations, policies, and non-client-facing roles.

Innovation is an ongoing effort, otherwise employees will focus on innovation for a few months and then it will be back to business as usual.

What challenges can crop up when innovating?

Managers, who are charged with delivering optimal results around core products and services, may find it easier to tell employees “no” rather than jeopardize results for new ideas.

Educate employees on how to pitch a new idea and to whom.

Create a wider support system for those willing to take on new challenges. Of course, support managers in achieving their core objectives, but don’t let great ideas die at their feet.

When trying new innovations, expect some failures, but frame them as valuable learning opportunities. If employees fear that association with an unsuccessful project will be a black mark on their record, they will avoid participation.

Can innovation ever be overrated?

No. When employees develop an innovation mindset, it leads to breakthroughs and successes. Employees are more engaged and retention rates improve, both of which lead to better results.

What trumps innovation?

Delivering business results and meeting client promises are more important, but innovation fuels continuous improvement for both.

Hudson RPO

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Innovative recruitment: Darren Lancaster talks business strategy

September 12, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles

Innovative recruitment: Darren Lancaster talks business strategy

Content Team

September 12, 2019

Innovative recruitment can be a major influence on competitive advantage.

When talent strategies lack innovation, this can make your recruitment process less effective and more costly.

A lack of recruitment innovation also bears on an organisation’s ability to stand out in a crowded marketplace for great talent.

Darren Lancaster, CEO for EMEA, recently spoke with TALiNT International for their September cover feature on organisational innovation, which you can read here.

Alongside other Hudson RPO leaders, Darren addressed what businesses should consider when developing a culture of innovation.

In the spirit of driving that conversation forward, we spoke with Darren about the nature of innovation in the recruitment space.

As a champion of curiosity-based innovation, Darren offers more than 20 years of experience in the recruitment sector. Discover from him what HR directors and talent specialists can do to enable innovative recruitment.

In which parts of recruitment does innovation excel?

The resource-intensive areas are key. This includes the applied use of technology to help you source, interview and coordinate, select and engage candidates. These are all important parts of the recruitment process. When you can automate one or more of these functions, this gives you more capacity to focus on developing relationships with top candidates.

Automation can help streamline processes and reduce costs. Ultimately, we’re all in a race to hire the best talent, and an efficient process enables this outcome.

What are some of the weaker areas?

What the industry is perhaps lacking in most, would be recruitment systems to track your total workforce(s) through one interface.

For example, you can have an applicant tracking system (ATS) for permanent and fixed-term recruitment, and another vendor management system (VMS) for temporary, contractor, and statement-of-work workers.

The creation of one system that can manage all workers has been discussed for many years, but no one has designed such a system. When such technology does exist, it will add exponential value.

I’ve also written previously about the disconnect between candidate engagement and employer brand. Unless your enterprise includes a level of personal engagement early in the application process, many candidates will never reach the stage of fully discovering your employer brand. Artificial intelligence, for example via chat bots, can help enable that engagement early on.

What are some quick wins for innovative recruitment?

Recruiters and talent sourcers should be your innovation champions. When the people who regularly represent the business are empowered to explore and adopt innovation, anything is possible.

Of course, innovation isn’t always about implementing technology. It can also be about adopting a single change in a process.

A lot of your best ideas already exist within an organisation, or can be created by the minds of brilliant people who know the business best. You just need to create the right culture for innovative ideas to be heard and acted upon.

How can recruiters become more innovative?

The most important aspect is to have a culture of innovation.

Fundamentally, innovation isn’t about putting a sign above a door and saying ‘this is the office responsible for innovation’. At its most organic level, innovation is about everyone contributing and an organisation creating a structure that allows employees to contribute.

Innovation can also be seen as being a product, which isn’t necessarily always the case. It can be about evaluating a current process and changing it with one simple innovative change.

What we have seen is where there is a department for innovation, that is exactly when it doesn’t happen and stops, as everyone thinks it isn’t their responsibility!

What are the advantages of pursuing innovation?

Convenience and flexibility are also key benefits of innovation. For example, at Hudson RPO, we support training and development by offering on-demand skills courses. Our employees can access these courses whenever, and wherever, they are. This also means that we can provide a wider range of skills development, while managing L&D costs.

It depends on what you are trying to achieve and where you or your end clients are along the innovation curve. They may be a luddite, or they may be at the end of the spectrum.

For example, the innovation of three years ago may well be appropriate for a luddite organisation because that innovation would still create genuine value.

In comparison, an organisation that is forward-thinking and sufficiently resourced would be happy to embrace the latest innovative tools on offer. From there, you can gain competitive advantage. An obvious example of this is Apple creating a phone from an already popular iPod.

What advice do you have for introducing innovations?

Whether it’s in recruitment or another business area, innovation must add value.

If it adds value, then the introduction is relatively straightforward. The normal approaches to change management and project management would allow it to become successful.

However, like any change, the adoption of innovation doesn’t always happen quickly. Don’t be too hasty to abandon a new tool, process, etc. To jump back to the example I shared earlier, about offering on-demand skills training, our business needed to experiment with different ways to entice users to engage with it regularly. It certainly wasn’t overnight. The rights comms and outreach strategy are key. The longer-term value is often worth the effort.

Can recruitment innovation ever be overrated?

No, of course not. The world wouldn’t have developed without it. One possible problem, however, is that organisations can become obsessed with doing it.

But, to remain competitive and continue providing added value, we need to lead the industry in trialling, implementing, and recommending the best innovations in rectech and beyond.

With the right innovation, you can create a better candidate experience and business outcomes.

When it comes to business, what trumps innovation?

Doing what you are supposed to really well and looking after your customer — these are always fundamental.

The other aspect is if it is important to create a culture of innovation, equally important is a culture of curiosity. An organisation full of curious innovators is one hell of a combination!

Click through to learn more about innovation and recruitment technology.

Hudson RPO

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For a business to innovate, internal change must outpace the market

September 12, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles

For a business to innovate, internal change must outpace the market

Content Team

September 12, 2019

For a business to innovate, internal change must outpace the market.

This advice comes from Kimberley Hubble, CEO for APAC. Kimberley recently spoke with TALiNT International for their cover feature on organizational innovation.

Alongside other Hudson RPO leaders, Kimberley addressed what businesses should consider when developing a culture of innovation

To continue driving that conversation forward, we asked Kimberley for more of her insights, which she has gained from more than 25 years of experience in the talent sector.

During that time, she has helped clients transform their recruitment models and served in a range of leadership roles.

Read her views on developing an innovation mindset below.

What does a company need to do to be innovative?

In order to grow and stay relevant, companies must regularly review their products and services, as well as how they are building and delivering them. The company’s internal rate of change must be faster than the external rate of change occurring in the business environment.

To be truly innovative, a company needs:

A CEO and leadership team who understand the importance of innovation and are committed to executing changes that deliver true business value.
A customer-centric attitude. Innovation must be grounded in what will deliver superior products, services or customer experiences.
A clear business strategy detailing the core challenges facing the organisation, the key strategic goals (including innovation goals), the specific actions that need to happen, and KPIs to track and measure progress.
The right people and culture, including skills sets and reward systems.
Access to external research/input. It’s hard to innovate if you don’t know what is happening externally.

What are the advantages of adopting innovations?

Business preservation and continuity
Business growth
Improved market share
Beating competitors
Top talent attraction, retention, and engagement
Customer retention and client satisfaction

What challenges can crop up when innovating?

Not truly understanding the company’s core challenges so that the innovation is not truly addressing the “big ticket” items.
Not taking the time to truly understand how the challenges can be addressed.
Introducing the right innovations but not implementing them well in the business, either because of a lack of investment, research, people, skills, training, or simply not explaining why change is needed.

Can innovation ever be overrated?

It can be if not done well. Some leaders make huge investments on one or two ideas when they may be better off initially making a few smaller investments. The trial and learn culture equips your team to move fast, fail fast, learn fast and win fast.

What is more important than innovation?

People. Without people, there is no innovation.

Hudson RPO

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Recruitment process outsourcing: what is RPO? Find out in this video

September 11, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles, Video

Recruitment process outsourcing: what is RPO? Find out in this video

Content Team

September 11, 2019

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) sounds like a mouthful. Yet, as a talent acquisition strategy, the concept is simple and useful.

And perhaps it’s most easily explained with a 2-minute video, which you can watch below.

If you’d like to skip past the video, you’ll find text explaining recruitment process outsourcing further down the page.

Recruitment process outsourcing: what is RPO?

Recruitment process outsourcing: what is RPO? (text)

Finding and recruiting top talent for your global workforce?

It’s not easy. Hiring demands are complex and unpredictable.

They can vary by region or country.

You must be able to manage uncertainty while building talent.

If not managed effectively, you could make poor hiring decisions.

You may also experience high staff turnover and increased costs.

Let’s change that.

With recruitment process outsourcing, we partner with your organization to build a custom hiring solution.

We do this by giving you the tools and processes to recruit wisely.

This means placing the right people, in the right position, at the right time.

How does RPO work?

In any business, recruitment volumes fluctuate. A new product launches, territories expand, etc.

As your requirements change, so does the amount of resource you need from a talent partner.

We get it. That’s why you pay only for what you need.

But that’s not all…

Our recruiters work on site or remotely. They serve in partnership with your team.

This enables them to convey your culture and values to candidates.

And it gives you 100% of our attention.

We’d love to tell you more about RPO…

Like how our proprietary process and assessment tools ensure you get only the top candidates…

And how you can benefit from reduced staff turnover and lower time to hire…

As well as more time to pursue strategic HR initiatives…

Does that sound interesting?

You make the final decisions. We do the leg work.

You increase employee retention.

You improve your organization’s competitive advantage.

You get the credit. We offer the lift.

Learn more about recruitment process outsourcing

Plan a smarter talent strategy today. Contact us to learn more about RPO.

Want to browse more content related to RPO? Click through to discover:

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Finance recruitment: the race to hire top engineers and tech talent

August 30, 2019 by Content Team

Blogs & Articles

Finance recruitment: the race to hire top engineers and tech talent

Content Team

August 30, 2019

In finance, digital change is widespread. Top tech talent has never been more important to this space.

Yet, the financial services sector often struggles to hire the most skilled tech specialists. This is a huge problem, and it must be addressed.

To gain a deeper understanding of the driving factors, we spoke with one of our top finance recruiters, Stewart Mitchell.

Stewart is a recruitment manager for a large global bank and offers more than 20 years of industry experience. He helps manage the bank’s recruitment processes across North America.

Discover what the financial services sector must do in order to secure the best tech talent in the market.

The challenges with hiring technologists in finance

So, why is it so difficult for banks and other financial institutions to attract the best tech talent?

A range of reasons can offer insight.

In some cases, these coveted candidates aren’t always compensated in line with what they could receive at tech companies outside the banking sector. Also, compared to the culture of big tech firms, technologists are not always held in the same high regard.

This can depend largely on the role and skill set.

Stewart explains: “At the tech companies, technologists are largely responsible for driving the organization forward, both technically and strategically. In finance and banking, technologists tend to be viewed more as a function to support the business, as opposed to defining it.”

Skills development can also pose a concern for candidates. Technologists at the likes of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (FAANG) work on leading-edge technology. But across banking and finance, they often work on legacy systems.

Stewart says: “Financial services firms are adopting some of these technologies, with a prime example being the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, there has been an evolution of financial services firms developing their own systems.”

In this respect, not only is the day-to-day nature of the bank-tech role perhaps not as appealing, it also triggers a concern that specialist skills could fall behind.

In finance, demand for tech talent is accelerating

As the world of finance becomes increasingly digital, top tech talent is urgently required throughout the sector.

While the pace of change continues to accelerate, the big challenge facing this sector is how to attract top tech talent… and how aggressively to go about it.

Plans are already being rolled out at Goldman Sachs, where the trading division plans to urgently hire more than 100 engineers for tech-related roles. (See note 2.)

“You are going to see us very actively in the marketplace going after this kind of talent,” Adam Korn, co-head of engineering in the trading division, told Bloomberg.

“Historically, engineers were not seen as a part of the business. That’s obviously changed.”

This hiring sprint promises to bolster the number of engineers employed by Goldman Sachs. More than 9,000 engineers currently comprise 25 percent of their workforce. (See note 1.)

The appetite for tech talent certainly isn’t exclusive to Goldman Sachs.

“For the larger firms, there is a shift from wanting to be seen as a more ‘traditional’ financial services organization, into a more tech-driven company working on cutting-edge technologies,” Stewart says.

In short supply? These are the top tech skills needed in finance

Recruiting for tech talent requires fresh strategies.

To successfully entice candidates, you must have a genuine understanding of the industries you’re competing with for talent. You must be able to identify what makes them so successful at recruiting and retaining tech talent.

You need to be able to take this knowledge to business leaders, with a view towards addressing any barriers to entry facing talented talented tech specialists.

So, what are the skills that are in hot demand within the financial services sector?

There are three primary skills sets that tend to be in universal demand:

Pattern recognition
Historical context
Process automation

Across trading platforms, process automation is huge. Candidates who can demonstrate a track record of delivering improvements in this area are in great demand.

But it’s not always about tenure of experience, with Goldman Sachs alone demonstrating a willingness to hire 2,000 graduates per year. (See note 2.)

Employers are after skilled tech candidates who can reduce trading times. They need engineers who can help process more requests and spit out faster responses to queries. These skills help generate more trades and more business.

How the world of finance can secure top tech talent

Digital change is affecting the trading floor with unprecedented speed and urgency. Trading services require much more automation and lightning-speed forecasting.

Digital change also affects every day banking. More branches are closing as customers manage their accounts online or with apps.

With these transformations comes an impressive requirement for engineers and top tech talent.

Financial institutions need to overhaul the way in which they view tech talent. A radical shift in mindset is urgently required.

Here are our top tips for recruiting tech talent in the world of finance:

Hire a CTO and give this person a seat at the C-suite table
Embrace leading-edge technology, not proprietary, obsolete systems
Actively communicate to candidates that the culture is becoming increasingly tech-centric

Stewart says: “This has been an evolution over the last two to three years. There has been growing recognition of the importance technology will play in helping to drive an organization forward, both in terms of personnel and the tools that can help achieve this.”

Giving your CTO the respect of the business, helps set the tone for how fellow technologists are valued. A culture of innovation, embedded with agile leadership and methodologies, conveys the right message.

Addressing these points can help tempt even the most in-demand tech talent.

And if your business is in the early days of becoming tech-centric, use this to your advantage: entice candidates who are keen to be the co-creators of an exciting new chapter focused on innovation.

Learn more about Hudson RPO Financial Services recruitment.

Notes

1.) Natarajan, Sridhar. Bloomberg. Goldman Plans Hiring Spree in Trading (Only Coders Need Apply) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/goldman-plans-hiring-spree-in-trading-only-coders-need-apply Accessed 28 August 2019.

2.) Franck, Thomas. CNBC. Computer engineers now make up a quarter of Goldman Sachs’ workforce https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/computer-engineers-now-make-up-a-quarter-of-goldman-sachs-workforce.html Accessed 28 August 2019.

Content Team

Life sciences recruitment advice: discover how to compete for talent

Life sciences recruitment: a competitive landscape

Create the vision, or candidates will

In life sciences recruitment, don’t delay the job offer

Be reasonable in your requests during the process

Don’t forget to sell the job to top life sciences candidates

Excel in life sciences recruitment with strategic innovation

Content Team

What is RPO?

What is MSP?

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Recruitment process outsourcing: what is RPO?

Recruitment process outsourcing: what is RPO? (text)

Let’s change that.

How does RPO work?

But that’s not all…

We’d love to tell you more about RPO…

Does that sound interesting?

Learn more about recruitment process outsourcing

Content Team

What is RPO?

What is MSP?

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Finance recruitment: the race to hire top engineers and tech talent

The challenges with hiring technologists in finance

In finance, demand for tech talent is accelerating

In short supply? These are the top tech skills needed in finance

How the world of finance can secure top tech talent

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