Digital Talent Attraction - Healthcare & Life Sciences
Candidates in US’s healthcare and life science sector are in high demand – and tough to find!
Sean Rogerson, Michael Page, Boston
How can companies take advantage of digital strategies in a talent-short healthcare and life sciences market?
The fight for top talent
The healthcare and life science space has remained robust throughout the pandemic, with available roles consistently outnumbering candidates. Our med-device and biotech business in Boston was the only discipline in my office that actually grew in 2020 off the back of a 2019 record!
We’ve had some communication with one of the pharma companies leading vaccine production recently and they simply cannot find people, despite being willing to pay for relocation. They will pay whatever salaries they need to pay; they’ll counter buyback; yet they really struggle to get a hold of candidates.
Looking ahead – way ahead
If an early-stage biotech is looking for a scientist, for example, they are not going to find them on Indeed, and the likelihood of coming across a candidate that’s open to opportunities is fairly slim. Depending on the specialism, they’re extremely difficult to find, because they’re well paid and quite often they have equity / long term incentive plans – so they’re not going to walk away easily!
This is what businesses need to think about: what’s the long-term offering and long-term strategy? What are the candidate’s benefits? If the candidate is in a business which is pre-IPO and they’ve got 10,000 shares, that’s potentially a lot to leave on the table if they move jobs (especially when looking at the dollar share price and valuations that some of the businesses have in the US). At the moment, hiring isn’t as easy as simply putting a job ad up - the chances are that highly skilled candidates aren’t sat on job boards and aren’t pro-actively looking for work.
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Digital strategies
Face-to-face recruitment hasn’t happened for all of the well-known reasons; however, we do a great deal of virtual interviewing. How do clients make sure that in that first virtual meeting they are driving engagement and selling the opportunity, so that the candidate wants to come back for more? It’s extremely important at the moment, but a lot of businesses miss this – and candidates at the first stage will just say, “No, I’ll just stay where I am.”
Life science companies need to sell the opportunity. There should be a balance between making sure the process is thorough, but that it also doesn’t last five or six weeks – a challenge, especially when hiring $150K to $200K candidates. We often find it necessary to talk to our clients about condensing the timeline and interview process as much as possible. Otherwise, we just lose the candidates.
Companies at their first interview, their first touch point, should try and make the proposition as attractive as possible. One difficulty is that often the first stage is formal and almost purely competency based. Additionally there is such a candidate shortage that there’s an artificially inflated price point for the candidates, and they know that! So, it’s really important for companies to understand that they have to buy talent. They do have to buy it, to pay for it, especially when looking at more specialist areas and skill sets.
Doing the due diligence
Candidates should do their due diligence and make sure it’s a two-way interview process. I think people miss this: it’s not just them being interviewed by the company; they can (and will) interview the company.
Candidates also need to be sure that they are managing their shop window from a social media perspective. Even if you’re passive or not looking for a new role, think about what your on-line profile looks like and the detail and information you provide – you might just get tapped on the shoulder and have your dream job presented to you!
What changes have you noticed in the healthcare and life sciences sector in 2021? Leave me a comment.