Employer Branding Archives - Biotech & Pharmaceutical Recruiting

Keeping Your Recruiting Team Motivated

Author: Tara Smylie

Motivated recruiting. Let’s face it – it’s hard for any of us to do our best work when we’re not feeling motivated. Sure, the work can still get done, but it won’t have that magical touch that comes naturally when we’re inspired to complete the project at hand.

Maybe you’re recruiting for a highly specialized lab position without many qualified candidates. Or maybe you’re trying to fill a key role at a biotech startup. Recruiting can be challenging – but when your team feels driven to succeed, they’ll be more likely to round up a roster of exceptional candidates. As their leader, knowing how to keep motivation high is essential.

Empower your team: Motivated Recruiting

An empowered employee is a motivated one. Employees feel empowered in their roles when they feel that their contribution is important to the success of their team, and that they have the power to make meaningful decisions in their jobs.

One tangible way to empower your employees is to offer training where possible. A little extra learning will help your employees feel competent and qualified in their roles. And of course, it’s an opportunity to give them new skills that they can use to level up their performance.

That said, in the present day, workplace empowerment extends beyond the office. Millennial employees particularly appreciate flexibility, which often means hybrid workplace models and customizable schedules. When your employees feel that they have control over their work-life balance, they will come to work happier and more motivated to shine in their roles.

Don’t skimp on communication

When you experience a setback – tell your team. When the scope or nature of a project changes – tell your team, and make sure you’re all on the same page moving forward. To that end, if you, as manager or boss, make a mistake… don’t be afraid to own up to it! If you’re willing to admit you missed something, your employees will likely follow suit when they make an error themselves.

And remember, good communication doesn’t just mean explaining what’s going on with a project – it means thanking your employees when they’ve been exceptionally helpful or professional in their roles. Acknowledgement of a job well done goes a long way!

Communication, good or bad, forms a huge part of a company’s overall culture. Consider this: a whole 47 percent of jobseekers cite poor company culture as their reason for wanting to leave their last role. It’s worth making sure yours is a good one.

Lively workplace, lively team

Whether your employees are remote or in-person, creating a lively workplace often comes down to the design of the work environment. Ask yourself: is your office furniture comfortable? Does your setup lend itself to easy communication between employees? Are your spaces and interfaces appealing and cheerful? These little details go a long way in livening up the work experience, which will make your team happier and more motivated.

Another way to liven up the workplace is to encourage friendships between your employees. According to research by workplace software company OfficeVibe, seventy percent of employees say that having friendships at work improves the quality of their workplace experience. And according to other data they compiled, work friendships actually boost productivity. That’s a win for everyone!

To encourage friendships between your employees, consider buying large tables for communal lunches, assigning groups for collaborative work, and/or organizing retreats.

Invest in the right tech

In the field of recruiting, the right hardware, online tools, and software subscriptions can all make a difference. Nowadays, AI and software solutions have a greater and greater role to play in recruitment – so don’t be shy! Letting the tech take care of the small stuff frees up time for your team to focus on the bigger picture.

Consider getting your team a subscription to a recruitment service like Linkedin’s Recruiter Lite subscription plan, and investing in a project management software like Asana or Monday.com to make team communication and strategizing as seamless as possible.

The secret formula

Growing a standout recruiting team is not just about assembling the group with the best credentials. It’s about consistently motivating your team so that they naturally become a powerhouse of superstar recruiters.

The takeaway is this: strive to listen to your recruiting team, and treat them like the valuable employees they are. As a result, they will be happier, more motivated, and better able to aid you in the search for ideal candidates.

References

How to Boost or Build Your Brand Reputation

Author: Tess Joosse

Your business’s brand reputation comes down to a simple scenario: What is the first thing that comes to mind when a candidate or client hears the name of your company? How you’re perceived has a huge impact on business, and maintaining a good reputation is key to attracting high quality talent, especially in the competitive biotech world. It’s a no-brainer — candidates want to work at and align themselves with a great workplace!

In addition to impacting recruiting, having a good reputation boosts employee morale and increases retention. But how do you build a positive reputation from the ground up if you’re starting a new company? Or perhaps you have been in business for a while but have neglected to intentionally build your brand reputation and don’t know how to tackle the task. Or uh-oh! Your reputation has taken a hit after you received a negative critique on a company review website. Here are some tools and strategies to consider as you build or revamp your brand reputation:

Create a positive candidate experience from start to finish.

Whether you have been in business for decades or are the new company on the block, your first priority should be to make every interaction with a candidate a positive one. Not only will candidates be more inclined to want to work for you, but their positive impression of your company will spread via word of mouth or online reviews.

This starts with the job listing: make sure it’s detailed and clear in explaining who you are as a company in addition to the duties and benefits of the position. Create a short and simple application, and communicate openly about the hiring process with candidates to ensure they know that you value them and their time. Keep them updated on timelines, create a seamless interview experience, and reject applicants gently. In these cases, or if a candidate receives but turns down an offer, a positive experience will still leave a good impression and they’ll pass along that sentiment to their networks.

Use your website, social media, and other marketing tools to tell your brand’s story.

If a candidate is unfamiliar with your company, they will likely head to Google and see what they can learn in a quick search. Your company website should be the first thing they click on, and it should tell your company’s story with clear and engaging copy and design. A testimonials page can add credibility and help people get to know how others have benefited from your company’s services and products. A blog or section with updates on company news can add credibility, keep interested parties in the loop, and boost your SEO ranking to get more eyes on your website. In biotech this is a great opportunity to publish content on industry topics and trends that intersect with your company’s work, from personalized medicine to artificial intelligence and beyond.

Social media is another tool to use to build up your company’s credibility. Share content that reflects your company’s values and work across your social channels, including company updates and any blog articles you do create for your website. LinkedIn is particularly powerful: it’s often where candidates come across and apply for open jobs in addition to reading and engaging with an employer’s content.

Address any negative reviews with levelheaded empathy.

In a perfect world, you’d never need to use this tip – but on the long road of building a brand, a negative impression inevitably will pop up. If you encounter a negative review of your company online, step back and read and think through the comment carefully. Avoid the overreaction that can come from reacting too quickly and evaluate how best to address the criticism in order to tamp down on the long-term effects. Respond in a friendly and apologetic manner that takes the reviewer’s perspective seriously.

Take feedback as an opportunity to grow.

You should listen to and consider all feedback, but if you notice many people leaving the same feedback or criticism that may be a sign to make a change. Are multiple candidates commenting they’re unhappy they had to come in for several in-person interviews, spend many unpaid hours on a test exercise, or wait weeks with no communication about the status of their application? These critiques present opportunities to re-tool your hiring process for the better. Building a robust and well-established brand reputation can take years, but is well worth it to attract great talent and keep your existing employees happy at your company.

References

Talent Acquisition Vs. Talent Management: Why Both Matter When Hiring

Author: Tess Joosse

You’ve probably heard the terms “talent acquisition” and “talent management” before – and you’ve probably used them yourself. Though they might sound like the same thing, talent acquisition and talent management serve two different but essential purposes in hiring. Read on to learn more about what these strategies are and why they can both help you hire and retain great employees.

What is talent acquisition?

At its core, talent acquisition involves attracting and hiring skilled and qualified employees. This includes all the basic practicalities you must do in order to build a workforce, including creating and advertising job descriptions, reviewing applications, interviewing candidates, and making offers.

But talent acquisition also comprises more nuanced and proactive steps you take when looking for employees and building out a hiring pipeline. Some of these steps include sourcing hires from diverse backgrounds, keeping in touch with past candidates in case future opportunities arise, maintaining relationships with recruiting agencies and other talent sources, and building and communicating a strong brand that conveys your company’s values. Talent acquisition is not simply focused on filling vacant roles, but on acquiring quality candidates long-term.

What is talent management?

Talent management is the continued process of keeping employees within your company and facilitating their development and success. Some talent management steps include building hiring and succession plans, identifying and mentoring promising employees, rewarding and promoting them for achievements and growth, and providing employee training programs. Talent management also involves fostering employee engagement and feedback, as well as creating a supportive “inboarding” process when existing employees are promoted into new roles. In all, it’s a process that engages and rewards the employees you already have, to the overall benefit of the entire organization.

How they’re different, and how they rely on each other.

The difference between talent acquisition and talent comes down to purpose. Simply put, talent acquisition focuses on finding employees, while talent management focuses on keeping them.

But while they have different functions and involve different actionable steps, both talent acquisition and talent management rely on each other, with the success of one boosting the success of the other. An employer that promotes from within and rewards growth might become known for treating their employees well. That reputation, in turn, might encourage high quality applicants to positively respond if a recruiter reaches out about applying for a role with the company.

Why they both matter in hiring.

The above example illustrates why talent acquisition and talent management are important. Obviously, without a recruiter from the company reaching out to high-quality candidates there would be no applicant pool to hire from. But without the positive company profile generated in part by the opportunities for growth, those great candidates might be less apt to apply and accept an offer. Talent acquisition found the great candidate, and talent management provided them with a selling point.

Cultivating a strong talent acquisition presence also enables you to:

Save time and stress by anticipating and preparing for future and potential hiring needs, rather than simply filling vacancies as they arise.
Hone a vision of what kinds of candidates you want to attract to your company.
Identify employees with rare combinations of skills and experiences, for both immediate hiring needs and in case of future openings.
Hire people with potential to grow beyond their role.

Maintaining a focused talent management strategy allows you to:

Boost morale and make employees feel valued and appreciated.
Increase retention, boosting productivity and combating knowledge loss.
Foster innovation and ideas by giving employees opportunities to challenge and stretch themselves.
Help your employees reach their full potential and achieve professional fulfilment.
Proactively attract candidates who value opportunities to grow, thus benefiting your talent acquisition. Again, when done well these processes are cyclical!

Both talent acquisition and talent management matter in hiring. One helps you get in touch with excellent candidates, and the other helps you sell them on your company — and encourages them to stick around once they’re hired. If you’re eager to start attracting some great talent, Sci.bio’s recruitment services are here to help.

References

Talent Acquisition vs. Talent Management vs. HR: A primer
Talent Acquisition vs. Talent Management: What’s the Difference?
What is talent acquisition?
Talent Acquisition: Process and Best Practices
What is talent management? The secret to recruiting success

Struggling To Fill A Job Vacancy?

Author: Claire Jarvis

Although we’re in a candidate’s market right now, not every company is successfully filling advertised positions and attracting top candidates to their roles. If your biotech firm is struggling to hire new talent, there are a few probable causes worth investigating.

Why you have trouble finding candidates.

The salary isn’t listed in the job posting or website. With rapid rises in the cost of living, candidates are demanding higher salaries to account for the recession. If you are listing a salary range, check you aren’t offering below-market rates.

An unclear job posting: either the job description is too generic, it’s not clear what experience level you’re hiring for, or the job responsibilities aren’t spelled out. The end result means you attract the wrong candidates.

Bad company reviews or interview experiences are posted on Glassdoor. Candidates check review sites like Glassdoor to learn about company culture and check for red flags. Keep an eye on these sites for bad reviews that need addressing.

You don’t offer remote or flexible working. Even when candidates are willing to come into the office, they don’t want to feel like attendance is mandatory, or give up flexible working practices.

The job application process requires more than ‘one-click’. Candidates are used to applying for jobs via LinkedIn Easy Apply – which requires no more than a pre-uploaded resume and hitting the ‘apply’ button. They certainly don’t want to copy information from their resume into a job application form, or click through multi-page application portals at the start of the process. Consider whether you need this much information about all the candidates during the screening stage, and if there’s a more modern application software you could use.

Your company website is confusing to navigate or outdated. Candidates will apply to five or more jobs in a single session – if they can’t immediately find Careers information on your website they’re going to stop looking and move on to the next company.

What happens when you can’t fill a job position?

Most of the issues outlined above can be fixed, though it might take a while. Other issues are harder to control (company location, need for a technical expert with specialized skill set). In both of these scenarios, consider short-term sourcing options to help your company meet its business needs.

Sci.bio is a specialist biotech recruiting agency that can accommodate most of our clients’ full-cycle recruiting needs. Our targeted, efficient, and scalable approach supports companies of all sizes: from agile start-ups to multinational conglomerates, with cost-conscious and scalable services tailored to our clients’ recruiting needs. Get in touch with us today and learn more.

How to Implement a Successful Internship Program

If you’ve been relying on job-ready candidates to acquire new talent, you’re missing some valuable opportunities. To widen your net, be sure to build a talent-sourcing and -training pipeline into your company’s DNA so you’re never strapped for qualified candidates when you need them most. That’s where an internship program comes in.

Benefits of Internship Programs

Steady supply

In today’s competitive job market, an internship program makes it that much easier to secure a good match: you’ll broaden your network of potential hires, and you’ll have a greater idea of their strengths and goals than you can get from a regular interview process. Once your internship program is up and running, you’ll have a steady flow of candidates to consider the next time you have an unexpected hiring need.

The price is right

Most interns view their position as a temporary yet highly valuable personal investment. Because they are just beginning their careers, they’ll be highly motivated to perform well in their roles even at a lower pay grade. Of course, you should pay your interns for their contributions – but because they’re still learning, you can pay them less than what you’d pay full-stack employees.

Many hands make light work

Interns can help check off some of the less complex, less skilled tasks on your company to-do list. With the smaller stuff taken care of, your full-stack employees can enjoy uninterrupted focus on larger-scale projects.

That said, don’t deprive your interns of hard-hitting projects: a good internship program builds the skills needed to take on greater challenges in the future. Nowadays, only 8 percent of interns’ tasks involve clerical, unskilled work. The other 92%? High-level skills. Bottom line, prepare your interns to become your employees.

Implementing Your Program

Consider your needs

Not all internship programs need to follow the same template. While considering how to structure your program, ask yourself the following questions:

What role will the intern have within the company?
What skills and qualities do they need to have to be successful?
Who is available to mentor them?

Finally, think big picture: what is your long-term vision for your company, and what skills will future employees need to make it a reality? This is perhaps the single most important aspect of developing an internship program. Say you’re looking to build a patient information website in the near future. This means you’ll need tech-savvy employees who can handle its creation and maintenance. If you train interns in these skills and they return to work for you full-time, they can hit the ground running.

Recruit and hire

To get your program off to a good start, begin recruiting interns several months before your program launches. Consider posting advertisements on job boards, asking around, and working with a university to begin your recruitment process. Schools like Northeastern University have co-op programs that supply interns to biotech companies.

As you consider who to take on, think of interns as future employees, not just temporary assistants. Even if they don’t end up working for you, they’re likely to tell their peers about their experience with you, which can make or break your reputation among potential hires.

Onboard and train

If possible, assign every intern a mentor at the beginning of the program. This helps orient the intern and gives your existing employees a built-in leadership opportunity. As your interns integrate into your company dynamic, include them in company brainstorming sessions. They’ll appreciate the gesture and you’ll benefit from their outside ideas and insight.

Also consider conducting exit interviews to ask your interns what they appreciated about the program and what you could improve the next time. If you’re serious about your internship program, the learning experience should go both ways.

If all goes well, make them an offer

Recent interns make great employees – they’ve already integrated into your company culture and know the basic ropes of the job, making the training process easier for everyone. Once your interns have wrapped up their programs, discuss their contributions with your managers, mentors, executives and program directors. If you were all generally satisfied with their performance and trust that they can continue to learn and grow, make them an offer. If they’re like 79.6 percent of interns, they’ll eagerly accept it.

Internships bring long-term value to your company

Implementing an internship program is a long-term investment that can cut down on a lot of hiring risk and training time later down the line. In the short term, it’s the classic win-win: they need the experience and you need the help. Over the long haul, it makes your hiring process more efficient and broadens your talent pool. Another big win.

If you plan to start an internship program, but would prefer to payroll them through a third-party company instead of adding them to your payroll, Sci.Bio is available to offer payroll services. Sci.Bio will manage the employee and employer liabilities associated with contract/contingent hiring. We offer payrolled contractors benefits to help keep them satisfied in their role so that they could turn into long term hires once they graduate! And our payroll fee is remarkably reasonable. Find out more here..