Hiring seems to be getting more difficult as time goes on, doesn’t it? It’s a candidate’s market and competition for the best life sciences talent is high. The question is: why is it so difficult to locate top talent in 2022? What are the top challenges you’re facing and why?

In this blog post, we’ll be unpacking these questions and outlining the hurdles that life sciences organisations have to overcome in order to hire top talent in the current employment market. 

First of all, finding quality candidates isn’t easy

The good ones are all already taken, especially in the life sciences sector. Those who are highly skilled, expertly trained, and ready to change the way we view the industry are already employed. They are busy innovating and incorporating Artificial Intelligence in their labs. They aren’t sending out their CVs, looking for their next career move because they’ve already found it. They have a clear career path and are focusing on their work rather than who they’re working for. 

How can you find people who are interested in moving to a new position, then? It’s all about knowing where to look. You need to have a wide network where you can have conversations with people who may not be on the market, yet will still be interested in finding out more about a role. It’s about finding the right people, regardless of their employment status, and converting them into candidates wanting to work for your organisation. 

With the world starting to embrace remote and flexible working, location is no longer a problem for life sciences professionals; they can therefore work for any organisation they choose. You need to convince them to choose yours. Whether this is with a competitive remuneration package, increased benefits, or your unique company culture, you need to ensure they’re buying into your employer branding. 

The high cost of hiring the wrong candidate

Hiring the wrong candidate can have serious consequences on your organisation. For starters, you spend a large amount of time and resources on making a single hire. There’s the gathering of CVs, reaching out to your network, having conversations, improving your employer branding, interviewing multiple people, and finally making an offer. Then, once you’ve hired someone, you need to onboard them. By the time you realise you’ve made the wrong hire, you’ve already wasted valuable time. 

There’s also the cost on your team members. Hiring the wrong person affects everyone they work with – from the team lead to the interns. If that person isn’t getting the job done correctly, other people will have to pick up the slack. This means your other team members are going to be tired, overworked, and unhappy. By making one wrong hire, you could lose important team members. 

Hiring with diversity in mind

One of the biggest challenges facing hiring managers in life sciences organisations is hiring diverse team members. How do you approach finding the right people for the job? How do you reach out to diverse candidates and encourage them to apply for positions at your organisation? How do you ensure your diversity and inclusion strategy isn’t simply performative, and is instead enacting real change within your organisation? 

Hiring with diversity in mind can be difficult, but as hard as it can be, it’s more important than ever. Having a diverse workforce encourages new perspectives, new ideas, and new methods of doing things, which is crucial in the life sciences industry. 

Time to hire 

This sector moves quickly. Innovation happens daily and you need to have the right people at the right time to make it work. Hiring can take far too long these days and it can leave you with fewer people on your team than you need. This is largely because the application and interview processes to ensure you hire the right person take too long. 

Another big issue with time to hire is that top quality candidates aren’t going to wait around for an offer. If they’re actively looking for a position, they’re likely interviewing with multiple organisations at the same time. Don’t put yourself in a position where you miss out on the right candidates just because your processes weren’t streamlined enough. 

Aspire Life Sciences can change the way you hire

We understand all the challenges that life sciences organisations face when hiring and we know exactly how to help. We can find the right candidates at the right time, ensure you hire the perfect candidate for the role, improve diversity on your team, and reduce your time to hire. 

If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you, check out our recruitment blueprint here. Alternatively, contact us and we’ll be more than happy to discuss what we do and how we do it.