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Follow these simple rules to hire the best candidate for your Life Science Company

Aysha Kazi

Jul 1, 2014

Operational E 3

Author: Aysha Kazi

Aysha Kazi

Follow these simple rules to hire the best candidate for your Life Science Company.

In the life science industry building a healthy, well-functioning company requires recruiting a mix of talent and technical expertise within the organisation with shared values, emotional intelligence and a willingness to work towards common objectives.

Getting the recruitment process correct from the start will save you a lot of time and energy further down the line and there is a lot to be gained as not only will it benefit you and your organisation in the short term but it will also assist with management and coaching for success through the medium to long term.

Below are 3 simple steps for a successful hire!

1. Getting the ‘right fit’

Understanding what the essential required outcomes of the role is a good starting point as you can then work back to the type person you are looking for and really understand the ‘right fit’ of candidate which is essential when hiring. The key outcome is what are you really looking for from this hire? Before you look to the market you need to be able to clearly determine what a successful outcome for your new hire is within the short term as this will give you the ‘Right Fit’ that should cover the technical perspectives but also the cultural. Merge these outcomes to key events that can be quantified, understand what is in the employees ability to influence and what the variables are.

It is also essential that you are looking at your best options rather than hiring in haste and the importance of the hire is knowing whether you have the best talent available or the best talent in the market place. Highly skilled scientists don’t tend to look for jobs the way most candidates do as usually they look for a job to develop their skill sets further rather than simply looking for another job. This links back to understanding the ‘right fit’ and allows you to focus on hiring on the important basic elements of what you’re actually looking for.

2. Interview and process 

The interview process should reflect the outcomes you are looking for and effectively be structured using behavioural, competency and technical interview techniques to understand past performance whilst enabling you to demonstrate the value of the position and present the benefits of joining your organisation. A two stage process usually allows you to get a ‘good feel’ of the candidate and allows you to understand if a candidate is right for your organisation or not.   Also use references as a tool to get a true feel for how the candidate has performed in previous roles.

3. Negotiation and Offer

It is important to understand the value of the position, the salary bench marks that exist within your organisation but also within the scientific market and the market salaries that the candidate pool is currently earning and what they are looking for. This will allow you to set a guideline and know if what you are proposing will meet the mark or fall short.  Once you have this it is then essential to understand what your candidate is looking for; career progression, scope of technical projects, security, training and development or salary increase. Taking all these factors into consideration will they buy into your potential offer? Put yourself into the shoes of the candidate!
With this information a successful offer can be made and you can take the individual from a candidate to an employee.

As scientific recruitment specialists Ark Talent Group can help ensure these points are comprehensively covered and more importantly you make the best hire.
Our approach is based on fostering long term innovative partnerships with our clients and as we have first hand industry experience of being candidates and employers, it gives us a unique insight into really understanding your business and hiring the best talent on the market, therefore allow our experts to find your experts.

We offer a professional and competitive recruitment service with a tailored approach that offers a wide range of options including contingency search (permanent and temporary), executive search for key appointments and retained campaigns for volume recruitment needs within the life science market.
Please feel free to contact us now, we would be more than happy to help.

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