Selecting Life Sciences Talent
Hiring the right candidates is one of the most crucial parts of building a successful team. While it’s tempting to rely on familiar methods, such as hiring friends and family or relying too much on candidates’ past work experience, these approaches can lead to costly mistakes that affect both performance and team dynamics. To avoid these pitfalls, it’s essential to use objective, well-rounded evaluation methods that identify candidates who not only have the right skills but also align with your company’s culture and future goals. Here are ten proven ways to do that.
Download the full ebook:
50 Tips for Building Life Sciences Teams
Field-tested insights and best practices for navigating the talent journey, from attraction to retention
Get clear on competencies
When evaluating applicants, make sure you have a solid grasp of the key competencies that will drive success in the role—and seek to understand if different stakeholders have varying opinions so you can form a well-rounded POV. Once you’re clear on what these competencies are, they can help guide your interview and selection processes.
Overvalue cultural alignment
No matter how capable someone is, research shows that if their values aren’t aligned with the culture you have or are trying to build, they’re more likely to leave the organization sooner—meaning all of their competency and right-fitness could be for naught. Hence, when assessing and interviewing candidates, make sure you are asking good questions that will help you identify those who not only have the right competencies but will also help to strengthen and reinforce your culture.
Consider operational models
Think very critically about the environment in which candidates have had prior success and the similarity of that environment to yours. To the extent there are differences (and there always are), you should take note—the best candidates will be well-prepared to describe how they’d handle different aspects of the new environment.
Beware of hiring only PLUs
We all share an unconscious bias to be more drawn to people who look and act like us. At Mix, we call these people PLUs (people like us). If you want to build a truly diverse team made up of unique perspectives, be wary of your PLU inclinations, and don’t let them sway better, more objective judgments.
Run a practical interview process
While well-executed rigor is important in the selection process, remember to keep the candidate’s experience front-of-mind to balance the length of the hiring process with what is practical. Finding the right people is not a battle of attrition—those who are the best fit aren’t necessarily the most desperate. In other words: five interviews are usually too many.
Semi-structured interviews are
4x better at predicting performance
than unstructured interviews.
Prepare a hiring guide and offer training
Semi-structured interview guides and interview training can provide assistance and direction for hiring managers while also ensuring more consistency across interviews. Fun fact, semi-structured interviews are 4x better at predicting performance than unstructured interviews. Pro tip: Base these hiring guides on how candidates respond in their individual assessments to bring the process all together.
Use assessments to predict performance
Validated, research-based assessments (like SPARQ) and case studies provide objective data that can supplement interview processes and help predict candidate performance. With so many different role-relevant areas to dig into—often in a short period of time—these assessments provide direction of what to question during your next interview, supplement ideas you already might have on a candidate, and help predict which behaviors a candidate is most likely to engage in if hired. Even better? You can pull these results through to support hired candidates’ onboarding and developmental journeys.
Increase the rigor with front-line leaders
The capabilities and performance of your front-line leaders are pivotal for team success—which is why it is so important to identify and choose leaders with the right behaviors, including coaching and development, inspiring resilience and perseverance, forming highly effective teams, and more. (For a full list and more info on how front-line leader assessments work, go to mix-talent.com/front-line-leader-assessment/)
Keep your options open
If you’re coming down to the wire, you should always have two or three great candidates to consider—even if you feel strongly about one of them. “A choice of one is a choice of none,” as we like to say. Continuing to keep an open mind until the final decision is made can help you avoid errors in judgment and keep you from going back to square one if your perfect candidate declines the offer.
Speak like a human
Humans want to work with other real humans. Unfortunately, that’s not always how recruiters come across. Robotic, rehearsed, aloof—these are not behaviors that lead to a positive candidate experience or a positive brand impression. Above all, when talking with candidates, be yourself, be honest, and be kind.
