Revitalising life sciences hiring: The case for creative recruitment

The labour market in the life sciences sector has stabilised, but employers are still finding it challenging to attract the best talent. Many are looking to offer greater flexibility in terms of working hours and hybrid working in order to attract the best candidates. Yet, it’s not all a one way street.

With ever more life sciences graduates coming on stream, job seekers also need to get creative to land their ideal role in the sector. A recent CBRE report revealed that recruiters and candidates alike are finding innovative new ways to engage in the job placement process.

Attracting the best talent

The CBRE’s report, US Life Sciences Talent Trends 2024, found that, “Despite a notable hiring slowdown in the US life sciences industry over the past two years, historically low unemployment is contributing to the labour market’s stability.” According to the CBRE, this means that, “the challenge of acquiring top talent in life sciences subsectors like R&D, manufacturing or medtech may not significantly lessen in 2024.”

This year’s report extended its labour market research, which now covers the top 100 US markets. It found that the availability of life sciences manufacturing talent depended greatly on location. Perhaps unsurprisingly, talent is most easily sourced in the larger clusters. Boston-Cambridge, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego all achieved top rankings for talent in R&D, manufacturing, and medtech. Other leading areas for manufacturing talent included New York-New Jersey, Houston, and Philadelphia.

The report also identified some interesting “emerging, underexplored talent clusters” linked to “smaller university-anchored clusters” outside the major metropolitan areas. It will be interesting to see if some employers’ choose to locate or expand operations near such emerging clusters in order get a first-mover advantage when it comes to accessing to talent.

Quality of lifestyle and cost of living

The report notes in particular the emergence of university-linked talent ecosystems in Santa Cruz, CA, Fort Collins, CO, College Station, TX, Charlotteville, VA, and Gainesville, FL. Another notable growth market is Raleigh-Durham, NC, which the report found to have the second greatest density of life sciences R&D occupations in the US, second only to Boston-Cambridge.

All of these are attractive places in which to live, especially for those just graduating, who will of course already have ties in their area. It may therefore make good business sense for employers to expand operations in places with established and available talent, which can offer employees a high quality of life, a lower cost of living, and a better work-life balance.

The area known as “the Triangle”, comprising Raleigh-Durham and Chapel Hill, NC, now specifically markets itself to life sciences talent as a leading US life sciences hub that offers a lower cost of living and a great lifestyle. The Triangle area is now becoming recognised as a leading American biotech hub, having been ranked as the fourth biotech hub in the US. It’s now possible to find some of the most compelling life sciences roles outside the traditional major US hubs and metropolitan areas.

The rapid rise of hybrid working demonstrates that many employees now place a premium on quality of life factors when choosing a role. Many are willing to accept a lower salary if a job offers greater flexibility. This can result in cost savings for employers who adopt a strategy of attracting the best candidates by offering more flexibility instead of – or in addition to – higher salaries. The very same logic applies for companies who adopt a strategy of offering candidates a more attractive and lower cost location to live and work in. Candidates in a city where their monthly rental costs are $1,000 per month will obviously not need to demand as high a salary as those in major cities with rental costs of $3,000 per month. Such locations can imply a win-win scenario for both employers and employees, with employees keeping more of their take-home pay, and employers saving significantly on salary costs.

Competition and the importance of soft skills

The report also notes that, “employment in the biotechnology R&D and pharmaceutical/medicine manufacturing industries has grown only 0.2% in the 21 months following June 2022. This contrasts with a 15.8% jump in the preceding 21 months (September 2020 and June 2022).”

As concerns about the growing possibility of an economic recession in the wider economy continue to contribute to cautious markets, employees should try to ensure that they are in a strong position to weather any economic storms, should they come.

The number of new graduates in the biological and biomedical sciences fields has grown by a remarkable 54% since the 2010-2011 academic year. The number of such degrees rose from 113,137 in 2010-2011 to 173,825 in the academic year 2021-2022. While the number of jobs being advertised has remained steady, if there is a sudden contraction in the sector, there may be a lot of graduates chasing fewer jobs.

With so many new life sciences graduates coming on stream, hiring in the life sciences sector is becoming increasingly competitive. Adopting a creative strategy can help candidates to stand out from this ever increasing pack.

Even while employees are taking a more holistic approach to their careers, so too are employers looking at candidates’ personal attributes in a wider sense, beyond their technical skills and knowledge. Employers and recruiters are nowadays often looking for evidence of those hard-to-define “soft skills” that make a person a great team player, and a pleasure to work with. Such people make the workplace a pleasant environment, which then contributes to the business in very real ways, by increasing staff retention and employee wellbeing, while reducing absenteeism.

Candidates should not be shy when it comes to emphasising evidence of attributes such as their interpersonal skills, positive work ethic, and any other useful transferrable skills they may have gained on their journey through life. A candidate with interesting extracurricular interests may also prove to be more attractive to employers.

Employers also understand that employees are often motivated by finding meaning and a sense of purpose in their work. If a candidate can demonstrate that their values and personal goals align well with the company’s mission statement, a recruiter may well decide that they are a good fit for the organisation.

For candidates, the interview is their moment to shine, and to truly demonstrate their soft skills, and interpersonal warmth. It stands to reason that many interviews initially take place online these days, since so many work meetings take place online, too. Employers want to see how you relate to people in that environment, and candidates will need to show that they can strike the right balance between projecting interpersonal warmth and professionalism. They should research the ethos of the particular employer they are interviewing for, since a small start-up and a major manufacturer will have different expectations.

The life sciences industry is embracing the wider societal shifts in how we work and live. Employers are listening to what its employees value and making changes to how they operate to attract them. More change may come, if economic conditions change. Yet, the report noted the resilience of active job postings in the sector this year, which is encouraging news for employees and employers alike.