*Guest article by Singular Talent Limited. If you would like to submit an article or blog post please email [email protected].

If you’ve been hiring recently, you’ll have noticed that generating applications is easy. If you just need warm bodies with basic qualifications, it’s a great time to grow your team.

Most Biotech companies have more specific requirements than that, though, and the combination of an increase in jobseekers and AI tools means that every job advertised gets hundreds of applications in hours. Some might be a good fit, but most aren’t, and getting to the right ones is incredibly time-consuming.

On top of this, even when making redundancies, companies typically try to keep hold of their best people. That crucial hire you need to make is probably sitting securely at one of your competitors, reluctant to enter a market that they’ve heard horrific stories about. Convincing the very best people to lift their heads and consider a new opportunity is harder than it’s ever been.

As a result, making that next key appointment is likely to need a new approach.

To attract the very best talent, you’ll first need to define your candidate attraction proposition. Think about your ideal hire, and ask yourself, why would this person want to join our company in this position? How would this opportunity improve their career or their job satisfaction? Be prepared to use this information in adverts, outreach messages and emails, social media posts and initial calls or meetings with candidates to show them why the grass is greener on your side of the fence.

When you first publicise a role, you’ll encounter a deluge of applications. Most of them will be irrelevant, no matter how explicitly you state the requirements of the role. You need a reliable way to filter candidates so you’re not spending hours interviewing dozens of the wrong people. A simple checklist detailing the top four things you’re looking for is your friend here.

You’ll also need a strategy to access the passive talent market. LinkedIn estimates that at any given time, 25-30% of working people are actively looking for a new job. These are the ones applying to your job ads and publicising their availability. At the same time, 85-90% of people are open to the right opportunity, if approached in the right way. If you don’t want to limit yourself to one third of the potential talent available to you, you’ll have to do the legwork to get in front of them. It takes effort, but it’s effective.

To help Biotech leaders navigate the new talent landscape, we’ve published The Singular Hiring Playbook. It’s an in-depth guide to effective hiring, containing the most important lessons we’ve learned from twenty years of helping Biotech companies to build exceptional teams. You can get your copy, free of charge, here: The Singular Hiring Playbook

If growing your team is on your agenda, it’s an invaluable resource that will save you time, money and energy while helping you to hire better people, more quickly, with more confidence that you’re making the right decisions.