Why flexible hiring is a game changer for life science SMEs

Hiring is hard for all life sciences businesses right now, even those with huge resources and the best brand recognition. There are many reasons for this, including a significant national talent shortage in the UK and a skills gap in the life sciences sector specifically.

However, for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) talent acquisition is even harder, mostly because they often lack these advantages. At Michael Page Life Sciences, we regularly see that one of the most important factors for smaller companies looking to hire top talent is flexibility in hiring.

Here, we’ll be telling you what flexible hiring means and how it can help you get ahead of the game as a life sciences SME.

What is flexible hiring?

Flexible hiring essentially means being adaptable on key elements of the employment package you’re offering, whether that’s location, hours, salary, or anything else that matters to the candidate.

The SMEs we partner with often have urgent hiring needs in niche, talent short areas like regulatory affairs, quality, scientific, market access, health economics and more. The professionals with the right skillsets to fill these roles know that they are in huge demand - but a bit of compromise in the right areas can go a long way in persuading them to consider a move.

So, what are some examples of flexible hiring? Here are a couple of important ones:

1. Offering a competitive salary

With life science businesses competing for a relatively small pool of candidates amid the talent shortage, larger salaries have become a necessity to attract the best people.

Ultimately, every company has a budget for new hires, and it might be difficult to acquire certain candidates if your budget doesn’t stretch far enough. But by finding out what the market rate is for the role you’re looking to fill and getting as close to it as you can, you will have a much better chance of landing the types of professionals you’re looking for.

For an in-depth breakdown of salaries in the life sciences sector across the country, check our guide to salaries and skills today.

If there’s one area that we would encourage SMEs to be flexible with when recruiting, it’s salaries. Top talent is worth paying for, and inflexibility on salary can hamstring the rest of your recruitment process.

2. Offering flexible ways of working

Remote and hybrid working has become commonplace across most industries, including life sciences. It’s now substantially harder to fill a role which requires attendance of a physical location full-time, than to fill a remote or hybrid one.

For an in-depth look at the importance of flexible working in the post-pandemic life sciences sector, check out this conclusive breakdown by Emma Adams, Associate Partner for Life Sciences at Page Executive.

Of course, an on-site presence is mandatory for some life sciences jobs, especially those in areas like quality and scientific. On the other hand, roles in project management, health economics, and regulatory affairs generally can be performed from home. Where it is possible to facilitate remote working, we would always advise our clients to do so - it will make hiring much easier, and likely enable you to secure a better candidate.

Chloe Baverstock, Senior Manager at Michael Page Life Sciences commented:

We recently had a Leeds-based client who was looking for a regulatory affairs professional, and required the successful candidate to come on site three days per week. After six weeks of searching, they hadn’t been able to find anyone. At our advice, they changed the role to remote, and were able to secure a great candidate within days. Seeing how much easier the process could be with this approach, they extended the hiring drive to two new remote roles, which we were able to fill just as fast.

Top tips for hiring as a life sciences SME

If you’re an SME in the life sciences space, you’ll likely already be aware of the challenges associated with talent attraction. You might have fewer resources to devote to salaries, while limited brand recognition might present an additional challenge.

Here are a few ways to give yourself the best chances of success when hiring:

1. Focus on brand awareness and reach

If you’re a smaller life sciences company, then it’s important to show prospective candidates, who may not be familiar with you, that you’re a great employer.

You could use social media to promote case studies demonstrating the success people have achieved at your company, or other marketing assets to showcase your growth. This is especially important if you are launching a new presence in the UK market from abroad.

Reach is also a crucial success factor. If you aren’t getting your job advertisements in front of a large audience, you’ll struggle to gain traction with prospective candidates. At Michael Page Life Sciences we address this by using a wide range of promotion channels, from social media to through organic and pay-per-click, and on specialist and generalist job boards.

2. Work with an expert agency

Recruitment can be difficult at the best of times, but in this candidate-short market, it can really hold back your commercial success. That’s why it’s so important to enlist the support of professionals who know the life sciences recruitment market inside and out.

This isn’t just a case of accessing expert advice; it will also enable you to hand over many time-consuming aspects of recruitment to your partners. A good recruitment partner will assist you with everything from creating an appealing job description to the interviewing process to onboarding and beyond.

3. Ask for a range of candidates

If you’re unsure what sort of candidate you need or what you’d be willing pay, ask your recruitment partner for a candidate shortlist with a range of candidates. By interviewing candidates with different levels of experience and who are asking for different salary levels, you’ll be able to get a stronger sense of the market. You’ll also have the opportunity to confirm whether your initial impression of your needs was accurate, or if you can afford to be more flexible than you initially thought.

4. Take the advice of local specialists

The dynamics of the life sciences recruitment market can differ significantly across different regions and different specialisms: hiring a health economics specialist in Birmingham is very different to hiring a quality assurance manager in London.

It’s crucial, therefore, to ensure that the recruitment partners you work with have a deep and up-to-date knowledge of the market you’re looking to hire in. This kind of knowledge will help you develop a fast and effective hiring process – it’s why Michael Page Life Sciences decided to create devoted teams of consultants servicing different local markets in the UK.

What next?

Our YouTube series ‘Hire right first time’ goes through some of the key elements of hiring in the life sciences space, from the importance of speed, to positioning your vacancy, to selling your role.

Ready to hire now? Get in touch with one of our expert consultants today.

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