Developing a Fast-Track Science Career—Part 2: Hiring Trends Affect All Career Tracks

By David G. Jensen

The biotechnology company has had a great impact on science careers, no doubt due to the phenomenon of the start-up company. The overall direction for science careers always seems to point upward—despite whatever short-term flux happens to be affecting job seekers at any one moment. There is no industry, and no career, quite like that of biotechnology. Our series of articles about science careers in biotechnology will identify specific career tracks and reveal the experiences of many who have succeeded in those disciplines (see Part One in this series.)

Despite the specific niche, however, all science careers, in both large and small companies, are affected by trends that run through the human resources (HR) community. While most of us would like to think that our marketable skills make us immune to such trends, we find out when hitting the job market that all candidates for jobs, regardless of raw talent, must pass through this HR screening process.

In this feature, we’ll take a break in our discussion of specific career choices to discuss the global trends and changes taking place in the hiring process itself. It is by learning to work with these changing elements that you can find yourself in a fast-track science career.

Understanding the HR screening process

Although it won’t surprise readers that HR staff receive a large number of resumes, many people are surprised to the extent in which the process has simply become a filter through which large numbers of resumes flow, leaving small numbers of interviews to come out on the other side.

We asked a human resources manager with a larger San Francisco biotech company to describe the process that she uses to sort through candidates:

“I have an assistant open the stacks of morning mail and pile the resumes into one large group which I look at over a cup of coffee. Whether they are on paper or electronic, the first thing that I do is to start separating them into three piles. A quick glance at a resume or CV can usually tell me whether to put it into the ‘no way’ pile, the ‘maybes’ pile, or the ‘talk to’ stack.

“The ‘no ways’ are resumes where there is no possibility of a fit, or where attitude problems, communications difficulty, or spelling errors and typos knock them out of consideration. The ‘maybes’ get a brief second look because there was something that caught my eye. Some of these fall into the round file and a number of them get filed for possible future needs. Of course, those resumes which fit a current opening go into the “talk to” pile. After a second look, however, we can trim those numbers back because the hiring managers don’t have time to do a lot of screening. The managers scan our submittals for the technical fit, and it is at this point that we emerge with a limited number of phone interview prospects.”

We all know that these young companies receive a lot of applications. When you study the process further, however, the discouraging thing is that the emphasis lies in the elimination of resumes. It becomes a numbers game, one in which you are simply one piece of paper out of hundreds. Luckily, however, every game has rules, and this one is no different. There is a way to win at this game.

The key is to pay attention to the development of your network. Resumes that come with a referral from an existing employee always get preference. Here’s how our HR contact describes it: “Of course, any resume which is referred to HR from an existing company employee is given a serious look. Generally, these go directly to the department manager after being logged in here in our department.” Think about this for a moment and remember it the next time you feel like tearing your hair out after making a few discouraging networking calls. It should work to convince you to be persistent and find people who can be your “sponsor” inside companies in which you’d like to work.

Other HR trends affecting the biotechnology company

In preparing this article, I surveyed a variety of biotech companies, large and small. Perhaps the typical response received is indicative of one of the most important trends in hiring today: “Too busy to respond.” HR departments and recruiters are exceptionally busy. In many cases, these organizations are having a hard time keeping up. Like any department in a recession, costs are being kept to a minimum and yet most of them are still hiring at the same clip as in previous years.

“Our company has had two major discovery programs gear up in the first part of the year, and I am still trying to get out from under that call to make 10–12 new hires,” one HR manager confided. The company has had several very successful deals this year with large pharmaceutical partners, leading to a need for more discovery scientists.

“My problem has been that the hiring managers are insisting on experienced people from the high-throughput screening field, instead of some very talented people who are available coming out of their postdocs. This means that we’ve got a costly and time-consuming process of robbing the competition instead of developing our own staff.” This company is located in Cambridge, MA, where there are plenty of experienced people, but where most are entrenched in other biotechnology companies. This trend reinforces the use of external recruiting firms.

The manager continued: "We've had to target a handful of companies who hire the same kind of scientist that we do. I’m using two or three recruiting firms to do this right now, and we keep getting referrals to newly trained scientists. Our managers don't have a lot of time to train new hires, however, which keeps up our focus on people with experience. We've found that the tremendous increase in open positions in our region in bioinformatics, proteomics, and genomics has created local shortages. It has remained a steady job market for scientists in discovery."

As you can tell from these comments, while the opportunities seem to be there for experienced people, it is also a fractured job market. It isn’t consistently easy to find a job with a science degree, as it depends on the niche and the experience level. Those who are just entering the market out of a grad program or postdoc find that many of the smaller companies prefer to hire those with industry experience. This is frustrating for those still in academia because it puts the bar a little higher for entry into the biotechnology industry.

Developing multiple skill areas

Another HR trend that is worth considering is the need for people with multiple skill areas. Mike Ziemianski, Director of Human Resources, TissueInformatics (Pittsburgh, PA), described it to me in this way: "People who can demonstrate a cross-pollination among seemingly unrelated disciplines, both from the academic and real-world perspective, are those who have the most value to add to organizations," Ziemianski says. "At one time being a biologist, a programmer, or a pharmacist was, in and of itself, all that was needed. Although careers can still be found with a single focus approach towards work, people who have learned how to combine one study area with another have the extra edge. A person with a degree in information systems, a minor in biology, and a concentrated study in mathematics has a huge potential advantage in the labor market, especially for focused organizations who need that unique skill combination."

Developing multiple skill areas takes time and the proper planning. One trend that hasn’t changed is that those who are successful in their science careers must take the time to do career planning and analysis on regular occasions. In our next column, my colleagues and I will review the various career choices that make up the drug discovery field—currently the hottest job market of them all. We’ve had some interesting interviews with successful discovery scientists, and we’ll tell you more about their career choices and how they have happened to land on the fast track.

Contact Information:

info@searchmastersinternational.com
Dave Jensen, Principal Consultant, Search Masters International.
(630) 663-9140