Life Science Review

Shirley Faith

There is a chronic shortage of skilled talent in the life science sector, allowing demand to outstrip supply. Recruiters need to diversify their recruitment strategy.

It is a challenging job for recruiters in the life sciences sector to keep hiring up with the sector's meteoric growth. Achieving success requires championing inclusion, recruiting for capacity, and fostering internal growth. While the life sciences talent market may be tough, the report also identified several new challenges related to talent attraction for the industry's expansion.

The best way to expand your talent pool is to improve your hiring process. Internal candidates can contribute to your talent pipeline in the following ways:

Invest in upskilling your existing workforce: In the US life sciences sector, it takes an average of 105 days to fill a non-executive position, resulting in a loss of USD 500 per day. Then investing in upskilling your existing workforce could be more efficient and economical than hiring new talent.

Upskilling current employees effectively address talent shortages by more than two-thirds of life sciences leaders. Sixty-three percent of companies have invested in an internal mobility platform to improve recruitment efforts.

Build capabilities: The key to holistically developing your employees is to think beyond technical or role-specific skills when planning your learning and development strategy. Multi-soft skills, including empathy, communication abilities, and design thinking, are becoming increasingly important in patient-centric solutions and integrated healthcare.

It was essential for 88 percent of life sciences professionals to expand their professional skills to work in adjacent fields. According to Deloitte's report on the life sciences industry, life sciences professionals can generate new insights and develop an agile mindset to continuously improve business outcomes by collaborating with colleagues to dive deeper into complex business questions.

Evaluate your career paths: Companies must provide employees with multiple paths for growth and development since only some want to advance into management. You can offer your employees career paths that allow them to take on more responsibilities and challenges with a higher impact without becoming managers.

Encourage career progression transparency: Transparency in career progression goes hand in hand with internal mobility. Your employees need to know the development opportunities available to them as a means of nurturing career progression from within. Many employees need to realize that these jobs exist.

Even if your employees know the opportunity, more is needed to incentivize them to apply. In Deloitte's 2019 Human Capital Report, nearly 60 percent of employees believed that finding a job at another company would be easier than changing roles at their current company. A transparent career progress tracking system will ensure your talent pipeline is stocked with promising internal candidates.