Scaling up with a Leading Software and E-clinical Organisation

Focus on Life Science engaged with a leading software & E-clinical company based in North America with numerous locations throughout the US and around the world. They provide EDC and clinical software to support Clin-Ops and Medical Affairs.

They hadn’t historically used staffing firms for these type of roles due to their network and the size of the organization up to that point and so finding a rapid solution to scale up was essential to their success.

The senior leadership team had exhausted their networks, and the efforts of the internal recruitment team did not bear fruit. They weren’t getting candidates with the required skillset or from competitors that worked in the same field and a more robust and fully fleshed out campaign was required.

Also due to the size of the organization, the incumbents were required to wear multiple hats and have skillsets across multiple verticals, eg someone in Business development that had an extensive clinical experience which is somewhat of an unusual hybrid profile.

Our client had recently made an acquisition and also brought in new C-suite leadership who were mandated with building out the commercial, marketing, client services and some of the development team. The EDC/E-clinical space is incredibly competitive with many organisations looking to gain the upper hand and attracting the right talent plays a critical role.

Initially, our remit was to map the relevant talent in the current market based on very specific metrics such as experience and skill set. This is usually a fairly straight forward exercise however in this instance we needed to navigate our way around non-compete clauses as a large proportion of the obvious talent was employed by competing organisations.

We needed to develop a pipeline of credible and viable candidates in the shortest timeframe possible while maintaining confidentiality within the market. Speed and accuracy of candidate submissions was key to success in this instance.

This engagement and the subsequent roles we have worked on thus far have been business-critical roles. The urgency of the roles is due to the commercial goals the business has set for 2021/2022 in response to the turbulent market conditions faced throughout the global Covid-19 Pandemic.

We worked closely with the internal team to set up calls with the various hiring managers to fully understand the nuances of the role including:

• Any variations from the job description – what they will be doing, what they are responsible for, what does the job entail, projects, opportunities to progress, what is appealing about the role, ultimately why a candidate should join the organization.

We generally don’t like to work from job descriptions as they rarely give the nuances involved in the role and we firmly believe that putting in the required amount of time to understand and flesh out the role in its entirety that creates a domino effect, translating into a better process and far more qualified candidates.

• Person criteria – Qualifications, accreditations, experience, industry knowledge, skills required, personal traits and previous background.
• The MIT’s – These are the core requirements and things essential to a successful candidate Also, there are competitors that they feel have candidates that would fit the bill.
• Remuneration – Salary, Bonuses, Benefits, and Progression and Development opportunities.

We also like to dive deep into the history of the role:

• Vacancy History – How quickly do they need someone on board?
• What problems have they had filling the role and most importantly, what are the ramifications of not filling the role?
• Methodology – What methods are they using, what success have they had, what barriers/obstacles have they faced?
• Interview process – how many stages, who will they be speaking to, when will decisions are made.

We want to get it right first time and save our clients both time and money. That is why a fully detailed briefing call is crucial to our success.

In total we worked on 5 roles, 1 was put on hold due to a restructure internally within the business however, we will be re-commencing work on that soon.

We placed 2 very senior level commercial professionals within 3 weeks of starting the engagement. There was another candidate for a marketing role which they loved but ultimately they decided to promote from within to develop their homegrown talent but this was no reflection on our candidate and they absolutely would have hired them if they didn’t have someone else viable.

Finally, at the time of writing (May 2021) we have another candidate that should be receiving an offer shortly.

This means that out of the 5 roles we have worked on, we have managed to find a suitable candidate for each of them, and look forward to working on the 6th role once the internal structure has been confirmed.

And lastly, as a token of our confidence with this client and give 100% peace of mind we offered this client extended rebate periods for each hire based.

If they don’t work out then there is absolutely nothing to pay. Also, everything we did up to the point of a successful placement was completely free of charge.