Learn how to discuss career gaps and how to be a great hiring manager and interviewer.
Welcome to Career Coach, a column for job seekers and employees navigating the ins and outs of finding, landing and succeeding in jobs in the biotech industry. Each month, Carina Clingman, founder of The Collaboratory Career Hub and host of the “Biotech Career Coach” podcast, answers questions from the community. You can email her questions at hello@collaboratorycareerhub.com.
In this column, we’ll discuss how to create a positive narrative around what you’ve done during a career gap, as well as offer tactical lessons on how to be a great hiring manager and interviewer.
Q: I’ve been tutoring while I’m looking for a job. Should I mention that during an interview? If so, how?
CC: I love that you’ve been staying busy during your job search. As a former tutor myself, I think the gift of knowledge and shared wisdom is incredibly generous.
First, try not to worry about your career gap. Recruiters and companies understand that times have been tough, and they’re more interested in what you’ve been doing to keep your skills sharp. So, if you’ve been tutoring or mentoring, it shows that you’re passionate about teaching and developing others, which are highly transferrable skills.
When asked about your career gap during an interview, keep your answer brief and to the point. For example, you could say something like:
“Yes, the job market has been tough, so I’ve stayed busy by tutoring during this time. I forgot how much I love teaching and mentoring, and this has been a great reminder. I noticed there’s an emphasis on mentoring junior team members in this job, which is part of the reason I applied. I’m excited to carry what I’m doing now with my tutoring and mentorship into a new role so that I can build toward leading a team someday, which is my ultimate goal. I’ll admit that in my last role, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for mentorship, and I didn’t quite realize how much I missed it.”
This answer frames your experience in a positive light and relates it back to the job you’re applying for. If a candidate gave me an answer like this, I would think they’re both proactive and passionate, and I would be very impressed.
More often, we get answers that sound defensive, guilty, ashamed or some combination of those three. Don’t be defensive or make excuses for your career gap. Instead, focus on the skills you’ve gained through tutoring or mentoring and how they can benefit the company.
Q: I’m hiring for my first direct report. My company didn’t really tell me how to be good at hiring, and we’re a startup, so I don’t have a lot of resources. How do I run a hiring process?
CC: Congratulations! Hiring your first direct report is an important step in your career. Unfortunately, if you’re hiring in a startup, building a team with limited resources is par for the course. Here’s the simple three-part framework I use to help my biotech startup clients prepare for hiring confidently (and scientifically!).
- Audit and understand the process: When you first take on the role of hiring manager, begin by assessing the tools and systems at your disposal. Ask yourself key questions: How are candidates applying? Is there an applicant tracking system (ATS) in place, or are you tracking applications manually? Who is responsible for screening applications? The answers will give you a starting point to help identify where your process is good, what needs improvement and what’s missing altogether.
- Optimize and use systems: Once you have a clear understanding of your hiring process and systems, it’s time to evaluate the tools that could make it more efficient. If you’re using spreadsheets and email to manage your hiring process, you may want to consider implementing an ATS. Applicant tracking systems can help you securely manage confidential candidate information and ensure that your hiring process is in compliance with legal standards. Most importantly, they can save a significant amount of time that would otherwise be spent on administrative tasks, freeing up you and your team to focus on more strategic activities.
- Use data-driven hiring: Approach your hiring process as you would developing a new protocol in the lab. Start by defining the stages. Determine how many candidates you’ll interview over the phone and how many will proceed to in-person panel interviews. The gold standard for hiring is to conduct video interviews with five to seven candidates, then advance three of those for a panel interview before ultimately hiring one.
Each interviewer should use candidate scorecards to rate applicants consistently across various skills and traits. This structured approach helps minimize biases and makes your evaluations more objective. Use that data to run effective debrief meetings where everyone on the hiring team is heard equally and your team feels confident about their decisions.
As you collect data, analyze it to refine your hiring process. For example, if you notice that many candidates reach the final interview stage, but few are hired, this might indicate you need to adjust your screening criteria earlier in the process. Lucky for you, the best hiring processes are extremely data-driven and highly scientific, which should appeal to your team!
Q: I’m scared of making a mistake and saying or doing something I shouldn’t when I interview candidates. What should I ask, and what am I not allowed to ask?
CC: It seems like you could benefit from some training on how to conduct interviews. Unfortunately, many hiring managers and interviewers in our industry are not given any training before being assigned to hiring teams. This can be dangerous because it’s very easy to unintentionally ask questions or behave in a way that can lead to legal problems for the company.
Just as you couldn’t learn to use lab equipment without proper training, you can’t expect to be an expert in hiring without the right training. It’s important to receive training on how to ask the right questions, interpret answers and avoid asking illegal questions. While I can provide you with a brief overview, I suggest speaking with your manager and advocating for basic interview training for you and your entire interview team.
Understand the Legal Framework of Hiring
The most important thing (legally speaking) is to know what you can and cannot ask during interviews. For instance, while it might seem friendly to ask someone where they live or about their family, these questions can inadvertently introduce bias (and are therefore not appropriate and sometimes not legal).
Instead, focus on questions that directly relate to the candidate’s ability to perform the job. Questions should assess their skills, experience and fit for the role without straying into personal territory that doesn’t impact their professional capabilities.
- Stick to job-relevant questions: Only ask questions that relate to the candidate’s ability to perform the job tasks. For example, if the position requires being on site, you can confirm their ability to meet this requirement without asking about where they live or their commuting preferences.
- Handle sensitive topics with care: If you need to discuss something like relocation, avoid personal questions about family or personal circumstances. Instead, focus on the candidate’s willingness and ability to relocate based on the job’s needs.
- Manage salary and visa discussions carefully: These topics can be tricky and vary by state and job type. Ideally, HR will handle this line of questioning, and members of the interview team won’t need to broach these topics at all. If you’re at a very small company without HR support, familiarize yourself with the laws in your area, and structure your questions accordingly.
Build Your Interviewing Skills
Now that you know the basic legalities, let’s focus on how to ask good questions. Effective interviewing is a skill that takes practice and time to develop. A quick trick is to use behavioral-based interviewing techniques, which involve asking candidates to describe past experiences that demonstrate their skills and work habits. These questions look like this:
- Rather than asking “Are you good at meeting deadlines?” ask “Tell me about a time when you had to meet an ambitious deadline.”
- Rather than asking “Do you have experience mentoring people?” ask “Describe a situation in which you had to mentor a junior team member to a more strategic outcome. How did you do it?”
- Rather than asking “Are you a good team player?” ask “What was your proudest accomplishment on your last team?” and listen for the use of “we” instead of “I” to evaluate how team-oriented they really are.
These types of questions allow you to learn a lot about a candidate. You experience the stories that make up their past accomplishments, you can evaluate how they think and you’ll get a true feel for the things that are important to them.
Carina Clingman, Ph.D., is the founder of The Collaboratory Career Hub, an online community for people interested in working in biotech. She’s also the founder and CEO of Recruitomics Consulting, which specializes in talent acquisition and talent strategy for startup biotechs. Listen to her new “Biotech Career Coach” podcast, learn about joining the career hub or send questions to hello@collaboratorycareerhub.com.
