Although looking for candidates on platforms like LinkedIn continues to be the norm, some headhunters are also combing Google Scholar and PubMed for authors with relevant skills.
Pictured: A stack of scientific journals/iStock, Olga Kadygrob
A few decades ago, hiring for biotech and pharma companies meant sifting through piles of resumes to home in on candidates. It also meant networking heavily with academics who could point to the right people for a job. But after LinkedIn launched in 2003, things gradually started changing, said Joe Peters, owner of Scientific Search, a New Jersey-based recruiting firm. Assessing people’s professional experience and shortlisting candidates was just a matter of a few clicks. Today, while most recruiters rely on platforms such as LinkedIn to source talent, some also turn to scientific publications in search of the right person for a given opening.
Peters uses LinkedIn as a first-line search strategy. This works when companies are hunting for people with broad skill sets, he said. For example, “Sometimes our clients just mention that they are looking for someone who can work in central nervous system-related research, so searching for candidates is fairly easy.”
When organizations have more particular requirements, however, Peters turns to the author section of relevant research papers. “If a company wants to hire someone with a specific research background—for instance, someone who has worked on tau proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease, then looking just on LinkedIn is not enough.”
Tracking Down Workers with Niche Skills
One area where Peters has seen a rising demand is in cell and gene therapy (C>). “We have quite a few clients working on CAR T who ask for people who have experience working with T cells,” he said. The dramatic rise in demand for professionals in the C> space comes at a time when companies have received approvals and now need to scale up their commercial production levels. According to a report by Vision Research, the global C> market size is expected to hit $42.56 billion by 2030, growing by nearly 40% each year from 2022 to 2030.
According to Peters, very few fresh university graduates have experience in C>, and companies only look for experienced candidates for such roles. “Having a publication related to C> may give companies confidence in their hiring strategy.”
Publications Give an Edge
Once a bullish market, this year was especially hard for the biotech industry. The XBI, an equal-weighted index of U.S. biotechnology stocks, fell by 56% from its February 2021 peak. Many companies have resorted to layoffs and cutting their product pipelines to manage the cash crunch in this climate. The industry trade group BIO found that more than 100 companies laid off employees in the first half of 2023, which is double the pace of the prior year, STAT News reported.
In this climate, competition for biotech jobs has become stiff. Having a name on a publication is way of one getting noticed by recruiters, suggested Nick Poloni of Oregon-based Cascadia Search Group. Poloni, who specializes in biotech and pharma recruiting, said that his firm seldom relies on scientific publications. Still, he is noticing an uptick in the trend among other recruiters.
Authoring a paper in a journal is an outstanding achievement and automatically gives people an edge compared to other candidates, he added. “Companies want people who have been part of scientific publications and think of them as a valuable asset.”
However, he warns that reaching out solely to authors of scientific publications is not a good strategy for recruiters. “If somebody doesn’t have a publication, it doesn’t mean they are not valuable to the company. It just means that there are deeper conversations to be had with other candidates to understand their professional journeys better,” Poloni said.
At a time when companies are hiring with great caution and ensuring that every buck is well invested, Peters suggested that even authors of scientific publications should invest time in building their LinkedIn profiles and mentioning specific skills they have mastered. Moreover, if people have worked in niche research areas such as C> or have publications to their name, they should elaborate on that as it will get them more attention from headhunters, he added.
Aayushi Pratap is a New York-based health and science journalist and an alum of Columbia Journalism School. Reach her at app2151@columbia.edu.
