5 Ways To Source the Right Candidate and Get Them Through the Door

You’re tasked with filling 3 new mid-level biotech roles to ensure timely launch of a new drug and as usual, you are crunched for time. Your success in attracting the right candidates may lie in a few simple tweaks to your recruiting email and phone screenings.

Take a look at these 5 tips and ask yourself: Is what you’re saying compelling to your busy, in-demand biotech candidate targets? Here’s how to perform a quick check.As a recruiter, you’re continually challenged to fill key roles that are integral to the company’s success and revenues. Your performance is often based on how rapidly you can deliver top quality candidates. In Silicon Valley tech and biotech companies the pressure is often even higher -- a typical scenario will task an internal recruiter and hiring manager with filling three new mid-level biotech roles in a matter of weeks to ensure timely launch of a new drug.

As CEO of Sage, I know your pressures and feel the daunting weight of these recruiting challenges firsthand, because at Sage we encounter them every day. What I’ve learned: often the simplest small tweaks to your email and phone screening scripts and approaches can mean the difference between sinking or swimming.

Take a look at these 5 tips and ask yourself: Is what you’re saying compelling to your busy, in-demand biotech candidate targets? Here’s how to perform a quick check:

1. Does your email describe a promising, career-expanding role?

Keywords to use in the headline are: “Growth opportunity” “Jump Start Your Career” “High Growth Potential” in order to not only capture a busy professional’s attention, but trigger their imagination and the glimpse into a more lucrative, fulfilling career opportunity.

 2. Does the first third of your email paint a promising picture, ask a question and include a call to action?

It’s essential to include all three elements right away so the candidate is drawn in and begins to imagine their version of a new role within your company. Beyond the usual adjectives “groundbreaking,” ”innovative” and “exciting” that so many recruiters fall back on to tout their company’s technology, use words that authentically describe your company’s ethos and culture. Don’t worry - you will add in the deeper specifics about the role later - the goal within the first 3 sentences is to trigger interest, capture imagination and compel the candidate to read further. In other words, elicit an emotional response. For example, “Do you want to be at the forefront of the latest methodologies in human DNA? Our client, a leading bio-tech company is looking for your expertise to make a difference in the way consumers understand their DNA. This role will have a direct impact on the future of how we understand our bodies, and predict disease and wellness for ourselves and our families. If you are interested in taking your career to the next level and working at a company that is all about impact and change, let me know when you are free this week for a quick chat.”

 3. Have you and your team tracked your Open Rates?

Here at Sage Human Capital, we’re founded on the premise of leveraging data to drive recruiting effectiveness and success. For example, all of our clients get a dashboard that they can log into 24/7 that shows how many emails we’ve sent to targeted candidates and the open rate of each email cycle. This way our clients and our teams quickly measure and calibrate outreach effectiveness -- for LinkedIN messages, emails and phone interview requests. The Sage Human Capital dashboard empowers you to identify and eliminate candidates’ resistance, communication bottlenecks and delays; identify which candidate profiles are responding more rapidly based on their geography, their current job title, their qualifications. This data-driven approach eliminates the guesswork as to your outreach effectiveness. If you haven’t tallied your Open Rates or measured your overall outreach effectiveness and would like to try our approach for free, Contact Us.

4. Does your phone prescreen bring down natural defenses?

As a Bay Area technology recruiter, you know how difficult it is to land a phone slot on a busy engineer's calendar. Rather pummel the candidate with bullet points about the job, we recommend engaging the candidate personally first to bring down their natural defenses. Start by asking them why they agreed to take the call, what they may be looking for in a new role and their likes and dislikes in their current position. A great example of this is when you go shopping, and immediately the salesperson at the store asks you if they can help you with anything. Your defenses are up, your immediate reaction is no. However, the fact is that you’ve taken the time to make the trip to the mall and you have your wallet on you. If that salesperson were to first see you looking at sweaters, and then come over to you and ask you if they can help you find your size or different color, you would likely have a less resistant response. As recruiters, remind yourself that the axiom holds true for candidates: your promise of a new, more lucrative, better job and life-changing career is a small price in exchange for 30 minutes of their time.

5. In your phone screen, have you laid out a vision on how this role aligns with the candidate’s career aspirations?

We’ve all experienced the candidate who accepted the job -- then changed their mind -- leaving you under scrutiny and putting your division or company at risk of not meeting key quarterly benchmarks. Often these recruiting glitches arise in situations when -- despite your outlining the job description, assessing core skills, and delving into daily duties -- your candidate’s personal perception of the promise that this role holds fails to inspire and energize their desires. Be sure that in any phone screens you and the hiring manager conduct that you effectively activate a vision of how that candidate’s career and life will benefit by taking this role, and underscore to that candidate why their natural aptitudes spell success. 

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