How we recruit Scientists
I founded LiCa Scientific 8 years ago and when I think why LiCa Scientific is well received by the market, I think it’s because we offer a far more straightforward interface. I wanted to write a blog to go over the backdrop to ‘why’ we are able to do what we do as it’s more complex than people may at first suppose.
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First of all, I have a belief that the job market is a very open but also very closed place for many companies. Most of our systems and my work as a founder are counteractive to this situation.
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I’ve worked in scientific recruitment now for 20 years and feels it’s actually harder to recruit for people than ever before, due to the way we’ve been ‘herded’ to certain to a handful of major hiring platforms, and then the belief that ‘this is the only way’.
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It is becoming increasingly difficult to engage on both sides, and engagement is more and more ‘bought’ if you haven’t spent years and shoe leather driving it. I find nothing that comes easy has much value and “easy approaches” seem to offer little more than wasted time and energy. Paying for advert promotion is all well and good but it doesn’t guarantee a result like we do, so can easily become wasted money.
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As a supplier I sometimes am given projects that have spent weeks sat on an advert platforms getting ignored and wasting time before quickly solving the issue with a shortlist that is hired from. So, lets get into it, how do we do recruit the top people so quickly?
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First of all we have multiple places where our candidates are in our orbit.
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I’m a nerd first and foremost I like astronomy as well as chemistry and science generally (see pic) so I think of these like polar, geosynchronous etc each orbit we’ve got does a slightly different job with different features.
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Querying these groups also works a bit like a telescope, in so far as you can only use each one to focus on one thing at a time, meaning to build a full picture you need to invest time in multiple viewpoints. Spend more time on a viewpoint and more can be revealed. Spend even more time on it you can do more, in astronomy you take the angle of view and look again 6 months later and take that angle you can find out how far away something is, you can't use a shorter time (unless it's a Cephid Variable star but I'll keep this blog on point) I think similar is what we offer with the database. We use a resource the internet won't give you which is 'time'.
If you consider an advert it relies on someone reading it at that moment. It's a bit like me deciding to look through the telescope above for a star called Betelgeuse going supernova and while one could be exceptionally lucky and that happen, it's highly unlikely. By building a community of engaged scientists for 8 years we often email people to be told 'great timing I wasn't looking for jobs but...' this is what I mean by time being a resource. We expect to find people and there is no luck involved. If we take on your recruitment project, we will find your people.
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·????? We hold a database which has over 10,000 people on there who have engaged with us over multi-years and can be funnelled into groups and contacted instantly using clever software. These are all chemists in our 5 areas of Analytical, Formulation, Production, Sales and Synthesis.
·????? We subscribe to the same job boards any candidate would likely use which takes a high ongoing monthly investment. If a candidate is on the market they have posted their CV, we can access that CV. This gives 100% access to 'on market' candidates in my view. There are also 'off market candidates' see below for a visualisation of what I mean.
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·????? Our ‘social’ networks are well developed we’ve thousands of followers and are able to get more attention to things in this market anything we post has impact.
·????? One thing that surprises a lot of people is we don’t excessively use LinkedIn and typically us it as an approach platform. I recognise the irony in one of the places I’m posting this being LinkedIn but any search results are only as good as the infrastructure driving the search. Relying on one place loses control. If I didn’t personally code how that search platform works, how can I know it’s approaching whole-of-market? Clearly you have to use several. ?
·????? We engage a lot with Universities, attend conferences, sponsor academic activities, visit colleges, meaning we know which PhD team at which University is researching what and have deep knowledge of know where exactly to go digging for niche skills.
·????? Finally we advertise. But we wrest some control here too, the content we put out is coded in a special way that means we “clearly tell the internet it’s a job” and AWS/Google et al act accordingly on that information. It means we routinely outperform our clients in terms of adverts we write versus what you write and who they reach. Anything you see on the internet is likely written 48 hours ago and will disappear in 48 hours, curated for you based on background information. The internet was never designed for job hunting, chances are neither was your corporate website. Ours very much was.
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So the answer the above question is really ‘infrastructure’. We have built these orbits of resources, and in the same way a bunch of satellites with atomic clocks can then drive your car for you it works similarly and drives results which on face value look simple and convenient.
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Anyway I didn’t know it would work but the old saying is ‘built it and they will come’. And that you have, over the last 8 years we’ve developed into a quick, simple solution for finding chemists attracting some of the worlds largest brands as clients. We are on a continuous improvement journey as well, the above systems will never be ‘finished’ and this means we remain at the forefront of things. Good enough is never good enough. ?
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I do look forward to layering in more Artificial Intelligence to this, and am attending a lot of sessions here which naturally won’t create a single extra scientist available in a tight market… but will likely allow us to search quicker as internet 1.0 did. This being said, give me a pile of CV’s again after a New Scientist advert... I miss the old days sometimes!
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Finally to continue the astronomy theme NASA used to have a saying when purchasing goods or services “You have better, faster or cheaper but you can only pick 2”.
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However with the rise of inward investment in recruitment I believe external recruitment options are becoming a rare breed of ‘better, faster and cheaper’.
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Contact me anytime for more information!
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Matthew Rollinson
LiCa Scientific
?+44 161 443 4173