How to successfully hire tech talent in life sciences

Challenges

Becton Dickinson (BD) is a global medical technology company dedicated to improving medical discovery, diagnostics and the delivery of care. Medication Management Solutions (MMS) is a division of BD that offers integrated solutions across the entire patient journey from hospital admission through to discharge and beyond.

Due to BD MMS’ roadmap of planned innovative products and software solutions, the company identified the burning need to increase its sales force hiring decisions planned for late 2019 and further into 2020 to enable strategy deployment.

The continued scaling of the business requires technology-savvy talent from across regions, which isn’t always found within the medical industry. BD required a thorough market/talent analysis and guidance as to where the talent can be found and which industries they can hire the talent from; what is the demand and the supply, as well as who competitors are for the tech talent in life sciences.

Solutions

The MMS project started with Cielo’s Executive Search team scoping an extensive, multi-country talent mapping exercise. To support BD and provide an insight into the latest technical (connectivity, M2M, IoT) capability, the team delivered a cross-industry study and prospect candidate overview for sales representatives and business development manager job groups in all the key markets in Europe. The BD MMS leadership workgroup worked closely with Cielo to define the requirements, competencies and from there shape the strategies on where the relevant tech talent for life sciences could be found. The project was broken down into several “waves” to assure alignment with the business and shape the actual talent map approach. The comprehensive report included the following data:

• Adjacent sector analysis, including location data, employee value proposition and market insights to inform future attraction strategies across 11 countries.
• Talent distribution: talent baseline, educational attainment, years of experience and tenure as well as the demand vs. supply analysis.
• Candidate benchmark profiles and industry hiring behaviors.
• A comprehensive longlist of qualified talent shared with BD, ready to be approached with about 1,700 candidates mapped.

Findings showed that BD should target healthcare IT and pure technology companies. It meant targeting traditional hires alongside “non-traditional” talent, who would be unaware of the impact their skills could have within a medical company – and on healthcare patient safety.

This intel was used to build up a talent attraction strategy executed by the Cielo employer brand and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) client teams.

Results

Cielo’s Executive Search team managed to execute a large-scale program of work in less than three months, in time for the client’s business to launch its talent pipelining and hiring for 2020. Due to COVID-19 however, focus shifted from direct recruitment to building talent pools for future roles.

Combining employer branding and RPO talent acquisition services, the team engaged with 1,695 market-mapped candidates. By understanding BD’s employer brand, the recruiters increased engagement with the candidates and provided a more high-touch candidate experience positively demonstrating how their individual skills could support the growth of MMS. As a result, there was a pool of 226 engaged candidates wanting to join BD’s talent community in readiness for business growth.

This success has also inspired other parts of the business, internationally, to begin similar campaigns.