Hiring Manager Tips: How to Work with a Search Firm for Best Results

Get the most value out of your recruiting partnership & hire top talent

Workforce Genetics is the executive and scientific search firm, parent company to BioBuzz Media, that provides unparalleled recruiting services to venture-backed and growth stage biotechnology companies.

The biotech industry talent market has been volatile, to say the least. As a hiring manager, you’ve had to navigate the pandemic, the rapid transition to virtual hiring, the “Great Recession,” a skills shortage, fierce competition for top talent and now what might be a biotech downturn fomented by inflation and a potential recession.

What’s next? The truth is, no one is quite sure as the impact of global market forces continue to reverberate through the world economy. 

With so many unknowns and an ever-shifting recruiting landscape, biotech and pharma hiring managers need all the help they can get to find the right people for their respective companies. Some of the most important resources for hiring managers are search and staffing firms.

However, hiring a firm is by no means a “set-it-and-forget-it” choice. Maximizing your partnership with the right firm takes a thoughtful, strategic, and collaborative mindset, as well as a fair share of internal prep work. 

Here are Workforce Genetics’ top 3 tips that can help a hiring manager like you get the most from your staffing or search firm partner.

Tip #1 – Align your needs with the type of recruiting firm you engage.

It’s very important for hiring managers and companies to know the difference between a staffing agency and a search firm. While often lumped together, these are two distinct recruiting models that have different end goals.

Staffing firms predominantly focus on contract staffing, staff augmentation, and project staffing assignments, or very entry-level or less specialized positions that are often hired through a ‘contract-to-hire’ model. These are not permanent positions, and the contractors they recruit are actually hired as employees of the staffing agency. An ideal client for a staffing agency is a large company who has many projects and fluctuating staffing needs. 

Search firms, on the other hand, are usually smaller companies that have a specific niche like, for example, life sciences and biotech. Candidates recruited by a search firm are always hired directly as employees of their client. The positions they recruit for are usually more highly skilled roles, executive/management positions, or positions that are in very high demand. A successful search firm recruiter becomes an expert in their field and fosters deep candidate relationships that they nurture so that when the timing is right to make a move they’ll be there to assist.

So, the first tip is to understand what type of positions you’re looking to fill and then select the correct recruiting partner that’s best equipped to fill those needs. You can read a more detailed exploration of the differences between staffing and search firms in this Workforce Genetics blog post. 

Tip #2 – Make sure your hiring process is refined and operating smoothly before engaging a staffing agency or search firm.

Look, you can engage with the most amazing search firm on the planet that can attract and funnel awesome job candidates into your hiring system. But if your process is flawed and candidates get stuck in bottlenecks, interviews get delayed, or offer letters stall, all will be for naught. 

You can only maximize the value that your recruiting partner creates if your internal hiring process functions at a high level. 

Here’s what you need to assess and refine your hiring process before you partner with a recruiting firm:

• Write a well thought out job description that outlines clear requirements and responsibilities and a compelling value proposition that will attract the right candidates. These should be written in the 2nd person if you intend to publish them; they should not be too long; they should feature your Employer Value Proposition, and; showcase what makes the role desirable.
• Establish how the job opening will be promoted outside of the careers page on your website. What job search sites work best? What social media outlets hit the right audience? What in-person events/conferences will you attend?
• Make sure that everyone is on the same page with what the role is, what skills, abilities and attributes you are looking for, and which are essential vs preferred, and how you’re going to communicate the role to the candidate.
• Establish your interview process and be clear on everyone’s role in the process. Decide how much is virtual, and what is in person. Have a clear process and timeline for how the hiring manager will gather interview feedback to make a decision?  
• Know ahead of time what your negotiation parameters are for negotiating with the candidate.
• Be clear on who writes and approves offer letters and how long those take.

RELATED: Recruiting is a Game of Inches: Why the Candidate Experience Matters More Than Ever

All of these items and more need to be defined and accepted as the standard operating procedure for every one of your team members involved in the hiring process. That way, when your search firm finds you a great candidate, you can deliver an outstanding candidate experience from start to finish and give your team the best chance to secure that talent.

Tip #3 – Set expectations early and avoid a transactional mindset.

Once you’ve identified the type of recruiting partner you need and have engaged them, communicate openly, be transparent, and set clear expectations for what you want from the partnership. The more open and honest you are, the more trust you build early in the process, opening the door to building a true collaborative partnership more quickly. This will also help get some of the proverbial kinks out of the way before they become a problem that results in losing a candidate.

The right search firm will also instill their process into the relationship in order to help deliver you the best results – and communication will be at the heart of it. Remember, while you are an expert at developing new medicines, we are experts in engaging, recruiting and helping you to hire top talent. Trust us to manage the search the best way possible.

Avoiding a transactional mindset, where filling seats overrides your strategic objectives, is essential. This is particularly the case when engaging a search firm whose business is built around trust, strong relationships, and intimate networks. You’re paying this firm a 25 -35% fee to find you top talent, so invest in that relationship and you’ll get every penny of the value from it.

Tell the firm what you expect, gather consensus on how to proceed, and keep the big picture top-of-mind—the biotech community in any given hub is relatively small, thus remembering the value of community will pay off in the long run for your hiring efforts. 

RELATED: Creating A More Efficient Talent Acquisition Strategy Through Multi-Channel Storytelling

Here’s a breakdown of what you can do as a hiring manager to set expectations early to get the most out of your search or staffing agency partnership.

• Schedule and prepare for the intake meeting
• Share your draft and/or final job description ahead of time
• At the intake meeting:
  • Describe why the role is open
  • Define the hard and soft skill requirements
  • Review must haves and nice to haves
  • Explain the company culture and Employer Value Proposition (why candidates should want to join your company)
  • Talk about the current team and why they’re successful
  • Break down the roles’ top 3-5 five responsibilities
  • Describe the day-to-day of a particular role
  • Define expectations for 30, 60, 90 days post-hire
  • Lay out comp and benefits (details like range, bonuses, sign-on, healthcare, relocation, and other details)
  • Talk about how you like to receive candidate submissions
  • Review resume submission feedback and turn around time expectations
  • Outline the interview process
  • Define who owns which parts of the process
  • Set standing scheduled check-ins, frequency as needed.

In the end, your internal hiring processes need to be refined and standardized. These standard operating procedures and your goals and needs have to be clearly communicated early on to your search partner. And both you and the firm you engage need to be on the same page, trust one another, and understand that your partnership isn’t about filling one seat but about building hiring momentum and protecting relationships—regardless if it’s a rejected candidate, job referral resources, workforce development partners or the talent firm’s network. 

As a hiring manager, you need to look inward first before seeking an outside search partner. Once you have your ducks in a row, go get the help you need and you’ll be best positioned to get the most out of your collaboration.