Gaining the Competitive Edge: Analyzing Your Rivals in the Life Sciences Arena

In the fiercely competitive arena of the Life Sciences industry, understanding your competition is akin to holding the key to success. Conducting a meticulous competitive analysis provides unparalleled insights, enabling you to refine your strategies and chart a course to dominance. In this blog, we’ll explore the art of dissecting your competitors within the Life Sciences sector and unveil the strategies to ensure your organization emerges as a formidable force.

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The Value Executive Search Firms Can Bring (Hint: It’s Not Just Candidates!)

Knowing how to select a search firm is something that many businesses struggle with, especially when you are keen to get the best value for your time and money. Rather than seeing a search firm as a one-way route to getting candidates, take a moment to find out more about what is being offered and how it can benefit you and your company.

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FTC’s Non-compete Rule Proposal – When We Can Expect Action?

The Federal Trade Commission has long been positioning itself to enact a new rule that bans noncompete clauses across the entire nation, helping to relevel the playing field for business competition in line with Section 5 of the FTC Act. Sadly, the delays and lack of decision have left many states feeling disheartened and frustrated, with many believing that the new rule may be watered down before it arrives. Take a look below to find out more about what’s happened to date and find out when we can expect to see further action.

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Thank You Letters – How to Get Them Right

Modern recruitment is a stressful process that leaves many candidates struggling to set themselves apart from the crowd. When giving recruitment advice, it’s common to hear information about how to construct applications, how to prepare for an interview, and the types of answers that interviewers are looking for. However, one area that hasn’t been explored in the depth it deserves is the act of sending a thank you letter after an interview is over. Find out why thank you letters are vital and learn how to get them right.

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Why You Need to Talk About Salary – Advice for Hiring Managers

The great thing about advertising job vacancies is that you are opening the door to new, fresh talent that can have a positive effect on your company. As such, you may be left feeling motivated, inspired, and eager to tell these candidates exactly why your company is the best place to work.

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Succession Planning – What You Need to Consider

Succession planning is not a ploy to help someone you like into their next job, it’s an organizational strategy that is designed to provide a smooth leadership transition when someone makes a move and yet only 35% of businesses have a formalized succession plan in place!

The wonderful thing about succession planning is that it allows you to both nurture and identify key talent that has the potential to provide quality leadership in the future, leaving you confident that your company is in safe hands. If you are leading a business or a department, then we have shared the things you need to consider when thinking about succession planning – take a look now.

Why Succession Planning is So Important

We all know that appropriate planning sits right at the heart of any business, helping you to create a stable business that can thrive. One key area that can quickly bring significant instability is a question mark over the organizational leadership and that’s why succession planning is so important.

Using succession planning strategies enables you to take a proactive approach to find the next generation of leaders, nurturing talent, and ensuring that your business can pass over to the next pair of hands without concern. Many people wrongly assume that succession planning is about picking one key player from within the company whereas in practice, it is about creating a culture of progression and an openness to talent discovery that can benefit the company’s needs over time.

How to Create a Succession Plan That Works

Even if you are already a fan of a succession plan, knowing how to implement one in the best conceivable way can be difficult, especially when you have a wide range of other responsibilities that need your attention. Take a look at our simple steps to creating a succession plan that really works:

  • Involve a Team – succession planning is not something that should be held by one person, instead, it should be a team approach. Take your executive team and department heads as your succession planning team and use their knowledge to make the progress you need.
  • Assess Your Current Talent – once you have a team dedicated to succession planning you will need to assess the talent that is already within your company and highlight any specific areas that are lacking so that you can start to consider where specific skills need to be nurtured.
  • Provide Opportunities – if you are keen to develop talent from within, you will need to provide opportunities for people to succeed. Think about mentoring and coaching as well as the use of secondments to help individuals get the skillset they will need for promotion in the future.
  • Create a Culture of Progression – finally, once you are clear on what you want to achieve, take the time to share this with your employees so that they know you are prepared to invest in their development with the opportunity to progress in the future. This will help to increase motivation and allow employees to see a future with your company.

Key Problems That Succession Planning Brings

No matter how invested you are in the notion of succession planning, there will always be obstacles that you will need to overcome or adapt to in order to get what you want. One of the fundamental issues with succession planning is the lack of diversity and fresh perspective that it brings, especially when you only promote from within. To avoid this issue, you will need to take significant steps to take an inclusive approach, making sure that underrepresented groups are specifically considered when making succession decisions.

You will also need to consider reticence from your executive team that may consider their current role to be the one that they will stay in until retirement. This type of thinking can have a detrimental impact on the progression of a company, and it is much better to work towards a leadership team that can switch roles every year or so, helping to keep people fresh and promoting the right talent at the right time,

The final issue is a lack of willingness to formalize succession plans for roles that will become vacant, with just 21% of companies having a clear and structured plan in place that is regularly reviewed. Rather than being a one-time decision that produces a document everyone files away, it should be updated and adapted on a regular basis to ensure that the company’s needs are being properly met. This will require ongoing input and a succession-focused committee, but the benefits of doing this will far outweigh the additional time commitment required.

Get More Information From GeneCoda®

If you are interested in getting more advice about succession planning and executive roles, then GeneCoda® is here to help. Our team has years of executive experience and will work with you to create a succession route that will ensure your company continues to thrive. Reach out today and let us support your succession planning needs.

☝️ For more in depth information and discussion on Succession Planning strategies, you might want to download our guide. 📚

The Do’s and Don’ts of Life Science Recruitment – Find Out Where You May Be Tripping Yourself Up

When it comes to hiring new people in your life science business, you may be making simple mistakes that cost you a lot, both financially and from a HR perspective. This can be a problem, especially when you consider that more than 9 out of 10 employers are struggling to fill vacant positions. Rather than continuing to do what you’ve always done, take a moment to read through our simple recruitment do’s and don’ts so that you can streamline your efforts and stop tripping yourself up.

The Do’s of Successful Life Science Recruitment

Are you ready to achieve the best life science recruitment results? Take a look at some if the top do’s for hiring successfully:

  • Do Think About Money – recruitment is a time consuming and expensive process, so it’s important to think about what you are spending and how much it costs to use your own time for recruitment.
  • Do Focus on Skills and Experience – it’s easy to look for candidates that fit a specific stereotype but think more about what they can bring to the table from their skills and experiences rather than picking out someone that fits the same mould as others in your team.
  • Do Get Help – your time is precious (and expensive), so use recruitment experts to help you find the perfect candidate. Recruiters have lots of tools they can use to help you select the right people, saving you the hassle of doing it yourself!
  • Do Listen to Others – when it comes to recruitment, take time to talk to others in your company to find out what type of candidate they are looking for. Doing this will expand the range of suitable applicants for you to choose from.
  • Do Share What You Are Offering – did you know that 79% of candidates are looking for more than just a salary bump? Make sure that you take the time to share all the support and benefits that you are offering in order to reach a wider range of applicants.

The Don’ts of Successful Life Science Recruitment

With all the do’s clearly signed for you to follow, take a look at some of the most important don’ts below:

  • Don’t Do it All Yourself – even when you are trying to cut costs, aiming to take on all the hiring responsibility is an unwise decision as you may end up choosing the wrong people or find yourself offering too much or too little during negotiations.
  • Don’t Hire from a Small Pool – when you are hiring, it’s easy to shortlist and offer roles to the first few people that apply. However, focusing on such a small pool of applicants will mean that your chances of getting the best will be slim to non-existent.
  • Don’t Waste Money – again, if you take the decision to hire on your own, you may end up spending more money than you need on advertisements and interview times. Instead, think about ways to get the biggest audience for the lowest cost.
  • Don’t Let Bias Lead – when arranging your own recruitment, you may find yourself swayed to behave in a specific way due to your own unconscious bias. Rather than letting this bias take the lead, try to employ non-biased recruitment tools to help you get a fair representation of all candidates.

Work with GeneCoda®

Once you are up to speed on the main recruitment do’s and don’ts, it is important to find a recruitment partner that will help you to progress in the way that matters the most. The team at GeneCoda® are the perfect choice as we focus all our time and effort on finding the best candidates for your job requirements. Reach out to us today and we’ll share our simple strategy that will propel your recruitment results forward!

Creating a Culture of Lifelong Learning – Why it Matters

As the world continues to evolve ideas into new and exciting advancements that help the world to progress, many life science companies are sitting back and marveling at their contribution to these developments. However, rather than sitting back and resting on your laurels, now is the time to invest in creating a culture of lifelong learning so that today’s great teams can create tomorrow’s big solutions.

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The Growing Demand for Data Scientists

There is no denying that life science is hugely dependant on lots of data, especially when working hard to prove the validity of experiments. In fact, most life science professionals spend a vast amount of time collecting data! However, data collection is just one part of the puzzle, analysing the data quickly and accurately is the other part and that’s where data scientists come in.

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Hierarchy vs Flat Company Structure – Does it Matter for Recruitment?

The way that a company is organized has traditionally focused on a hierarchical structure, with levels of management that employees can promote to. While this structure is still predominantly used, especially within large companies, the flat company structure is becoming more popular. When it comes to recruitment, does it really matter what structure a company has? Find out more about the pros and cons of these structures and the impact that they have on recruitment.

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