Stop Worrying About Turnover and Focus on Building a Great Product How many of you have received an unsolicited newsletter in your inbox with the title, "Employee turnover is the silent killer of workplace productivity." As a headhunter for 20 years, I instantly think of how ridiculous such a statement is. Employee turnover is a given. People are going to leave for two main reasons, 1) a better opportunity has been presented to them outside of the company, or 2) they are not happy with their current company/position. Rather than working out retention strategies and effectively putting "gates" in place that will hopefully keep people from leaving, companies should focus on what they can control which is building a phenomenal product and a great company culture. Focusing here is really what attracts and retains outstanding employees anyway. And if an employee leaves for a better opportunity, congratulate them and wish them well. After all, the best employees are the ones that understand their value and also understand when leaving is the best thing for everyone involved.

Go ahead I am Listening "u..huh, ….yeah,… right… yup….makes sense to me….., what was that?" I was hoping that my colleague was actually listening to me but, it sounds like he was sending emails and perhaps even texting someone else while we were on the phone. How many times has this happened to you? It seems today that we have become incapable of doing one thing at a time. The next time you are in the car, take a look the people driving by and make a mental note of how many are speaking on the phone. Or, when you are walking down the street, count how many people are fixed to their smart phones. These trappings have made it impossible for most of us to really listen. Which is a huge problem when you are interviewing. If you are a candidate interviewing for a job the most important words out of your mouth will be the ones that reflect how well you have been listening to the interviewer. Assuming you have done your homework and understand what the company does, your conversation will need to resonate with what the interviewer has been speaking about. It is not what you have done or can do. It is how what you have done or do can help solve the challenges that the interviewer has been speaking about. If you are a company interviewing a candidate, you will want to listen carefully to what the candidate is saying. Do their answers reflect a deep understanding of what your company does? Do they articulate their experiences solving problems with a level of detail that reflects a "hands on" approach or, do they sound like someone that needs a lot of other people to get anything done? Recruiters can be some of the worst listeners on the planet. In the rush to fill a position, they often don't effectively listen to what the client is asking for and subsequently send candidates that don't accurately fit the job description. In F. Scott Peck's book, "The Road Less Traveled", the author speaks of a lecture he attended where he had to make a super conscious effort to listen to the speaker. At the end of the lecture he had a headache and was sweating. I don't believe we will always be faced with having to display that level of concentration when listening but perhaps stepping away from the keyboard or the screen is a good start.

As a headhunter with an agency focused in hiring leaders for emerging biotech and device companies, I must maintain a solid understanding of hiring trends in the industry as well as the personality phenotype that can work well with the frantic pace of these emerging companies.

NEWS PROVIDED BY Paul Sanderson January 14, 2019 2018 saw a record amount of private investment in healthcare stocks. We also witnessed multi-billion dollar acquisitions with both BMS and Lilly buying Celgene and Loxo Oncology days before the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. Our firm was fortunate to work with some of the best and brightest innovators in the market. Clients included Turnstone Biologics , Logic Biotherapeutics , Annexon Biosciences , Endotronix , IGM biosciences , Onconova , Shockwave Medical , Viracta , and Zymeworks . Hires were in numerous functional categories including Chief Medical Officer for Onconova , and SVP of Sales and Marketing for Endotronix. For 2019 we see a number of new modalities gaining traction. With Spark Therapeutics gaining approval for the first gene therapy in the US and EU, and Avexis signing a 8.7 billion dollar deal with Novartis, the road is now well-paved for many others with gene, gene editing and genome editing platforms to move forward. While Kite and Juno, two companies with CAR T platforms, had huge acquisition numbers in 2018, cell therapy in 2019 will expand into other therapeutic applications with Bluerock Therapeutics a company that raised a record a round of $230 million building new medicines in Neurology, Cardiology and Autoimmunity. It is not all about Oncology: While therapeutics in oncology especially immune-oncology have been leading the investment cycle, we started to see expansion into neuroscience with what has been labeled the Neuroscience Renaissance . Companies like Annexon Biosciences , Denali Therapeutics , and Alector have raised huge sums of capital and are poised in 2019 to move forward building medicines for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s Huntington’s and Parkinson’s. It is a rare time to be in the biotech industry: Despite the Administration’s plan to cut research dollars for biomedical research utilized by rare disease patients, rare disease biotech’s saw an increase in numbers and we also had some IPOs with Logic Biotherapeutics , Eidos , and Avrobio being a few going out this year. We believe the trend will continue. The patient population is obviously in great need and the path to commercialization is also easier for young companies for a variety of reasons. We look forward to helping find and hire the talent needed for our clients to help them reach their goals bringing better medicines for patients.

The "Absolutes" and the "Superlatives" are coming to our pool party this weekend. Ever notice that the more tired and frustrated you get the more likely you are to start speaking in superlatives and absolutes? I see this happen with increased intensity during an election year and I am sure it has NOTHING to do with the DRIVE BY media's LEFT-LEANING manipulations! In the same way that superlatives and absolutes should be ignored when listening to someone trying to sell you on their position or product, you should refrain from using them when speaking about your experience in a job interview. How many times have we heard this or something like this before: "Our process improvement strategy had a HUGE impact on the BOTTOM LINE." A more convincing and thoughtful way to say this would go something like: "We evaluated a number of process improvement strategies and settled on one that we implemented in four weeks across eight different business lines. Three months later we did an evaluation of this implementation and found that we had reduced costs by 15% . Employees involved with implementation were so excited about the improvements they were seeing that they initiated their own process improvement evolution check list. They now use this to suggest and implement changes on a quarterly basis." Employers are looking for thoughtful answers to questions that do not sound like they were picked out of an interview handbook. The more your answers sound like you actually lived through the action you are describing the more likely you will be looking at an attractive offer.

And yet that is what most job seekers are doing metaphorically when their strategy for finding work is to apply online with a resume. Think about how many riders are on that bus? Two years ago maybe a hundred per opening but now perhaps a thousand. Riding this bus suggests one of two things. You can't figure out any other way to get where you need to go or you just don't believe in yourself enough to take a more assertive approach. I am willing to bet that most of us fall into the former category. "Well, here is the bus for that gig at Pfizer, better go ahead and just get on it." Meanwhile there a bunch of stinkers on the bus with you that are pissing off the recruiter on the other end because they have not bothered to "clean" their resume in the appropriate way to show how good of a "fit" they are. Or maybe Pfizer advertised for a role and you are headed to the gig-stop only to find that it is no longer there. Problem is to drive a Porsche you need to be able to know a little more than where the buses stop. Or maybe the better statement is: you need to work harder up front to be able to drive a fine automobile. Applying on line, taking the bus, is a little bit like "making the donuts". You just follow a set path. Driving a finally tuned machine will take research and more work on your part. However once you are OK with the work, you will never get on the bus again. So how do you put your career behind the wheel of a Porsche? Well the first thing you need to do is to think of yourself in the same way that Steve Job's thought of the IPOD when he brought it to market. Or the way Southwest Airlines launched, or any other company you can think of that launched a product that made the competition irrelevant. They certainly did not rely on what everyone else was doing to get their message heard. Simply put, you need to think of yourself as the solution that the company you want to work for HAS to have. When you start there, all of the work in learning how to drive this fine automobile will be easy. What is this work? Check out my upcoming post: "What recruiters prefer you don't know"

Can a recruiter help you find work in a tough economy? Sure they can but it's the same in any economy- if you happen to be a perfect fit for the opening they have. The problem in a tough economy (like now) is there are far less openings, and this isn't just because there is less hiring going on, it's also because many companies stop using recruiters. They think they can do it on their own and they want to save money. Candidates would benefit from a better understanding of the picture from a recruiters perspective, starting with a definition of what makes a recruiter successful, and then in turn, what gives them as the candidate the best chance for success. A recruiter's success is far more contingent on having lots of good job orders than having lots of good candidates. This is rarely understood by candidates and leads to frustration for both parties. Job orders are power for recruiters, and once again that power only transfers to candidates in a job search if they are a fit for a particular opening. So candidates will benefit from taking a more proactive or aggressive approach to helping themselves stand out. This applies for when they are working with a recruiter as well. But the best course for a candidate is to be proactive and build their own marketing campaign. This should include creative ways not only to get in front of the highest level hiring authority they can, but being just as creative in ways to make a huge first impression.