CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Dr. Ganesh Nikam, Co-Founder & CEO at Biojobz
- Can you brief us about your business background, its area of expertise, and the services you provide.
Biojobz is an online recruitment portal and talent consulting company for the Bio-Pharma-Health care industry. It specializes in understanding the criticality of finding and acquiring the right talent as per the organization’s requirements. Key services include talent acquisition, industry mapping and recruitment solutions for Indians returning from abroad. The company also specializes in headhunting for roles such as General Management, Engineering & Projects, Supply Chain, quality, strategy, R&D, clinical research and operations.
I am a MBBS Doctor and have done my Post Graduation in MBA-HR from Symbiosis. While working for 3 years in various roles under HR function of India’s largest vaccine manufacturer, Serum Institute, I observed that recruitment in health care (Pharma, Biologicals, Vaccine Manufacturers) is highly technology-specific, necessitating highly specialized manpower as well as strong alignment with the company’s technical product pipeline. However no external vendor in the market could come close to that level of understanding. Even on the candidate side, because the recruiter/HR does not understand technology, they were unable to provide a clear career path for any candidate making a career change. To address this gap in the growing industry of Biotech and Pharma, I decided to quit my job and setup Biojobz.
Today with over 15 years of service and along with 50+ team of young, enthusiastic, dynamic go-getters backed by their sound educational background, Biojobz is committed to delivering in challenging environments. Through an exclusive application bank of more than 60% of total bio-pharma executives working in India at middle and senior management levels, Biojobz has been able to create a paradigm shift in the speed of delivery of assignments. Biojobz understands the ever-changing business side of the Life Science industry and accordingly delivers the right fitment of middle and senior resources while also considering the long-term career aspiration of the candidates
- What challenges have you encountered when scaling up your workforce to meet the demands of your growing pharmaceutical business?
Our journey has been about building brick by brick the brand promise and the delivery process. It is now almost 15 years, we have been able to grow the company on solid grounds of research, excellent client servicing, a very high focus on training our employees and building the biggest database of bio pharma resources network and nurturing them for so many years. We serve more than 50+ top bio pharma companies and recruit almost 500 candidates for them for various positions. At each stage faced unique challenges and also the industry keeps changing. Currently we face the challenge to effectively use new-age social media platforms/tools for sourcing and profiling candidates. And as we grow overseas, we face the challenge of Understanding and delivering the cross-border talent requirement for both its Indian and Overseas clients.
3.When working with clients in the pharmaceutical industry, what kind of information do you consider essential to gather in order to fully understand their recruitment needs?
In a recruitment business you need to gather information of multiple things. It includes information about the company, the role, future growth, and the candidate. With our vast experience in this industry, we are very abreast with the company progress through internal and public sources. We either know or would gather the information about the company’s org structure, culture, designation and compensation levels. This helps us to match the right candidate for the right role in the right organization. We do undertake a task to fully understand the role specific requirement and get full clarity. On the candidate side, each potential candidate is very well vetted by our team before we put forward his or her resume to the company for further processing. It also includes communicating any candidate specific expectations to the company as well
- Can you discuss any experiences you’ve had with diversity and inclusion initiatives in the recruitment process?
Diversity hiring is a clear mandate from most of big Indian and Global MNCs. It starts from the top, where there are leadership positions as high as vice president which are specifically created to supervise diversity initiatives. The scope of diversity which was limited to gender up till now, is now expanding to physically challenged candidates, regional diversity and members of LGBT community. The top MNCs like Abott, Pfizer, Biocon, Dr Reddys are targeting at least 50% of the work force should be part of the diversity community. We as a specialized recruitment firm have seen manifold increase in getting diversity mandates for recruitment assignments and it coming from all type of our clients
- Communication and negotiation skills are crucial in recruitment. How do you ensure effective communication between candidates, hiring managers, and other stakeholders during the recruitment process?
During the initial phase any recruitment cycle, communication and clarity is very critical. It is far better to overcommunicate than under communicate. Clarity of Role, designation, reporting structure, career path and compensation range must be very clearly intimated to the candidates. We make sure, that the role and responsibility description of a job opening, is in very detail and we get our clarity first from the employer. We also check the verify that, what would the right compensation range for such position beforehand. While searching for candidates, we just do not talk to anybody who is matching, but only few of them which we think would fir well to the job and the company and vice versa for the candidate. We also make sure that Candidate do ask their questions to the interviewer directly incase they have doubt and full clarity. When a recruitment process comes to end part which is about negotiating the compensation package, we provide a through input of industry standards, current trends and explain the various components of the compensation package. It is 90% of time, candidate asking for more than what employer is willing to offer. But we intervene very deeply and negotiate with both the parties, to find the right balance and close the cycle.
- Could you explain your understanding of the current trends and advancements in the biotechnology industry?
The current trends are where most of Bio tech companies and Pharma companies which has entered Bio tech lately are focusing of Biosimilars. Most of them are focusing both in research and manufacturing of mono clonal anitbodies which are going off patent in coming years and getting ready with their products. The next trend is about increasing research and mind space into Cell and Gene therapies and finding as many as therapeutic uses cases. Skill wise biotech is very high on demand and commanding a much better compensation hikes and other benefits. Many traditional pharma employees are up skilling to biotech so that they get better hikes and asking for cross rolls in the same company. We have seen maximum increase growth hiring in biotech segment with high compensation demands from the candidates
- What strategies or initiatives have you implemented to overcome the challenges in hiring within the pharmaceutical industry?
Hiring and recruitment process is changing rapidly both for the employee and employer. As a recruitment specialist we have seen a very high increase in social media platform as a recruitment and verification cum validation tool. Social hiring, or simply social recruiting, has emerged as the one of most dominant method of talent acquisition today. To identify, engage, and recruit workers, job search firms and internal corporate recruiters are increasingly turning to social media, which has quickly surpassed more customary recruiting sources such as campus interviews and worker referrals. Recruiters employ social networking sites to reach more people and a larger pool of candidates, including passive candidates, more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional recruitment approaches such as classified ads and job postings.
- How do you ensure you attract and retain top talent in the pharmaceutical industry?
Talent war has now transformed from a discrete intervention to a continuous engagement. The old tool box now must be discarded, and new set of tools needs to be employed. Rising attrition, increased sensitivity to compensation, company’s strategic goals and modern demands of work-life balance, is bringing in new set of expectations from the talent market and they are non-negotiable. Indian Pharma industry itself is going through a strong flux of change due to shift in mindset towards R&D driven growth strategy, global expansion, global supply chain reorientation due to geo politics and emergence of next generation of work force. Acquiring and retaining talent to navigate these troubled waters would need a lot of reimagination of internal and external game plan. Companies will innovate and compete to attract and retain talent, the ones who are investing in it on a long-term basis and ready for an exhaustive strategy will come out as the ultimate winners. Few of the key strategies are Enhanced Employer Branding, Building Organization Culture which is modern yet rooted in values, giving competitive compensation and incentives, providing tech enabled work life enrichment, and moving towards agile and sensitive leadership at all levels.
