In the fast-paced world of biotech, staying ahead of the competition is a constant challenge. As innovation accelerates and new technologies emerge every day, the speed at which you can bring new therapies to market becomes crucial.
The pressure to meet project deadlines, drive innovation, and secure investment all depends on having the right people in place. But how do you assemble the right team when you’re dealing with talent shortages and struggling to pinpoint the exact skills needed for each role?
A skills-based strategy could be the answer. This game-changing approach aligns your workforce with your strategic goals and equips your organization to adapt in a rapidly evolving landscape. If you're finding it difficult to fill critical roles or need to pivot quickly to meet new challenges, a skills-based operational model is your secret weapon for driving growth and reaching the clinic faster.
As the name implies, a skills-based organization focuses on what employees can actually do to contribute rather than what their jobs are. Instead of simply viewing your staff as “talent,” this model emphasizes understanding and mapping out the concrete and objective skills needed to push your company forward.
Nine out of ten executives say skills are becoming important for the way they define work, deploy talent, manage careers, and value employees. Deloitte
A skills-based approach is particularly useful in fields like biotech, data sciences, and engineering — industries where the pace of change is rapid and new intersections and combinations of skill sets appear frequently.
Conventional hiring practices, which tend to emphasize degrees and job titles, may miss out on the specialized expertise needed to stay ahead. But a skills-based strategy ensures you’re not only identifying these skill gaps, but also aligning your team's capabilities with your business objectives to stay competitive.
“Traditional hiring often relies on subjective interpretations of candidates' narratives—what they say about their experience and how it’s interpreted by recruiters,” says Scismic co-founder Danika Khong, PhD. “A skills-based approach helps break down these narratives into objective skills. This increases the accuracy of hiring, which leads to better retention and enables your organization to become more agile in reacting to changing milestones and strategies.”
Building a skills-based organization begins with creating what Khong refers to as a “skills blueprint” — a strategic framework that directly aligns with your business goals. By breaking down job requirements into measurable, objective skills, you ensure that each role in your organization contributes to the broader business strategy.
With this blueprint in place, your hiring process becomes more precise, drawing out the skills hidden in nuanced resumes and connecting them to your company's roadmap. This approach allows you to fill skill gaps quickly and adapt to new technological developments as they arise.
Picture this: You’re on the hunt for a new salesperson to drive your business forward. Instead of searching for candidates who have worked at a specific company or held a certain job title, a skills-based organization would first define the skills necessary for success in that role, such as the ability to build relationships with prospects, understand complex scientific data, or create tailored sales strategies. This way, you’re not just hiring a resume — you’re selecting someone who can hit the ground running.
One of the biggest advantages of a skills-based strategy is the ability to tap into a wider talent pool. With 73% of executives expecting to face continued talent shortages over the next three years according to Deloitte, this could have a major impact on your ability to seize new growth opportunities. By prioritizing skills instead of traditional credentials, you can find candidates who may not have followed a conventional career path but possess the precise abilities you’re looking for.
For example, a candidate who has spent years perfecting gene editing techniques in a research setting might be an ideal fit for your organization’s needs, even if they didn’t graduate from Harvard or cut their teeth at Pfizer. A skills-based strategy not only helps you uncover hidden talent like this, but also enables you to scoop up high-caliber candidates before your competitors do.
Hiring someone who looks great on paper but falls short when it comes to real-world performance is disappointing and costly. “Many leaders think they have a hiring problem,” explains Scismic co-founder Elizabeth Wu. “The real problem is not understanding the skills your organization needs and the experience that goes with it, and how these skills are packaged together in candidates in the market.”
A skills-based strategy helps you avoid this pitfall by focusing on what really matters: what the job requires and what the candidate can do — whether that’s drafting patent applications or contributing to industry publications. As a result, Deloitte finds that organizations following a skills-based strategy are 107% more likely to place talent effectively.
But it doesn’t stop there. A skills-based strategy can also help you leverage your current workforce more effectively. By focusing on your current employees’ skills and experience instead of their job titles, you can assign them to tasks that best match their abilities. This alignment between job requirements and employee capabilities not only boosts performance but also leads to higher job satisfaction — and that's a win-win for everyone.
In biotech, much of your success depends on having the right people in the right place at the right time. But if you don’t have a clear understanding of which skills you need to reach your goal, how can you be sure you're moving in the right direction?
“Without a skills-based profile, hiring becomes quite subjective, with recruiters constantly holding out for a candidate with the elusive ‘X factor,’” says Scismic Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Peter Craig-Cooper. “Before you know it, you’re another quarter down the line and your investors are demanding to know why you still haven’t hired for those critical roles.”
A skills-based approach acts as your roadmap, helping you to avoid roadblocks and stay on track for critical milestones. Companies that embrace this approach are 57% more likely to anticipate and respond to risks or market shifts effectively, according to Deloitte. This proactive mindset not only keeps your projects on the right path but also strengthens investor confidence.
Training new employees can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. And while your new recruit ramps up, your competitors are pulling ahead.
But when you're working off a skills blueprint, you can hire individuals who already have the exact skills you need — whether that's advanced CRISPR techniques or proficiency in operating high-throughput screening equipment — before you need them. Likewise, you can identify opportunities for upskilling current employees to fill critical gaps. This head start enables your team to jump in and contribute almost immediately so you can be the first to clinic with new therapies.
Perhaps most importantly, a skills-based approach can foster greater innovation within your organization. By bringing in individuals with diverse skill sets and backgrounds, you create a more well-rounded team. This diversity can lead to fresh perspectives and new ideas, which are crucial for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in biotech. In fact, Deloitte found organizations that leverage a skill-based strategy are over one and a half times more likely to innovate.
For example, someone with a background in computational biology might not be the obvious choice for a lab-focused position. But this cross-pollination of skills might be just what you need to drive innovative solutions and keep your company at the forefront of the industry.
A skills-based strategy can help your company anticipate risks and gaps, fill critical roles faster, and ultimately stay one step ahead of the competition. But shifting your thinking from job titles to skills will require a major mindset change from all leaders and functions — not just human resources.
If you want to learn more about this impactful strategy, don’t miss our upcoming event, where we’ll dive deep into the skills-based approach and how it can revolutionize your talent acquisition process. You’ll gain valuable insights into implementing this strategy and learn from industry experts who have successfully adopted this approach.
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Register now to secure your spot and start transforming your hiring strategy today!