Sourcing Niche Talent: A Guide for Biotech Companies

Biotech companies depend on their team’s expertise to drive innovations. The challenge is finding and locking down this talent. Sometimes only a handful of experts worldwide can fill essential roles and lead projects to success.

When you’re struggling to find niche expertise, the hiring process can become long and costly. Businesses end up diverting resources from core operations to scout markets, outbid competitors, and negotiate with candidates. This hampers overall performance and deters top talent from accepting the role.

Is there a way to escape the Catch-22 and find the right people without pouring all your resources into recruitment?

Our guide explores how Biotech companies can source niche expertise with a robust global hiring strategy. We look at all the biggest recruitment challenges the industry faces one by one and how to solve them.

Widen your talent pool

Being constrained to local markets can drastically reduce your pool of candidates. Many specialized roles, like microbiologists and gene therapy researchers, have a limited presence in some regions.

Plus, the employment rate in some markets is so high that there are very few available candidates. You’re forced to either recruit from competitors or look further afield to find niche talent for open positions.

The challenge with hiring abroad is that you have to establish a legal entity in each country. This involves a lengthy setup process that demands a lot of your team’s time and resources. There’s also the risk of permanent establishment, where your business activities trigger tax obligations to the local authorities.

An Employer of Record (EOR) service allows you to hire internationally without setting up entities. The provider becomes the defacto employer for any foreign recruits. While the provider absorbs all the legal liability, you retain control of all your business operations.

Choose a global provider like Deel EOR to ensure you can truly hire anywhere. We currently cover over 150 countries and counting.

Support global mobility

International hiring may expand your talent pool, but it presents extra challenges. Many specialist roles in biotech involve hands-on work in laboratories, factories, or the field. How are foreign employees supposed to perform these jobs from overseas?

That’s why the next logical step is often moving candidates from their country of residence to your company sites. This calls for a comprehensive global mobility strategy.

Start by looking for an EOR provider with extensive visa and immigration services to support your program. They can sponsor employees across all your desired locations. If you’d prefer, top services like Deel can also arrange work visas through owned entities.

Then explore how to support candidates throughout the relocation process. They’re likely to need assistance with:

• Finding accommodation
• Enrolling in public services
• Registering with a local doctor and dentist
• Collecting their ID card
• Setting up a bank account

The trick is to make the move as seamless as possible. You’re not only looking to successfully relocate workers and their families but also keep them satisfied and strengthen their commitment to your business.

Some employees may be ineligible for relocations. Write detailed global mobility policies and make them publicly available on your system. Everyone should understand the rationale behind your decisions to foster trust and transparency.

Speed up the hiring process

Biotech is growing at an unprecedented rate. The market value is expected to double over the next five years as we continue to make advances in DNA sequencing and tissue engineering.

In this fast-paced industry, businesses often need immediate access to niche expertise. Your team may lack some skills or knowledge, which prevents them from advancing to the next phase. However, while you wait for candidates to move through the hiring and onboarding stage, projects can get significantly delayed and off-track.

Another concern is that you might miss out on candidates. If they’re considering multiple offers, they might settle for a competitor if you can’t lock them down fast enough.

Eliminate any inefficiencies in your recruitment process to reduce the time-to-hire. Automation can help you become more efficient without increasing the risk of errors.

Here are some hiring and onboarding tasks you can automate:

• Applicant tracking
• Interview scheduling
• Background checks
• Contract generation
• Document management
• Payroll setup
• Benefits enrollment

If you’ve enlisted an EOR service like Deel, we handle the entire process once you’ve selected a candidate. You could reduce the time-to-hire from several months to as little as five days.

Keep hiring costs low

While the demand for biotech is rising, many businesses are struggling under financial constraints. A recent report discovered that venture funding has fallen over the past year. Now over half of public biotech companies have two or fewer years in cash reserves.

As funding opportunities dry up, hiring teams are more likely to operate with a tight budget. They might not have the capacity to advertise posts everywhere and interview every candidate.

Outsourcing some hiring and onboarding to an EOR service allows you to allocate resources more effectively. The provider handles routine tasks like contracts, payroll setup, and benefits administration for a fixed monthly rate. This frees up more of your budget to spend on employer branding, outreach, and candidate engagement.

Outdo competitors on compensation

There might be less access to funding but experts say a recovery is imminent. Meanwhile, new biotech startups are emerging all the time and intensifying the competition for talent.

Although companies are cutting hiring budgets, they need to find a sweet spot for compensation packages. Otherwise, they’ll deter top candidates and lose them to competitors. That means researching the market and ensuring salaries meet global standards.

Deel’s Salary Insights tool can tell you the average range for roles across different locations. For instance, did you know the median salary for data scientists in the UK is $127224.41 per year?

As for benefits, top EOR services can broker competitive deals with providers in all the countries where you hire. Deel also makes sure everything you offer meets local requirements. That’s essential when many countries have strict rules about the healthcare, insurance, and pensions employers must provide.

Ensure new talent meets requirements

The stakes are high in biotech. If you hire the wrong employee, it can lead to significant setbacks in your research and development. Recruiters must thoroughly vet each candidate to ensure they’re able to work for your company and perform their job well.

Thorough background checks let you verify whether workers have:

• All the necessary skills and qualifications
• A clean criminal record
• Work authorization (in the case of visas)
• No conflict of interest
• No non-compete agreements that are still in effect

Automate the screening process to save time while searching every relevant database. You can now use Deel’s AI tool to perform background checks. The process lasts just 15 minutes and candidates can track their progress on the mobile app.

Mitigate compliance risks

Biotech companies are often highly regulated due to concerns over ethics, data privacy, and health and safety. This extends to your hiring practices.

Here are the main compliance risks to watch out for:

• Licensing: Every employee must have the right qualifications to handle specific substances or technologies
• Equal opportunities: You must avoid discriminatory practices, which may be more evident when it’s a specialized role with a limited candidate pool
• Intellectual property: Information your workers share with the company can’t infringe on copyright laws or violate past employment agreements

There are also growing concerns about the US Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent ruling on biotech mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The new legislation blocks these transactions if they’re seen to reduce competition and create monopolies. However, M&As are a common way for biotech companies to secure talent. The only recourse is to move carefully to avoid violating these regulations and causing legal issues.

Your EOR can help you navigate all these risks. Deel sends all our customers updates about changing regulations across all the countries where we operate via our Compliance Hub. We also ensure you and your workers have all the relevant qualifications, licenses, and other paperwork to operate legally and safely.

Protect company secrets

Chances are your biotech organization handles a lot of proprietary data. If employees share information with the wrong people, it could have a devastating effect on your business.

It’s critical to get new hires to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) the moment they join the company. As there can be differences between the jurisdictions, ensure you can force the policy everywhere you hire.

As a bonus, NDAs mean your team understand your policies from day one. They should know precisely what they’re allowed to share and how to keep the system safe.

Deel can help you draft NDAs and manage them via our centralized platform. All you have to do is review our template and make any tweaks. Candidates can sign them electronically so you don’t have to send paperwork backwards and forwards.

Set up in key markets

Certain markets are experiencing a boom in biotech. The US currently leads the way with the UK, France, and Canada not far behind.

Moving your operations to these key locations makes it easier to secure talent. You gain access to an established network of specialists, partners, and investors. As you have a legal presence in the country, there are fewer barriers for those joining your team.

Many businesses hesitate before making the move. They’re unsure whether their operations can handle the complexities of a cross-border relocation.

However, you don’t need to handle this process alone. Leading EOR services like Deel can sponsor a range of entrepreneur visas including the O-1 and the L-1 in the US. We check your eligibility, collect all the paperwork, and help you build a strong case for your biotech company.

If you’d prefer, Deel can guide you through the process of establishing your own entity. We partner with local law firms and consult you every step of the way to ensure a smooth transition.

Hire anyone, anywhere, anytime with Deel

Hiring presents a unique challenge for biotech companies with niche talent strewn all over the globe. However, with the right strategies, you can source, attract, and retain the people you need to drive success.

Deel empowers biotech companies to hire internationally with confidence. From managing compliance to facilitating global mobility, our EOR simplifies the complexities of recruitment. You’re then free to focus on building the ideal team and supporting them in their new roles.

Ready to find your next star player? Contact the Deel team to discover how we can support you throughout the recruitment process and beyond.