Stephanie is joined by Jessica Gurley, a superstar Exec Recruiter from ThinkingAhead’s Life Sciences division, who dives into using technology to actually further humanize your professional interactions, the hugely important act of repetition, and just in time for Halloween, why so many clients these days are getting ghosted. Ooooo, scary.Discover what sets ThinkingAhead apart, hear stories from recruiters, and browse opportunities by clicking here.
Welcome to the Talent Trade. I am your host, Stephanie Moss, partner with Thinking Ahead Executive Search. Today, I am super excited to have one of Thinking Ahead's greats from the life sciences practice with us, Jessica Gurley. Welcome, Jessica. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Yay. So Jessica recruits in our life sciences practice, a life changing niche.
Jessica, what I'd love to do is turn it over to you, do a little bit more of an introduction of yourself and your niche. And then we'll talk about how you as a recruiter in that space stand out from the crowd. Great.
So a quick definition of life sciences is anything from pharmaceutical companies, device companies, biotech diagnostics. So anything that you would consume from a health perspective is considered life sciences. Actually, even veterinary stuff is considered life sciences. My specific niches are more what we would refer to as the commercial side of the business. So that would be sales.
So the sales reps that go into the office, marketing, the people behind the scenes creating the specific stories. Access Health Economics, which helps and supports access, being able to approach insurance companies, the government to make cases on why access should be allowed for this. They do economic models and spreadsheets and then additionally reimbursement.
So after you get a prescription or something given to you by your doctor, the rebates, the rewards, the coding, all of those things, reimbursement is something else that I recruit in.
down super complicated, but good. Okay. So you have been in this niche, you rule the roost. Tell us, what do you do different than other recruiters in your space, other recruiters, period? How do you stand out from the crowd?
One of the first things I do, no matter what the situation is, is I don't come out at a potential client or a candidate pitching something at them, whether it be my services or the job that I'm currently working on. I work and intentionally position myself as wanting to get to know my candidate.
I always do a little pre-ramble or preface of, I don't know what other recruiters you've worked with, but I'm not gonna come out here and pitch at you. That's not my style. I would rather take a few minutes to learn about you Especially from the candidate side. With the client side, I might approach it a little bit differently. We'll all say, hey, thank you so much for taking this call.
What would you like to discuss first? Would you like to discuss your needs or your organization or things that I should know about you? Or would you like to talk of what thinking ahead can do? I always put the ball in their court. and try to set up a conversation about them first or what makes sense for them to talk about and get out first.
I just think it disarms them and it really makes me seem, because I am more invested in them as either a person or an organization versus my own agenda and what I'm trying to accomplish. One of the other things that I do that I hear as a biggest complaint and that I'm so thankful that Thinking Ahead trains on in our culture is follow through.
I actually was talking to a COO yesterday and she was telling me about some of her experiences or some of her high level colleagues experiences on how unprofessional it is to host candidates.
And she would say even at C-suite level recruiters that are working with CEOs, COOs, CFOs, they're getting ghosted even after like two interviews and not hearing back from the recruiter on their status of the progress in the interview process. And she was saying it is so bad out there. It's wild that recruiters would even consider that being something ethical to do or something that's okay to do.
It's interesting to hear that because that would never have been something that I thought was okay. I'm happy that Thinking Ahead has trained and is really... adamant about the way that we conduct ourselves in the marketplace. And, you know, the truth of it is we are paid to deliver good news and we are paid to deliver bad news. That's our job is to coach people through the ups and the downs.
Think about any job that you've had. It can be scary. It can be intimidating, depending on where you are in your life or where you are in your career. Our job is to help support them. And if you ghost them, that only looks bad on you. And that leaves them kind of feeling like, well, did I do something?
It's really about supporting that person through the process from the very beginning to either an offer acceptance or through the middle where it's like, hey, they are going to move forward with another candidate. And these are the reasons why. So ghosting is something that I hear very, very, very frequently as the number one issue that people have with recruiters.
So follow through is super important. Right. Consistency, I would say, is the other piece of how I work and stand out. And the longer I've been doing this, the more I hear this feedback. Repetition really works. The way that Thinking Ahead sets up culture with the training, the way that we operate in the marketplace and our business model is repetition.
I did some Googling and just backed up some of the things that we were taught that the brain needs five to seven times before it can transition from a short-term to a long-term memory. So it's really important that when you're first starting to reach out to somebody that you're doing it consistently and you're doing it in a pattern that will help them remember you.
I've had people after a year of me calling on them and just doing this pattern say, you've been so persistent. You haven't given up. Your name is recognizable to me now. And I'm reaching out to you to talk about this specific thing. The other thing, once you have that initial conversation is,
is keeping in touch with them quarterly at a minimum, but typically it is best to come to an agreement on what that should look like. And I always make sure that I ask that, is it okay that we stay in touch every three months or does it need to be more frequent? Does it need to be less frequent? And getting that buy-in on what the consistency would look like.
And then again, following through and doing it. And even if it's just as simple as a message of, we haven't talked in three months, like we talked about, I am holding up my part of the I'm giving you a call, being intentional. And as I continue to do this process, again, receive so much positive feedback about how effective this is.
I was also talking with another C-suite individual and she was telling me her product just got FDA approval, which means it can go from a clinical stage to into the FDA to then be able to be released to the public. And she said that she was so agitated that recruiters came out of the woodwork to reach out to her about something very transactional.
And she was like, why would I even consider a relationship with them? when they weren't previously consistent she's like you call me you know very consistently but she was like you're one of the only recruiters that i actually pick up because you've been consistent through the downs and she just i mean flat out said annoys me when random recruiters i've talked to once
come out of the woodwork when they see an announcement about something. That's just not a good way to build ongoing relationships and trust, especially with people in this industry that get bombarded with recruiters. And life sciences is a very saturated market with recruiters.
It sounds like one of your cornerstones for standing apart from the crowd is how you treat people it's about them not about you you do follow through you do what you say you're going to do there's consistency sounds like you bring a lot of empathy to your practice and just have made a practice of treating people well
Oh, thank you. That's very sweet. I mean, I try to treat people like people. I mean, that's why I got into this business was because I wanted to feel very emotionally connected to the thing that I was doing every day. And I took one of those quizzes about what you should do with your life at like 38. And nurturing and hospitality and care came up at the very top of my skill set.
So one of the reasons that attracted me to recruiting was
the long ongoing relationships and getting to the point where you're talking about not only business related things, but very personal things like people know how old my children are, they know what grade they're going into, you know, it's building these more in depth things than just, hey, this drug is launching, hey, you're expanding, you're How can I work with you to put money in my pocket?
Yeah, I really love that part of the business. And I say that to people when I'm getting to know them is I love to hear people's stories. What made you get into this? What made you pick the transitions that you did? So it's always specifically interesting to hear. one of those more niche things. I'm like, how did you fall into that? Or what interests you about it?
Well, tell me about what made you want to do this and starting the conversation out that way. So yeah, I mean, I would would say I do pride myself on being a very relational person and finding a lot of joy in that day in and day out.
And that definitely makes you stand out. Now, what I think is super fascinating about you is you have this high human touch relational approach. And yet you become one of the firm's kind of gurus, innovators of this technological approach to doing what you do.
I really lean into technology to learn things. I listen to audiobooks. I listen to podcasts. I watch a lot of documentaries. That's my learning style is audio and visual. I have a harder time. I'm slightly dyslexic and I have a harder time reading and comprehending information that way. So, I lean in technology in those ways because I see the benefits of it.
So, some of the things that help me and I feel like can bring a more differentiating fact where other recruiters don't do it, but then it can either cut down on time or it can help personalize you. So, technology can be your friend if you use it effectively. Too much of anything is bad.
But ChatGPT helps me when I need it to just be smoother and more concise with my messaging, especially the end of the day when my brain is really tired and I'm trying to write a message and it's just these ongoing messages. I have a really hard time with run-on sentences. That's always been an issue of mine since I was a small child. I would get dinged constantly for that.
And so I will put ideas down in my crazy long run-on sentences and put them in a chat GPT when I just don't have any more brainpower. And I usually say, make it smoother, more concise, and more professional. And it will help me funnel my thoughts into a way that are just more readable. Secondly... I really struggled with this job being very phone based because I had always done outside sales.
And I always attributed my sales success, true or not, maybe it's my own insecurities, but from the fact that people could see me and interact with me. see my energy, see my hand motions, just see my smile and just my energy of who I am. So a phone job at some level really intimidated me because I'm like, they're not getting to know me. They're not seeing me.
They're not seeing the enthusiasm that I'm bringing. They're not seeing the nuances of how I interact with someone. So I use LinkedIn as a
way to not only discuss personal things where I'll post about my postpartum depression or my stepdaughter in Alabama or my son or my other, you know, my family or whatever, but I also could use it as professional engagement because it gives me a more holistic image, I guess, in the marketplace is the best way to put it or brand where I just don't go on and talk about, hey, I have this job listing.
Hey, I have this job listing. Hey, I have this job listing. I think with technology, it can be a two-edged sword where you do feel more distance because it's not as personal, but you can use those tools to make yourself a more holistic person to somebody. The other thing that I do to cut down on time
is I do use a bookings link, but I do it, I feel like, in an appropriate manner where it still is very personalized. I don't just say, book here. It's like I might have an engagement through LinkedIn or through a phone call, and I'll say, hey, I'm going to send you an email. The fastest way for both of us to do this, instead of going back and forth 100 times,
or missing it is I'm going to send you an email, click the red link and pick a time for us to connect. Like I don't do it as just shoving it out into the marketplace and being super impersonal about it. I use it as a personal way to help streamline interactions. And I don't do it all the time. It really depends on the scenario. And I feel like I use it to my advantage when I think it's necessary.
And then sometimes I don't when I feel like it makes it more impersonal. It just is a kind of a toss up and a gut reaction. The last thing that I do that I have found to be very effective is using video marketing campaigns to engage with potential candidates. And the reason that I
really leaned into this was because it made sense to me again i learned through video content i learned through documentaries through little short snippets on instagram or reels or whatever to learn about a specific topic in a very short amount of time to then retain it and when
the idea came up, I was like, oh, I instantly connect to this, which probably has fed into my success because I believe in how it can work and impact someone.
So one of the things that I do is when I do have a search, I sit and put together a minute to a minute and a half overview of what the position is, why it's an exciting company, the benefits of the company or the job, and then just some list out items of qualifications and who the company is looking for.
And if you feel like you're the right fit, feel free to reach out to me or pass it on to somebody else. And the responses that I've gotten from candidates has been so overwhelmingly positive where they say things like, I wouldn't have reached out to you. It made it more intriguing. It made me feel more comfortable calling you. It excited me about the opportunity.
And that engagement and more initial buy-in makes it having a more easier conversation on the back end about getting to know them and then additionally talking about because they have like a little preview of what it is that they're engaging with. Additionally, I've taken that concept and talked to hiring managers about it and they really understand it.
And it's so different than any of the other recruiters that they have engaged with where they're like, oh, that makes tons of sense. Because everyone kind of understands that we live in a very ADD space now with our culture. You have someone's attention for a minute, a minute and a half, and then you lose them. So, you know, videos made up 82% of all internet traffic in 2022.
Over 2.6 billion people around the world use YouTube every month. And viewers retain 95% of messages when watching it on video versus 10% through text. And I've seen that tenfold in my efforts this year with recruiting. It's just the way that our society learns.
So why not utilize it in a way to, again, personalize yourself and stand out where people know my name, they know my voice, they know my face. I'm not just a flat screen to them. I'm three-dimensional. and then pull a lot of energy behind what I'm talking about. And they can see the enthusiasm that I have about the opportunity and transfer it to them.
Dude, that's awesome. I really feel like you bring this yin and yang of being incredibly focused on the human, the individual. And yet at the same time, what we just heard was a tremendous amount of relying on technology for efficiencies and to get to folks you wouldn't otherwise get to, to get to the humans.
Yeah. So I was a sales rep. I did call on these people and I did have interactions with the people that I recruit. And I understand how that train works together. So I understand if the economic story doesn't work, then you can't have access. If you can't have access, then you have a more challenging marketing story. If you have a challenging marketing story, the sales rep can't do their job.
So because of my experience in life sciences with some of the positions I had, it's really easy for me to pull through that narrative and understand the nuances of those five buckets to be super effective, not only in focus, but in how everyone collaborates together. And then at the end of the day, how those things help reach patients to help have a better quality of life or even save their life.
So I think that previous experience before becoming a recruiter in this space also makes me stand out because I can have very transparent conversations with, hey, when I was a rep, I understood that access, I couldn't do my job without it. And I understand that you can't make good access stories if you don't have the right economic models.
And if you don't have the right economic models, it's because the clinical trials are missing something. So it is this domino effect that I can very confidently speak to across those five or six areas. And especially within marketing and sales, being a sales rep, it's given me a lot of confidence and buy-in and security and like the circle of trust because I've been those people.
And that just immediately takes down walls. With the marketing people, the same thing. You know, I understand what their work is. I understand their interactions with salespeople. I feel like that also helps me stand out and give me an edge against other life science recruiters.
So folks, a couple of key takeaways here. Treat your humans like humans. Use technology to give you an edge and get to those humans faster and recruiting in a niche that you have a passion for. It is a difference maker and it sounds like you have definitely found your people too. Thank you.