Have you ever wondered how executive recruiters work? Or why some recruiters seem more invested in your job search than others?
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
- The different types of recruiter models – retained, contingent, and in-house
- How recruiters can help you navigate the job market and land your dream role
- Tips on how to negotiate your salary and benefits effectively
In this episode, we dive into the world of retained executive search with Brian Evans, a seasoned recruiter from Discovery Search Partners. He shares insights into the recruiting process, how to work effectively with recruiters, and what you can expect from a retained search firm.
In this Episode:
Learn about internal vs. external talent acquisition, including retained and contingency search, recruitment agency types, and fees
Understand how recruiters are compensated, and whether that impacts how they work with candidates – and candidate offers
How recruiters really use LinkedIn, and how to optimize your profile to get noticed
Find out how recruiters can provide company insights, help candidates prep for interviews, and more
Links and Resources:
Industry Insider – 12 hours of CME, learn exactly how to land a rewarding nonclinical career without a new degree, special connections, prior experience, or a pay cut
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 133 – Working with Recruiters: Guest Brian Evans from Discovery Search
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Marjorie. I'm excited to be here. Again, you know, my name is Brian Evans. I have worked in recruiting really only in retained executive search, and we'll get into what that means. A little bit later, but I've worked in search for my 12 year work for a small boutique firm called Discovery search partners. We're primarily East Coast based although we do searches all over North America and some work in Europe as well.
I live in Yardley, Pennsylvania, which given the farm a crowd, if your group is 300 plus, some people who are familiar with Yardley, it's about halfway between Philadelphia and Princeton. So about half of the town I think works, farmer but yeah, I'm really excited to be here. I do everything you know, as a small firm Discovery search partners, we all kind of do. Do every little bit of everything a lot of hats. So I'm on the phone as a recruiter trying to develop candidates I'm managing clients as well and participating in interviews and everything so I get to kind of see the full the full workflow from the external recruiter side and I'm excited to answer some questions, shed a little bit of light and maybe dispel some myths and misconceptions along the way. So thanks for the invite, Marjorie.
Awesome. Thank you. And so Brian, I'm going to drop your LinkedIn into the chat, even though I know everyone is industrious enough to be able to find it. And I'll share that with people as well. So if you want to talk to Brian, after this conversation, you know, anybody can certainly set that up. That's his business, his bread and butter. So that would be welcomed. Of course.
You mentioned Brian, that you are that your firm is doing exclusively. Retained search right, you do retain search may be a good place for us to start off would be to kind of break down I mean, as I understand that you have sort of three buckets of recruiters or talent acquisition, if you will, you know, one is internal they work for the company. Everyone knows HR, then you have retained search. And then you have the sort of the third bucket which I don't really know what to call and maybe you can shed some light on, you know, what's it called when someone is they don't have a relationship with the company, but they're trying to pitch candidates anyway.
Yeah, that's a good question. And I think an important distinction. So there's a lot of ways you can kind of break it up. Internal and external is a pretty obvious distinction. You know, any fully built out HR organization has internal talent acquisition and some, especially recently, a lot of large pharma companies have built up internal executive search functions, who were really doing more of the, I would say, you know, VP level and up searches in from an internal perspective that that's kind of cyclical, it comes when the money is in profitability is good and that is one of the functions that they tend to cut pretty quickly when budgets get tight.
But we are seeing right now I know j&j has built out a full on executive search function internally. So internal external there's an important distinction in terms of external resources and external recruiters retained executive search, which is what Discovery search partners is that, you know, Korn Ferry has done a lot of things but one of the things that they've built their business on is retained search Spencer, Stuart, Russell Reynolds, all the kind of big names are known primarily for their retained executive search. So what that means is, they get, we get paid, no matter what, more or less so we get a down payment, which starts the project, we get a payment, you know, maybe 3045 days later and then usually the third payment either comes at a scheduled date or upon the placement of the candidate.
The other category is agency search. So contingency recruiters only get paid if they make a placement. What you're talking about is a thing that we'll get into, which is recruiters kind of shopping candidates around but to kind of make a clean comparison contingency recruiters are outside it's an outside agency similar to retain firm that a company will engage oftentimes with several contingency firms for the same role, and whoever submits the candidate who gets hired gets the gets the feed. And the fees are kind of calculated in a specific way, which we can we'll also get into in a little bit, but usually with Retained work. It's indicative of a higher level of quality and a higher literally high level within the organization.
Contingency recruiters are usually working kind of entry level up through middle management. There's usually no guarantee on the candidate so for retained search, we guarantee candidates will remain within the company for 12 months, provided there's no you know, big change or anything like that. And if they if, if the candidate is fired or leaves within 12 months, we do the search again for free. So that's part of what you're getting with the retained. It's more money as part of what you're getting with the retainer fee. is higher, kind of a higher level of quality and a more guarantee for that money.
And that's so important, I think, from the perspective of the job seeker to realize, I mean, obviously the guarantee is not a contract with the person being hired. They're not stuck there. But it's in your best interest literally, to make a great placement right to ensure that there is a really good match. And then that goes both ways. So not only that the companies really likes the candidate, but the candidate will really like the company and everybody will thrive together. Otherwise, you have to do your work again for free. Right so when I mean I do hear as I've told you ahead of this call, a certain amount of like distrust of recruiters in general but I think you know, when you find the right person in the right setting, your interests are really aligned you know, and it's in their best interest to find you a role that you will really, really like.
Yeah, the other thing that was a retained search firm, we're more likely to have relationship with the hiring manager and really have an in depth discussion with the people in the organization and what they need, versus a contingency recruiter is probably just working with HR with talent acquisition may not know a lot about the specifics of the structure or the you know, whatever technical things that the person needs to get into. So that's another distinction. And these are these are all generalizations, but generally true.
Yeah, sure. And I can I can relate just even you know, as a hiring manager in the various roles that I've had, I will oftentimes get totally unsolicited emails from people who are recruiters and they'll say, you know, I know that you're hiring for such a such, and I'd have some amazing candidates and in all of the places where I've worked, that's actually been against company policy. So they may have fantastic candidates, but I'm not talking to them about those candidates. And if those candidates think that they've been put forth because they're working with that person who I assume as a contingency based recruiter, then that's unfortunate, because I'm not seeing them, right. So that's why it's important, I think, to know who we are working with.
Let me go down the I'm gonna kind of go down the list of questions that we have sort of in order to try to just make sure that we are but in terms of the, the different kinds of recruiters, I mean, you don't need to tell us how everybody gets paid. You kind of touched on a little bit of how people get paid. But one of the things that's of concern to candidates is whether or not the way you get paid impacts what they get paid like what their offer is. Could you speak to that a little bit?
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, the reality is that that companies have pretty solidly defined ranges and you all know this working in the industry. But those ranges don't really change whether they use a recruiter or not that that money is usually coming out of a different budget, either an HR budget, a talent acquisition budget, or somewhere else.
So especially with retained, you know, we get paid no matter what. So you know, it's in there's no financial benefit to me, whether it's Candidate A or Candidate B, that who the company chooses, my job is to get the company the best person. So there's we are incentivized on the candidate side and in a way because the way that a retained firm and many contingency firms calculate their fee is based on a percentage of the placed candidates, first year's compensation. So the kind of the standard fee for retained search is 30%, sometimes up to 33%. Of that first years compensation and that's usually just base and bonus. Sometimes it includes a signing bonus or you know, stock but not everybody includes that.
So, essentially, you know, my my customer is the company, but the more you get paid, the more I get paid so we're sort of incentivized in both directions. In a way now, contingency firms, it's usually 20%, maybe sometimes 25%. But it's lump sum at the end, when the candidate is hired. Some times it's just a flat fee like entry level, you know, say to Qaeda opens a big manufacturing site and have to fill it out with hourly workers or whatever the example might be. They might be getting, you know, $2,000 per person that they're placing at an entry level role. So it varies a lot more on the contingency side than on the retail side.
But the bottom line concern that I feel like I hear is people are worried that if they get their job with the assistance of a recruiter that they will earn less than they would have earned if they got their job on their own. And I think what I'm hearing for you is no because they're different buckets of money. It's not a cut out of your salary offer. And if anything, it's in your best interest to play somebody who's got a great deal because your percentage is based on that. And because if they leave early, then you have to do the search again. So yeah, so someone who doesn't happen a lot but it happens every now and then.
Yeah. So so if someone gets low balling right and you take a job offer and then you find out Wait a minute, I'm really being underpaid here then you're probably not likely to be happy and or stay. So the more that I learned about this from you and from other recruiters, Brian, the more I realized like that just doesn't make sense as a concern. So at least with working with reputable agencies and retain search companies, i i personally don't think that's an issue, but I know it's a common concern.
Okay, let me ask you. Like, in what ways you sort of touched on this a little bit that you may have a relationship with the company, you may know the hiring manager a little bit, but what are some of the ways in which the recruiter can help the candidate beyond just you know, waving their resume around and getting it on the desk, in terms of either telling them you know, more information or helping potentially to help them to understand you know, interview tips or maybe like what can you do with the candidate if you decide to work with them to try to put them fourth thing that I think is really important to understand, you know, when, when I have a job description, or you know, list of job requirements for any role, that list of requirements is written for someone who really doesn't exist, right. It's a it's a wish list. They're looking for somebody who can walk on water in most cases.
So there's almost always some level of flexibility or at least prioritization of what those requirements really are. And a recruiter that's plugged in, especially to the hiring manager, can really help you understand as a candidate, what are the priorities, what are the, you know, there's 10 things on the list. What are the five that I have to have, what are the two that are nice to have? A Wish List of you know, making a kind of a really, something, somebody who doesn't, nobody is going to check all of these boxes. So there's usually a prioritization or even some flexibility. And like I said, a good recruiter is plugged into the hiring manager can usually help the candidate understand what those are. The other thing is to ask the recruiter what your gaps are, versus you know the list of those requirements and how you might be able to talk about them in an interview or kind of at least be aware of them and be have kind of a self awareness about that in an interview. Interview prep is a another one that that is very important, just in terms of who you're meeting, what are their personality types?
What is it that they're looking for, you know, if you have to interview with three different people for a role, each of those stakeholders probably has different areas that they're looking for, specifically in that person. So if I'm meeting the HR person who might be culture fit, if I'm meeting the Chief Medical Officer, it might be specific therapeutic experience and ability to be hands on with a clinical trial or you know, so So the different stakeholders that you meet throughout the process, we're all going to be looking for different things. And being able to prep for that is important.
The other thing I think just kind of as a general interview tip is it's hard but it's important to find the balance between a thorough and a concise answer, being able to kind of cut right to it without sort of throwing spaghetti against the wall with your answer is is a really an important interview skill. And I think sort of can be an indicator of generalized communication skills, which you know, more and more is really a big differentiator between candidates.
And is that something that you'll help? I mean, what you just described in terms of who are the players and what are they interested in is a great cheat sheet to go in with right and if a recruiter can help advise you on that, that's awesome. And being aware of gaps and kind of how to address them, but does that mean that as you're working with candidates, you will do some, you know, some prep type exercises to have them give sort of model answers?
Yeah, yeah, usually I try to at least, and this is where, you know, recruiter who knows the hiring manager knows the company has worked with the company a lot. It's more likely to know more people in the company. So if I have a candidate going into interview, and I know the people they're going to talk to, I always want to make sure that that I chat with the candidate before they meet those people so they know what to expect.
It's in terms of coaching them you know, I want people to be the themselves because that's where the once they're employed and I don't want the candidate or the company to be dissatisfied after the process. So I want it to be based on you know, I want their selection to be based on the reality, but sometimes, we kind of nudge people in one direction or another. If maybe they have a tendency, at least in our initial conversations to be too verbose. You know, maybe I'll drop in a line about being trying to be more concise or something. But I don't I try not to change people. Just maybe kind of aim them in the right direction, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's great.
And let me ask you a somewhat provocative question. And you can answer this you know, not just like what do you Brian do but like, what your knowledge of the industry? If you are working with the candidate, and partway through the process, you realize this is probably not the candidate like it doesn't reflect that well on you. If you were to put that person forward. Tell the candidate I'm not going to put you forward or do you put everyone forward to the company and let the company make the decision? Or how does that work?
That's a great question. It's really dependent on the company and the way that they want to the way that they want to do it. Some companies want to see the four best people and that's it. Some companies want to see eight people 10 people for an executive level role. So that threshold is kind of dictated by what the company wants, and also how deep my pipeline. Yeah, this is, you know, sometimes if I know I they want to see more people and maybe this person is not exactly it.
Sometimes they, you know, sneak their way in. But usually it's because I know they like I'm not going to submit a candidate who I know does not check the most important boxes and ability. Yeah. Do you think that most recruiters though, will just transparently Tell that to the candidate like hey, listen for this reason, that reason the other you're not among the top and you're not going to be put forth?
Yeah, it's like if I know that you're not if I know that a candidates not realistically a top three contender for a role and I especially if I know that candidate has other opportunities. I want to tell them because I want them to put themselves in a position to to get the job that you know, it's going to be right for them. Yeah. So it doesn't do anybody any good. Me candidate, company, whatever, it doesn't do anybody any good to kind of draw it out and lead anybody on.
So I do try to be and this is maybe not what my industry is particularly known for, but I do try to be transparent with that and really honest because if you're not realistically, a contender I don't want I don't want you wasting your time. I don't want my client wasting time. So you know, let me quickly I think we can help with I just wanted to touch on is the compensation discussion. Oh, yeah, please. I think it's we're in a time now where you know, the compensation discussion is is has changed a lot over the last three years, five years. I think.
Just kind of generally speaking, my advice for candidates is forget. Forget your history and talk about it. First of all, we're not allowed to ask your history and a lot of jurisdictions, but forget your history and your expectations. And the more transparent candidates can be with their expectations, the less time we're going to waste. So if you know you need to be at a certain point, you know, base salary wise, the earlier, the better. And it's not to say that these are all hard numbers. Clients have been known to suddenly find some extra money after they meet somebody they really like.
But if we're really far off then I don't want to waste your time. And you know, I don't want to make my client angry by submitting somebody who's, you know, 25% over the base salary, ceiling on the role. So I think you don't have to tell me what you've made. You probably shouldn't in a lot of cases. And I'm not allowed to ask, but being clear about your expectations, I think is really helpful. And focusing on the whole package rather than comparing line item by line item. Also, I think is can be really helpful to kind of when you have multiple opportunities, or you're weighing it against your current role. Let's use the full package. I think it's the most fair way.
Yeah, this is really, really helpful. So I'm hopefully I've heard that, generally speaking, in many places, it's illegal to be asked what you make and so when people aren't doing that, and you should say what you want, right? So you're gonna be thoughtful about that. I think, in working with recruiters, it's a little bit different in that when you're talking to a hiring manager, you don't really lead with like, what is the compensation for this role, but when you're working with a recruiter, my sense is that it can be part of the early conversations because you just said you don't want to waste time going down, you know, multiple steps through if something is way off to the point where a deal could not be made. So is that fair? Like if you if you and I had just met and you said hey, Marjorie, I thought of your role and my you know, first or second question was, well, you know, what's the compensation? Is that off putting or is that normal?
No, it's normal. And I would, by the end of our conversation, I'd probably ask you what your expectations were anyway. So that's that's one of the ways that the recruiter can kind of be a buffer between the candidate and the company is helping set those expectations early. Without you having to feel awkward about the hiring manager or HR or whoever you meet with.
Yeah. And what if I said to, like, what if I said to you, oh, you know, I'm hoping to make 350 Whatever, you know, I'm just throwing in there, but you know, that this roll, the band is like, starts there and maybe I could be competitive for 500 Would you tell me that so transparently, that's where it gets tricky, because the client, the company is my client, they're my customer and and if they can get somebody they're really happy with for a little bit less money.
They're going to be happy with me. I what I usually so so the reality is and when the retained search, I know, ballpark of what they think it's probably what they'd like to pay because that's how we paid the fees in the beginning. So when they when they pay me a third of my fee to kick the search off, it's based on something sometimes we do a flat fee, but that's, that's rare. So it's usually I have some idea of what that might be. What they'd like to pay is a change very often. Usually in in the upward direction.
However, what I will usually do and you can kind of gauge the recruiters reaction when you when you say I'd like to make 350 If what my reaction would probably be Oh, yeah, that'll be no problem. Maybe that means that that's a little bit low. You know, you know what I mean? I'm not going to tell you, yeah, you can make 500 Sure, but, and it's a little bit of a dance and it's it's frustrating because I you know, there was a lot of validity to just having from upfront I think it makes things a lot easier. Yeah.
Well, you know, one of the things that's simple all the time either. Sure.
One thing that I have heard, as, you know, negotiation advice or whatever is that when when a candidate is asked about their salary expectations, assuming this is not on a form, right, there'll be in a contract with somebody that the candidate should instead of putting out a number should say, you know, what is the band that's been approved for this position, because to your point, they have something in mind ready? If someone were to ask you that question, which is a little different, you know, then you counseling someone that they have sort of lowball themselves if they asked you that question. Do you have latitude with your companies to provide a range?
I think I have any clients who don't allow us to do that. No, what I'll usually do is, so a lot of times what we're tasked with doing as far as is kind of providing some market feedback and benchmarking with, you know, what the talent market is. So at our retained level, our clients are pretty responsive to what that market data is.
And that's part of what they're getting. With with the firm, you know, who's really kind of used to functioning on that level. So, watch, to answer your question, how I would usually respond is most of the candidates I'm talking to are in this range, because what we set it out in the beginning is almost never where it ends up. Because there's negotiations, there's, you know, a lot of a lot of different factors that that impact what that number usually is, most of the time it goes up to be honest with you.
Okay, so good to know. Yeah. So there's a question that's coming through the chat that was also on our list. So I'm just gonna go to it now, which is basically how, how can we tell as candidates if the recruiter that we're working with is under contract and is retained? Is it as simple as we just?
Certainly, can I? That's one reason why every message I send LinkedIn email, whatever, to a candidate that I'd like to get on the phone. I included in that message. You know, my firm has been retained by whatever it may be San Francisco, biotech or whatever. Yeah. So I include that in the message and, you know, I could be lying, I might say, I'm not lying.
It can be hard to verify as my point I've been asked, flat out by candidates, you know, are you retained on the search? And the answer was yes. And candidate told me Okay, good, because I only thought retained recruiters. Not a bad idea, especially if you're reached a certain point in your career. So you can certainly ask, I think one of the best ways to do is is really probing questions of the recruiter. If they've actually been engaged by the company, they're gonna have had, at some point, a conversation with at least talent acquisition so they're gonna know, maybe some of the main priorities of those job requirements, or maybe you're going to know something about the structure of the role who reports to, you know, who is the hiring manager? What's the culture like, how big is the team?
You know, those those sorts of questions. I think can the more the recruiter knows the more likely it's going to be, you know, they have a relationship with the company that's worked with the company before. Ask them how many people they've placed there. Yeah, you know, we have we have clients we've placed 40 people at a VP level and up over a decade. We know that company as well as their internal talent acquisition people, as well as somebody not working for the company can so you know, those are I think the kind of questions to ask, there is a phenomenon I'll call it with, you know, some recruit some contingent recruiters do this.
Companies do this to where they will post a job on LinkedIn or somewhere where they don't actually have an opening. They don't actually have a need for that role. And they do it to to pipeline for candidates that they might need later, usually happens at a lower level. So I don't think it's a big risk as big a risk for for MDS and pharma. But like C RAs, or something more entry level there. are companies who will make postings for jobs, they don't actually have openings for just to kind of fill their pipeline of people.
And there are contingency recruiters who I think will sort of take that same approach where, you know, they'll go on LinkedIn and there's here's for companies for biotech companies in Boston who have openings for medical directors in hematology, and they'll go out and start calling medical directors and hematology, get a two three solid resumes and then just start firing them out to those companies, sort of what you talked about before with the hopes that something sticks, and you know, they've spent a couple hours on it and get a placement.
Well, that is to safeguard yourself against that, but I think really digging into the recruiter and asking those kind of probing questions can help you understand how well they actually know the company if they have a relationship.
Yeah, that's great. And also, I definitely you've just taught me something I did not know I did know that some companies will post jobs. I don't know if that's true in in pharma necessarily, but that some companies post jobs on LinkedIn basically as an advertisement. So to raise awareness about their company. I did not know that. Recruiters are sometimes or companies are sometimes posting essentially fake job descriptions for jobs that don't exist, so that they can, you know, fill their backup files of CVS.
I don't say I don't want to create the impression that it's super common. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and the reason why I'm interested in that is because so many people when they're looking for a job and they just get a bunch of rejections, it's so disheartening, but as we all know, I think I call a lot of those jobs are essentially already spoken for by an internal candidate and everybody knows it. We're, you know, there's a number of factors and if one of those factors is maybe the job doesn't even actually exist, that just helps us all feel a little bit better when when you get radio silence, right when you're when you're applying. A question. If I could shift gears just quickly, because this, this actually happened to me once a couple years ago, but someone has more questions on I'll tell my own anecdote.
Just I think I'm going to cover this question in this way. There was a time a couple of years ago where I got a recruiter reached out to me with a role that sounded kind of interesting. And as I was kind of scoping it out, before I had talked to that person, another recruiter reached out to me with what seems to be the exact same job. And by the end of the week, three candidates, I had corresponded with three people who were all really talking to me about the same role. I came to find out one of the three was retained.
The other two were not. And separately, a neighbor of mine who works at that company has been trying to like put it on my radar. So now I've talked to somebody internal to the company, a retained recruiter to recruiters and I wasn't actually even pursuing the job. I was just talking to people. But what ends up happening then if I were to actually want that job and apply now there's so many people in the mix. What does that mean for the recruiters and for me, inside or faux pa there? That's it?
That's a great question. I think so different companies have different practices with all that, as you noted before you know, all the companies you've worked with had policies of you know, kind of blindly solicited resumes were not something that you've pursued by recruiters. So we have I'll give you an example. We have a client, a former client in Princeton, who it's their policy to post everything on LinkedIn, all their job openings even even jobs that we are retained on as exclusive.
So what happens then is if we're retained on a exclusively retained on a search, they have a posting open, anybody who applies who looks close enough. They just send their CV to us. And so that candidate gets put through the exact same process as all the other candidates that were developing for the role. So we entered the interview stage on even footing. My guess is it could have been a scenario where, you know, there was a firm who was retained on it. The company may have had a policy to post a job anyway. And some recruiter saw it and was trying to solicit their candidates for the role. Unofficially, you know, not having an official relationship with the company. If that was the case, in that scenario, we would still get credit. Because we're retained, so we get paid. Yeah, we get paid regardless.
For me as a candidate if I had been interested in the job and I had given my resume to the first person who was not the retained person. And they would have been submitting an unsolicited resume that might have gone basically into a black hole, right? It could it depends on who's monitoring the post and how involved they are in vetting those resumes.
Because then maybe, if I didn't know better because I didn't I mean, again, not not a thing I was pursuing. But if I didn't know try to figure this out. I might have said oh, you know, like, first come first serve like this guy called me first. I'm gonna give him my resume, not talked to the person who's retained and then possibly, essentially thinking I've applied, but in reality, he hasn't gone anywhere, because it's in the wrong hands. Is that Is that right?
I would say in that scenario, if you had a contact in the company, that's the way to go. So yeah, I mean, I'm saying that as a as a as a retained recruiter. Your best way is networking. Yeah, honestly.
Right. Yeah. Studies show that there's the data is kind of all over the place. But studies show some studies show as many as 80% of jobs are gotten through networking.
Does not surprise me. Yeah.
So if you have that avenue available to you, that's probably the best way. Yeah. Because then you have somebody in the company who knows the culture who knows the operating style that's successful vouching for you?
Yeah. And it sounds like no matter what you should always apply on the company's website. No matter who you're sending your resume to open most of the time, if it's posted, you have to apply anyway. Even if if working with a retain recruiter who submitted you who's there. Do you know? Yeah, you have to do the application at some point. You take the job, okay. Just as a formality. So yeah, so do it.
And also, I think for most people on this call already know this right? And you never know how long those postings are gonna stay live. And when they get pulled down, they get pulled down. So I my personal advice to people is to see a role that you're even remotely interested in like, go ahead and apply. You can always learn more later and change your mind later but what you can't do is if it's closed there may not be another way in brine continued to recruiter might get irritated by that because you're you know, that's they only get credit if they're the one who submitted you but retained recruiter, you know, we get like I said, we get paid, anyway.
Yeah, yeah. So, I'm going to do a few rapid fires because I don't think we'll have time to get through all of these questions. What I'm going to do is either just ask you for like your your quick answer, or I'm going to tell you what I think the answer is and you tell me if I'm right or not. So one of the one of the questions it's on this list is is it okay for candidates to contact recruiters directly? I'm sure the answer to that is yes. Right.
Yeah, it should not be too difficult to find recruiters who actually work in pharma. I would, I would only look at recruiters who are actually working in pharma. We get solicited emails and resumes from people all the time and they're you know, I can't help you but anybody who's who's in pharma biotech medical device, where we do work, I try to respond to everything. Sometimes it's hard. But yes, the answer is yes.
What would be your advice? So if people didn't know you because you weren't on this, and they are sitting there today saying, I don't know any recruiters like how would a person go about finding a recruiter in pharma or, I mean, obviously, you could look up Korea, right, but could you? Is there a way to find out from Google sleuthing or LinkedIn sleuthing who their recruiter connected to a particular job post is that's hard.
We don't I mean, most of the searches we conduct start out as confidential. So there's, you're not going to find anything on our website about what companies we're working with or anything like that. So it's, it can be hard to find out if it's an external recruiter. Who's working on it in a lot of cases. But just in terms of growing your network, you know, just googling. A good place to start would be Googling, you know, pharmaceutical executive search. And, you know, I'm sure, Korn Ferry Spencer Stuart Ross, Reynolds will be some of the top matches and those are the big firms, those good things to start with, but there's a lot of smaller, smaller firms like mine who do a lot of really high level work, too. So yeah, don't stop at the big names.
It's good to get to know folks when you're not working. So that you know, folks when you are looking right, I think that's good advice.
Well, if even if I'm not doing something right now, for you, I might be in three months. I don't know what's happening. So somebody I know is there's always an you know, our internal database is always the first place we start when we're looking for candidates.
So that's good to know. And when you try to have your own database when you are sort of pounding the pavement or scouring, you know, LinkedIn or whatever. One of the questions that's on our list here is do recruiters literally, keywords on LinkedIn, or Buzz buzzwords is what's written on the question Do they go through LinkedIn and look for buzzwords I guess, if I could ask you a bigger question. Like what kind of tools do you have or what are you doing for as a professional on LinkedIn to try to find candidates that are appealing to you? And so how can a candidate help you find them?
Yeah, I mean, LinkedIn is is invaluable at this point. They've really made themselves and fortunately or unfortunately, kind of the only game in town in terms of in terms of that. I would say, you know, LinkedIn is a huge piece. your LinkedIn profile does not need to be a replica of your CV.
But I would say if you net out or be found more easily a couple of the things you can do is for physicians in particular, is having complete info on your education, training, any certifications, you do not need to have dates, but you know, if you're board certified what what it's in where you did your education, where did your training is really helpful. Kind of a quick description of each role. You've had maybe a key accomplishment or two. What therapeutic area you worked in, you know, was there a particular list of compound or compounds that you worked on? Doesn't have to be super in depth, but just a little bit, you know, example, if I'm searching on LinkedIn for you know, someone in medical affairs for lung cancer.
If you don't have anything about lung cancer on your LinkedIn profile, you're not going to list so including some you know, therapeutic area expertise or states or things like that, that you have expertise in is going to help you show up on on that list. If you've managed a team is nice to have on there. Because that can be a deal breaker a lot of times you know, if you have those things filled in on LinkedIn, I think that's you're more likely to show up a good recruiter is going to find you if you have if you have those things.
I have two follow up questions on this. One is does it matter where like for example, you know, you can list your skills or you can add your bio or you can add descriptions under each job posts that you've had. Does it matter where in there these words are? Are they all showing up when you do your search?
It depends on how I'm searching if I just do it by keyword, no matter where they are. Okay? If I'm specifically searching in the skills category, which I tend not to do, because not everybody has that build out, you know, particularly robustly that it only searches in that LinkedIn has a recruiter specific product. Yeah, on LinkedIn recruiter. What we can do really in depth, advanced searches and keywords, and search any any of the fields that are on LinkedIn. You can you can really fine tune it to the point where nobody's showing up anymore. That's where I tend to lean more on the keyword because if it's in there somewhere,
but this is really interesting, because from a candidate point of view, knowing what those tools look like or how they're often used is what will help people I think, optimize their skills, right. So if I'm hearing you correctly, like you might use keywords because not everybody updates their skills, but if you're a candidate, you should probably update your skills, right because some other recruiters teaching in that way.
Yeah, that's a good application to pull out of that. I think it shouldn't take long especially if you've got you know, top fives and you want to make sure that you're known for putting them in that skills section is is good, but also maybe just kind of dropping them in the summary. Section is good. It doesn't have to be in a job description under each role. The summary field is kind of a catch all you can just put it in there and it'll get it'll get picked up on by the search.
And then my second follow up question is, this is controversial, right? What about the whole open to work business? You know, there's a couple different things right one is the invisible indicator that like yeah, I'm receptive and you could reach out to me the other one is the big green circle around your face. That literally says you're like looking for a job. When I've heard some people say is, that's a turn off because nobody wants to hire someone who's like, you know, actively looking. They rather hire someone who is currently employed and like I don't know, perceived to be more desired desirable. Wait, yeah, I don't know. Tell us about that.
I don't, honestly I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the open to work or whatever the tag is. Most of the candidates we place out of retain level. We're not looking when we initially contacted them. But we've placed some really great people who just happened to be at work. So I don't put a whole lot of weight into the idea that the only desirable people are candidates who need a job. Because I mean, we all know how this industry goes.
One bad earnings call and suddenly your compound is you know, canceled and your whole team is out of work. So it has no indication of how how talented you are or how good of a leader you are. So I don't I don't place a lot of a lot of weight on that. I'm looking for the best person whether they're, you know, in currently employed, maternity leave, whatever, I don't care. I'm looking for the best person for that role.
I have seen on the other end of the spectrum people especially in some of the the groups that I'm in parts of you know, on on Facebook and in LinkedIn where people physicians are very interested in getting into pharma and medical device. And I frequently see people ask question, What can I do to get noticed by a recruiter other than putting my open to work checkbox, and I have generally have given them the advice that I don't think that that doesn't do anything for you. I mean, right, like, if you saw somebody that popped up, only because they were open to work, but otherwise their profile didn't have any of the keywords or so forth. You're going to pass that person over, right.
I certainly would come back, after I've tried to other people who had the key word hits. That makes sense. Yeah. That first job in industry is is that's a hard transition for a lot of reasons. But, but finding those people who are ready to make the transition is is particularly difficult. You basically I mean, from a recruiting perspective, you just got to call every physician and you know in whatever the particular requirements are a it's a disease state or whether you just have to call well took three four times as many people until you find one who's ready to industry.
This is great because oh, I mean, first of all, everybody on this call is already an industry so we don't have the same but this is relevant. I think, you know, we started off talking about how, you know, retained firms are often working to place higher level candidates into higher level roles. But a lot of people in my group have been in industry, but I would say on average, you know, maybe like in the three to six year range, right? Not not especially but not not fresh, either. Are recruiters interested in helping placing people in director senior director positions or is that to June or benefit from a relationship like with you?
Yeah, that's a that's an interesting question. I think it depends on the firm. Honestly, we my firm we will take really, calculation is based on how much we need to make in order to break even in terms of the all the resources and research and man hours that we put into a search. So that that number, you know, translated strictly to a certain amount that essentially, the person we're placing has to make at least x in their first year and in order for the fees of the search to cover what we need to do hopefully that makes sense. So yeah. Level moves, depending on if it's a company we've done a ton of work with, we have a great relationship. And they say, Hey, look, we have a senior manager role we're having a really hard time with we're much more likely to say yes to that then, you know, somebody we've never worked with, and we're trying to establish ourselves with so it's kind of a sliding scale. I think being physicians, you have the advantage. of sort of a baseline compensation bump versus the average person at your level. Right.
So Director at j&j might be a certain band, but a medical director with an MD is a different story. Yeah. So pretty much a physician search, more or less, at any, any company is probably going to fit kind of within our parameters for what we need to do from a retained perspective. That being said, you know, we are expensive where we cost a lot of money. So there's a lot of contingency firms doing some of the you know, Medical Director kind of rolls to sea level that that, you know, maybe the company doesn't have as much money to spend. So it's, it's not it's not totally black and white, but hopefully that answered your question a little bit.
Yeah, it does. Although it makes me wonder if people who are a little more junior would feel like disinclined like, Oh, I was gonna, but no, I probably won't because I'm too Junior and he probably can't help me. Would you still be wanting to grow your network of physicians in industry, regardless of their role and potentially be able to help them with their networks, if not very specific post.
Yeah. This is a business of relationships that I'm in. Whether, you know, whether I can help you today or whether I can help you five years from now. I'm interested in, you know, trying to do that i One of the things that I love about executive search, is people get into positions where they can be successful and ultimately, I mean, we're all kind of in it for the same for the same end goal, which is to improve people's lives.
And the fact that I get to play a part in that kind of on a tertiary level is really, really exciting and really gratifying. I mean, you, you folks are in it on a much more direct level than I am. But being able to hopefully, put you all in a position where people's lives can be improved. That's kind of what it's all about. And whether I have a role right now, that is good for you, or whether that's five years from now, you know, two months from now I don't know when that is going to come. But chances are at some point, I'm going to work for another 20 years. So that time is probably going to come so.
Yep. Fantastic. That's great. There is a question that has come in. I think you gave us the answer to so I'm just gonna kind of paraphrase here. So, I mean, do all of the companies they may not list all their roles on LinkedIn, but they but they do list them all on their own website. Right. So so if we're getting a I think the question of this underpinning this is if you are getting a if a recruiter has approached you about a certain post and you're trying to figure out whether or not it's legitimate, can you just go to the company website?
You can if that company has a policy to post everything. Oh, not every company posts everything. So then on their own website, yeah.
It could be legitimate, that they're retained and that the only way in is through that person.
I'll give you an example. As I, as I said a little bit earlier, probably about half of the searches that we do start off as confidential. There's a lot of reasons that a search might be confidential. The most obvious one is replacing somebody. But it could be that that's still under wraps that they can't really let any info out on it could be you know, it's a role that they know there's internal people who are going to want to compete for it, but they know they're not ready so we we do it confidentially.
So there's a lot of reasons that a search can be confidential. That's not going to be posted on our website. Otherwise, what's the point of doing a confidential confidentially so yeah. Many of those during the search process become on confidential, but some of them all the way until the announcement is made are confidential, and we're doing NDAs and everything with the candidates and all of that.
So I think what's important and I think an important theme throughout a lot of these questions is if you don't trust the recruiter that you're talking to, you know, maybe maybe that's a sign. You have to feel like there's a mutual respect and kind of striving towards the same thing with with the recruiter you're working with. If you feel like they're not giving you the full story or holding back something that might be a red flag, or maybe just ask them about it. Say, Hey, you know, those probing questions I was talking about before and I think be pretty illuminating. But if if you don't trust the person you're talking to, then maybe you shouldn't be talking to them.
You know, it's such a great point. And it's one of the questions on our on our list that you know, is you know, never used recruiters the best jobs don't need them. Actually, this is not even a question. It's just a comment. When I asked for questions. Somebody said, never the best jobs don't need them. But as you have pointed out, some of the very best jobs do need them because for intellectual property reasons or because of confidential personnel turnover reasons. They're actually not public is closed.
And so there's no way to find them by yourself, at least at the stage. So that seems super important to know. And also, yes, you know, probably a lot of the distrust is a hangover from clinical recruiters. I mean, I don't know about everybody on this call, but I mean, I haven't touched a patient in in five, six years and I've been in industry for eight. Get all the time. Even my cell phone blows up with people asking if I'm looking for like locums work or do you know, do I want to do some, you know, this anesthesia job and wherever, and, like, I feel like what have you do? You know, me? Because if you did, you wouldn't be asking me that question. Because that's not even what I do for a living anymore. Right. And I think we've all experienced that clinically.
And we've probably also experienced or many people have, you know, having had a conversation with a recruiter who asked for your resume and you give it to them. And then like a date, you're just ghosted. You never hear back. I hear that really commonly. But I suppose it seems like the bottom line is, if they're totally uninformed about you, or they're not getting back to you, they're not the recruiter for you. Like that's Yeah,
I think it's something I'll add to that is, if I think you're a really great fit. I'm not going to ghost you because you're, I need you. So it couldn't be that I might be slow to give you feedback. And a lot of times that's because our clients are slow to give feedback. So I think there's, there's some legitimacy in sort of taking ownership of the feedback piece of that, and if you haven't heard me, shoot me a note because it might have been a week and I haven't realized it because I'm working on you know, five other things.
But, you know, sometimes I don't have any news and that's the news. But if if I think that you're really good fit for something, I don't want too much time and cost money, and suddenly you're off you know, market and market. Yeah. So I tried to do my best to keep regular touch points with active candidates. Sometimes, as I said, it gets a little bit longer than I'd like, but I have no problem with the candidate saying hey, have you heard anything? What's the update? It's been a week or whatever, two weeks? I have no problem with that because sometimes it does get away from me.
And I want to make sure that that the candidates who I think are really legitimate are staying engaged. But chances are if somebody has ghosted you, either it was not the right opportunity, or it could have been something kind of like what I was talking about before where maybe it was a contingency recruiter who was just looking for your resume and then sent it off somewhere and nothing ever happened. Not been totally ghosted. Probably nothing's happening. Yeah.
One last question. I know we're, we've been going for an hour. I want to one more question because I think it'll be a short answer. You were mentioning that, you know, even when a person is not placed, or if you've met them otherwise that you'll keep their resume. There's their CV in your files. And that that's the first place that you look when you have a new prime, a new post.
A person has said but like nobody ever hears about someone calling that they gave their resume to a year ago. So I guess if Could you comment on like, how often are you actually going into these files? Is that a productive way of like, I know, Brian's got my resume. So if something comes up, he'll call me or should we be nurturing that in a more proactive and ongoing way?
Yeah, that's a good question. We try to start every search with a search of our own database. So if you know by, oh, and you sent me your resume, and I did what I'm supposed to do, it's in our data. And that's for my whole firm. So even if it's not me, if it's one of my colleagues working on something, they should be able to pull you up as well.
And get to that that information. That all that said it is a business of relationships. And so if we have a more active or nurtured relationship, I'm more likely to think of you when that that comes up. So it's, it's both but you know, in theory, every time we open a search, we first thing we do is we go into our database and see what we have internally and we have over 50,000 candidates in our database that's every that we've ever identified for any search in like 15 years of being in business.
Wow. You know, there's a lot but you know, hopefully we've we've stored the data in such a way that we can pull out the right people. But if you're in a position where you are looking, and we talked five years ago, shoot me a note, you know, I want to it's to my benefit to keep those relationships active as well. And, you know, we're all kind of in the same boat and that it's hard to keep all those things Top of Mind time. But, you know, I really do. I really do want to keep those relationships going. Yes. I can so so I think that's that's definitely part of it.
I have put your LinkedIn link again into the chat for people who joining didn't see it and maybe haven't have not seen it while we've been on here. We're really wrapping up but I do want I guess a Brian to give you the opportunity. Is there anything really important that we ought to know that we haven't touched on yet today about working about when your firm?
Yeah, good question. I think one of the things that would be I did want to hit was sort of how the candidates can make can help the recruiter help the candidate. So I think number one is help me understand your career transitions. You know, a lot of short 10 years can usually be can be a red flag, but there's a lot of factors. That can contribute to that company could be sold, you know, compound failed, you had to move closer to family, whatever it may be. The more I know about those transitions, the better I can advocate for your candidacy.
I've seen a lot of people start to put them on their CV so you know, they were at a tech company for a year and a half but the funding dried up or you know, they got bought or whatever it may be and they just noted on the CV which I think being really clear and transparent about what your experience is, what your experience is and what it might not be and what your limitations are, is helpful. And sort of To the Point before with the fluidity of some of those job requirements, you know, everybody has limitations, depending on where they are you very well could could still be a legitimate contender.
So but knowing what they are ahead of time and kind of being able to address them in an interview, I think helps more than hurts and then being clear and give detail on sort of the financial piece, particularly as it relates to what we call leave behind. So if you've been with a company for a while, and you know you're getting paid a bonus in three months, maybe not on the first phone call, but at some point it probably about an offer.
You're gonna want more I know about that, the more I can prepare the client to address those things and help keep you financially whole. We generally advise any, any kind of long term incentive or stock that's vesting in the next six months or so. You should be including in that conversation as well. Beyond that, you know, if it's another public company, they'll replace it with their stock. But, you know, include that information. You know, if you're the right candidate, we're going to talk a lot, a lot of different times, and so does not have to be in the first call. Yes, our relationship develops and we get more comfortable. You know, sharing as much of that as you can, really helps kind of alleviate potential issues later on. And then noncompetes yes, we're living in a wild time with noncompetes because they're getting more and more broad and more unenforceable and now they may be banned.
But who knows? Because I'm sure there's legal challenges to come on that right. So nobody nobody please do not assume your non compete is not applicable anymore.
I will say, I've seen companies flipping them into a stock agreement recently. So I've seen a lot to say, oh, no, I don't have a noncompete and then they find out that they actually signed one when they receive a stock grant. That was in the 45 page document that they signed for that and nobody actually reads. Yeah. So just pro tip, if you if you've signed a stockman in the last couple of years, and you don't think you've signed a non compete, it might have been in there I mean, so we could obviously talk for another hour and probably with an attorney to about the ramifications of non competes, but it just in case that people don't know on this call, I mean, you know, it's the your the employer that you're leaving, will most likely take legal action against the employer that hires you.
So it may be against you, but I mean, the bigger risk is hires in which case they will most likely let you go. That's a big mess for everybody. And you want to not be in that boat and as much as possible. So it can be everybody's advantage. There's ambiguity around whether or not there is a competing interest. Get an attorney involved and sort that out. Well in advance, right. Yeah.
I will say a lot of times they can be worked around or negotiated down. So if you're non competes for 12 months, we've seen a lot of people get them negotiated down to six months or three months or something. So it's not a it's not a deal breaker. It's something that we need to know about. Yeah.
And then we can figure out what the what the strategy is, and a lot of times it's it's the hiring company's legal department who's going to want to see a non compete, right. It's not not a breach of any confidentiality or anything. So you know, the more transparent I think, the better and the more prepared, everyone can be. For, you know, potential hurdles and things that need to be worked through.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Brian Evans, everybody Discovery search partners. Thank you so much, Brian. This was extremely educational, really fun. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope everybody on the call and join turned at least one or two new things I know I did. Really appreciate you being with us today.
Ya know, I enjoyed it. Hoping to have already seen both a dozen or so LinkedIn requests come through. So I'm happy to do that and connect with everybody. So thanks for having me, and we'll make that connect down the road.
Fantastic. Thanks. Thanks, everybody.
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