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With changes in the healthcare industry coming hot on the heels of Covid, how do you scale your medical device recruitment to deal with product demand?
The medical devices industry changed more in the time of Covid-19 than any other time in its history.
Countries were desperate for ventilators to cater critical care across 2020 (the UK alone upped its ventilator numbers by 22,600), but that wasn’t the only area affected.
During the pandemic, people delayed seeking treatment and support, upping demand for medical devices later. With the lingering popularity of remote appointments, medical tech will continue to be in demand for a while.
Data is King
The demand for medical information to guide public health also increased demand for more data than ever to be gathered.
In the US, The FDA stated that since the 2016 21st Century Cures Act, real-world data (RWD) is playing an increasing role in health care decisions.
This means more technology and people to handle data, and links between medical devices required to store and transport data.
How Has this Changed the Medical Device Jobs Landscape?
Processes in the medical device industry have gathered pace, quickly.
Rapid deployment is vital as the industry reacts to changing circumstances. But this situation created complex logistics that need dealt with quickly.
The Pandemic Has Had a Knock-on Effect for Medical Device Recruitment – And Medical Device Recruitment Agencies
The requirements for equipment manufacturing and data hasn’t just caused logistical problems, it’s also caused staffing issues. Many roles are highly trained and finding new employees to facilitate demand hasn’t been easy.
Even for medical device recruitment agencies.
Add economic uncertainty and competitors facing the same issues, finding top talent has been a challenge.
So How Do You Find New Medical Device Talent?
Look at other industries would be our first tip for your team. By searching other highly rated industries, you can tap into talent that understands regulations for safety and compliance like ISO13485.
Industries like automotive, aerospace, and even pharma to an extent are good to begin.
However, how do you know where to look in these markets? What locations have talent? What are salary expectations?
Talent Mapping
Talent Mapping helps here. This provides a comprehensive overview of talent pools in specific locations or markets and shows where opportunities lie. At Solutions Driven, we create talent maps for businesses breaking into sectors or locations.
Talent Maps provide them with comprehensive views of the talent pools. From a talent map, recruiters and hiring managers make a hiring plan, taking the data and insights to inform strategy. They can also tell if you have team members who, with development, could step up to the next level.
But don’t expect these markets to be easy pickings. The automotive industry has had a difficult period but things are picking up with electric vehicles.
Obviously pharma is going through a lot of the same changes too.
How to Attract This Talent
Engage Candidates
One of the best ways to attract passive talent and high quality candidates in medical device recruiting is creating procedures to engage them and support strong relationships. According to Talent Board, negative candidate experience will cause 69% of candidates to never work with your company again.
Word of Mouth
Having candidates who speak well of your business and team is vital.
That means putting more resources into engaging with candidates throughout. Candidates like to feel wooed. If hiring managers or recruiters can explain your business and the role comprehensively, that goes a lot of the way to attracting them.
Outside Recruitment
But many healthcare businesses don’t have the resources or internal support for this. So they bring in outside recruiters.
However, when doing this, they need to ensure their recruiters will embody their Candidate Value Proposition, engage candidates properly, and work as a partner, rather just just another recruitment supplier.
Offer Job Progression
Nazma Qurban from Sales Impact Academy recently said that progression is vital for employee satisfaction. If people feel like they’re moving forwards, they’ll work harder to reach their goals.
Progression in soft and technical skills is something the medical device industry can currently offer candidates. After all, they’ll be gaining experience in a new field. Medical devices are fast-paced and exciting, providing the chance to move up the career ladder.
Future-Proofing Medical Device Recruitment
If the changes of the recent past have taught us anything, it’s that this sector and healthcare in general is constantly evolving. In two years, manufacturing and intelligence requirements in the sector will be different to what they are now.
The skills and attributes required in medical device jobs will continually change as the manufacturing, tech and software changes. Which means hiring for potential, rather than current skills.
Hiring for Potential
But how do you hire for potential? What’s best practice? It’s easy for recruiters to see how qualified or experienced someone is. How do you figure out if they have the capacity to learn, to grow in their role, to manage, and to make quick decisions based on the information and evidence they have?
The 9-Box Grid
One of the best ways is the 9-box grid. The grid provides valuable insight to where a candidate currently sits in their capabilities and their development potential in future, showing whether they have the skills and will be proactive enough to keep moving with the times.
We use it regularly for sectors like medical devices as it’s useful for industries with uncertain futures and new technologies.
It can help give hiring managers peace of mind that the person you’re hiring will be able to help them grow and won’t stagnate in their position.
Psychometric Testing
The other option here is to use psychometric testing to gauge how people will react to common situations in your organisation.
DISC PPA
For example, a DISC PPA test can tell you how people will behave at work. If you need someone with a cool head to make decisions quickly and match the fast-paced market, or someone who will work well in medical sales, DISC tests can help you identify them.
HPTI
Or if you need to find out who’ll be a great future leader and have the experience to take on these responsibilities, a High Potential Trait Indicator test can tell you where on the open, conscientious, extrovert, agreeable and neurotic scale candidates lie.
This can tell you if they have knowledge and expertise to become a good manager or people leader.
When you’re looking to ramp up or find fresh talent for medical device jobs, it can often be difficult to do it in-house.
Other priorities take hold and your internal team might not have the time or the experience to do a comprehensive search for great talent.
Working With an Outside Partner
That’s where a trusted external medical device recruitment company with in depth understanding of the market can be useful to your recruitment.
They’ll have the ability to conduct in-depth searches on their medical device clients’ behalf, engage top talent, and present you with shortlists to take your business forward.
