Like almost everything within the HR world, the humble job interview has gone through somewhat of a revolution since the advent of COVID-19.

We now live in the era of remote interviews as standard. It’s been a long time coming, and not just for the inherent efficiency of pre-vetting talent from the comfort of their (and your) own home.

• Remote interviews open up the doors to a massive, diverse candidate base who were previously uncontactable, or marginalised based on location.
• It gives employers so much more scope to connect with talent quickly and efficiently, reducing the time to hire.
• And remote interviews provide digital hiring scalability. Never has the potential to reach so many people been so achievable, so easily.

However, while the tech changes, attitudes and behaviours are sometimes slow to adapt. This is where companies like Evolve have found they can add immense value - getting candidates (and some employers!) up to speed on best practice in this recruitment new normal.

The remote interview raises some cunning challenges for candidates - not least are questions around what the best sort of tactics are when body language is restrained, nuance and subtlety can be lost, and the free-flowing communicative balance of an in-person interview is reduced to a two-dimensional chat.

Word to the wise, there are some pretty easy-to-remember, hard and fast rules of remote interviewing that, if deployed correctly, will stand you in good stead for a call back:

Still dress to impress.

• First impressions, even if they are on Zoom, do still count.
• Yes, the running joke of people doing interviews in shorts and a suit shirt is undoubtedly more true than we’d like to think, but dressing appropriately is still a sign of respect and professionalism.
• Whilst, as we highlight below, other aspects of remote interviewing are probably more pressing (such as lighting, or checking your internet connection), dressing in interview-appropriate attire is still the clearest, cleanest and best first impression you can give.

Check your lighting!

• This one is an easy remote interview hack - don’t attend an interview sitting in front of a light source!
• For example, a window. Having a large, bright light source behind you dominates the camera white balance and you end up on screen as a talking, dark shadow. Naturally, this cannot do. So light, evenly, from the front, preferably with a light source that faces you straight on, rather than top-down or bottom-up.

Make sure you’re in a neutral space.

• By this we mean think about how the space you’re attending an interview speaks for you. So consider the following:
  • Your interview background - is there anything within eyeshot that could be considered risque, personal, unprofessional or distracting? If so, remove it. You want your entire frame to be as neutral as possible, or if you’re fond of a virtual background, again we urge you to go neutral. We’ve found the best sorts of backgrounds give a little personality - like a real bookshelf - but are still neutral enough to not warrant further scrutiny.
  • Pets - as much as we love our furry friends, if you have pets it's best to keep them out of earshot where they can’t distract you (or your interviewer!)
  • Housemates, family or children - as much as possible, pre-warn anyone in your house about the time of your interview to minimise sound follow-through or accidental walk-ins. While there have been plenty of incidences of comical, inoffensive intrusions mid-TV interview, in a job interview it’s a no-no.
  • Phones, notifications, alerts and other screens - think of it this way: you wouldn’t have your phone on loud in a face-to-face interview, so the same rules apply here. I appreciate that, in some rare cases, you may need to refer to another screen for reference points (which echoes looking at a document in an interview), but in the main other digital devices should be switched off and your attention should be 100% on the job in hand.

Time-keeping.

• This one is short and sweet - you have no excuse to be late to a remote interview. So rock up early, sit in the digital waiting room, and bask in the glow of your time-keeping efficiency. Plus, it puts in a great first impression.

Check your tech!

• Finally, check your tech - your internet connection, the video call link, your webcam quality, the lighting set up, double and triple check it all.
• The last thing you want a few minutes before a video interview is a basic administrative error to pop up that could’ve been rectified days before. If in doubt, over-communicate - you’d rather ask too many questions about broken Zoom links or dodgy internet connections than not raise it at all and be left treading digital water.
• Remember, as the interviewee you’re not responsible for hosting the interview, but that doesn’t mean you renege on your responsibility for making sure the interview runs smoothly. Work with your interviewer, not against them!

Contact Evolve for more advice on remote interviews!

This is the second of two blogs focussing on some of the basics of interviewing - this one is aimed at employers on the search for their next star hire.

Creating a positive, inclusive and effective interview is a lesson in balance.

Any employer who’s ever hosted an interview understands this and tries to work with the unique dynamics of an interview to the benefit of both the candidate and the employer.

But the modern hiring market is far from balanced. Within the wider Pharma and Healthcare market, candidates are in short supply employers are clamouring for the same talent from small talent pools, and despite the best efforts of specialists across the HR landscape, the industry remains firmly in candidate-led territory.

A lot of companies are compromising on long-held rules to get talent in the door. Traditional salary bandings are being crushed under the weight of recruitment necessity; counter-offers and counter-counter-offers are completely normalised; candidates for maybe the only time in history truly know their worth, and want to maximise return on placement in a new job.

The power is, seemingly, all in the hands of the candidate. However, the interview is a place for equal power dynamics, and good interviewers use this to their advantage - not by leveraging their brand, power, pay or reward, but by engaging the candidate on what they really want from a job.

When company purpose and company mission are more important than ever to an employee, it's theoretically easier than ever to host a successful interview.

Here’s how!

Do.

Prioritise achievements.

• In specialist industries like MedTech or life science QC it’s not enough to find a candidate with the right skills - you need to know whether a candidate can apply those skills to the immediate benefit of your firm, customer base and business network.
• So, make sure you build an interview strategy around getting the most information possible from a candidate on what they've achieved in the scope of their employment, and how they can apply those material achievements to your enterprise. Try not to focus too much on skills (good candidates will have a lot of them!) but try and find out how they use those skills in work, and which skills are most appropriate for your company.

Offer, and contextualise, flexible work where appropriate.

• Remote work is one of, if not the, most important work “perk” that, post-COVID, has become a make-or-break deal for many candidates.
• While we understand not every job in the medical, technical or wider life sciences field can be remote, this is where contextualising the role comes into play. You need to be able to communicate how, and why, certain roles are based where they are, and how your expectations of employee workflows have changed as a result.
• This provides clarity of role for your potential staffing base and sets the right expectation for the candidate.

Personalise, and contextualise a relevant benefits package.

• As a continuation of the point on contextualised remote work, full remuneration packages need to be relevant and personalised to every candidate where possible.
• Long gone are the days of centralised work perks focused on office-based benefits. Consider the context of work and where work is.
• Would your teams benefit more from perks such as localised childcare benefits to help staff handle the rising cost of childcare or a free gym membership in a location they commute to only twice a week?

Meet the Great Resignation head-on.

• Don’t hide behind the great resignation as the cause of your hiring struggles, or your inability to retain staff. The best employers in the medical faculty have pivoted to meet the effects of the great resignation head-on. Those same employers realise that an interview represents the perfect time to communicate and contextualise everything - the entire brand, recruitment and workforce journey - with candour.
• Your candidates will appreciate an employer who is honest about their purpose in a disrupted working world, and who is clear about their solutions to it.

Don’t.

Forget the basics or the power of empathy.

• Be polite. Be timely. Be welcoming. The basics of hosting a good interview still matter and in our post-pandemic new normal, showing empathy for a candidate's position and journey is vital if you want to secure the trust and respect of the talent in front of you.

Take too long to communicate.

• The most common complaint of employers who fail to hire or lose advocacy from their candidate network is that their recruitment process takes far too long. Don’t wait a month to decide on a candidate. Don’t even wait a week. Pull the trigger within at least 2 to 3 days.

Hold multi-stage interviews beyond two or three stages.

• On the topic of interview time scales, if you are set on putting a candidate through a multi-stage interview, make it very obvious from the first step of your candidate journey (the job advert!) how many stages there are, and reduce the time between each stage.
• Good candidates will not wait for good employment - they are in too much demand and will get a better offer from someone else.

Ignore feedback.

• Lastly, seeking feedback from your candidate is vital in improving your overall interview technique and strategy. This is especially important if you’re consistently bringing candidates to interview and not hiring.

The bottom line.

The candidate journey from referral or job advert should be fast, done with candour, and with empathy.

The companies that forget the basics of good interviewing - timekeeping, good preparation, working quickly to snare the best of the best - will always suffer from poor hiring numbers and, over the long term, poor retention of staff.

This is the first of two blogs on some of the basics of interviewing, so we thought we’d start this mini-series highlighting some of the most important candidate interview do’s and don’ts.

In our experience, no matter the industry or level of seniority, navigating an interview is not a simple tried and tested formula.

Every aspect of recruitment, from pre-interviewing and vetting through to onboarding and retention, has changed. Industry shifts caused by market conditions and the increase in remote interviewing all mean interviews must adapt to meet the needs of the modern workplace.

Interviews, interview strategy and interview planning are as subject to changing trends and industry movements as anything else in recruitment and HR. Consider this a bit of new recruitment market myth-busting, courtesy of Evolve!

So, without further ado, here is the Evolve Interview Do's and Don’ts guide for Candidates…

Do.

Ask Questions.

● We cannot implore this enough of candidates. Be curious. Ask questions. Ask about the role, the last person in the role, why the role is vacant, and what you should expect from the role. Ask your interviewer what they should expect from you. There are never enough questions you can ask.

● An interview represents one of the only open forum opportunities to mine your interviewer for information on the role, the company, their plans, and your place within it all. So don’t leave any stone unturned.

Dress to impress, even online.

● Although we don’t completely believe in dressing for the job you want, not the job you have, there is nothing wrong with making sure you turn up in appropriate attire.

● Never forget the basics of interviewing - showing up in your Sunday best might be a touch overkill, but smart clothing shows respect for the occasion and that you’re approaching the interview process from a place of professionalism.

● We may all be doing everything on Zoom and spending less time in office, but compromising on this, at the interview stage, is fatal for a job application.

● The basics still count, respect is still important, and displaying professionalism is vital.

Remember the basics of positive body language.

● From looking at windows or facing doors during an interview, to crossed arms and eyes dropped to the floor, body language matters - remember, it’s what you're saying when you’re not saying anything.

● This is where a bit of practice makes all the difference. Positive body language comes from control, awareness and continuous adjustment to posture, facial expression and tone of voice. So practise answering questions. Film yourself practising questions and review how you engage.

● Confidence is bred from knowing how you approach every question and every answer, and this will feed down into everything from your posture to the way you gesticulate during answers.

Remember to relate anecdotes and experience to achievements.

● Relate as much working evidence and experience back to tangible moments on your CV, and always elevate achievements over skills when talking about yourself.

● This will mean your interviewer can see where, when and how you achieved something in past roles, better visualising how you will fit into their company.

Don't.

Be late!

● If you’re holding an interview online, there is no excuse. But similarly, turning up late to an in-person interview shows a critical lack of forethought and planning.

● If you are going to be late due to traffic, or you’re experiencing digital issues and cannot access a remote interview, do not hesitate to let your employer know as soon as possible. Be open, honest and receptive to feedback on future interview planning: hiccups happen and it’s not fatal to a job interview unless you refuse to communicate.

Forget the follow-up email.

● A follow-up email is one of the easiest things to forget. If an interview goes badly, it may be something you don’t want to do. But I find even sending a simple thank you shows courtesy and respect.

● A follow-up is also an opportunity to double up on points raised in the interview. Perhaps you mentioned a project you worked on you think your interviewer may want to read more about - that’s your chance to show them!

Be aloof!

● Lastly, attitude to interviews is everything, because it reflects your attitude in how you work.

● Every point raised above speaks volumes about how you’d approach teamwork, meeting deadlines, how you work with management and more. So if you approach an interview from a place of aloofness you’re not displaying confidence - you’re displaying arrogance.

The bottom line.

The ball is very much in your court when it comes to recruitment - the low supply/high demand of specialist talent in the pharmaceutical and healthcare market has created a perfect storm of candidate supremacy.

But an interview is neutral ground. It should be treated with professionalism, grace and thanks.

For more helpful advice and tips, contact Evolve!

The job advert game has changed.

Long gone are the old school hit-and-hope recruitment advert strategies, typified by sending as many adverts to as many people as possible, and spreading your advert across as many job boards as possible, all in the hope of engaging the right person.

In some sectors, this attitude still exists. But the candidate return is sketchy and the quality of candidates unstable - the return on job advert investment simply isn’t there anymore.

In the post-pandemic era, job adverts have to be hyper-targeted. When the cost of hiring the wrong person is astronomically high, and the recruitment market is decidedly candidate-led, you want to make sure your advert is finding the right people.

You want the focus to be on quality, not quantity.

To find the right talent, you need to make sure your company is being advocated for in the right networks, and that your job adverts are finding their way into the inbox, job board or direct message of your perfect candidate.

This requires some written word magic - you want to inspire candidates to apply, you want to talk their language, and you want to highlight opportunity, to grab future stars, developing talent, and next-gen leaders.

Within the Pharma, MedTech and Life Sciences industries, job adverts are typically rich in industry detail, specific in requirements and highly niche in the use of language. However, writing jargon-heavy job ads and sticking them on medical jobs boards does not guarantee quality CVs in your inbox.

There are many aspects of a job advert to consider before you put pen to paper, such as:

● Where you’re posting the advert - what sites, which networks and for what particular candidate?

● How does each platform dictate what does and doesn’t work for job adverts? E.g. should you be wording an advert on LinkedIn the same way you are for other jobsites, or Twitter?

● Are you leveraging your employer brand enough? As employer brand specialists, we know that your entire job advert needs to be written under the brand umbrella of your EB.

● Will your job advert attract both passive and active candidates? What candidates are looking for a new job? Which ones are looking only passively? Do you know the difference between the two, and how to speak to both parties?

● Does your referral network know you're accepting CVs, and are they, too, advocating for your live jobs?

The modern job seeker.

Consider the modern job seeker - mostly digital natives who are facing a disrupted future, having made it out of the pandemic, who are aware of the cost of living rising for months if not years to come, and desperately seeking job security even as they launch “side hustles” to both explore their career paths…and make ends meet.

What type of job advert is going to attract those people? What style of language speaks their language?

The perfect job advert.

While further below we pick apart the main pitfalls of job advert writing, you want to have the following basic information in a job advert:

● Introduction - a brand-focused intro paragraph where you announce the role, the company, the time scale for hiring, and a breakdown of the opportunity on offer.

● Main Section - this needs to be a detailed description of the company and its values; the reason or reasons for hiring for the role; the history of the role and its place in the matrix of the company; the leadership team and their needs; the company plans for the future, and the primary responsibilities of the role.

● Compensation and benefits - the real meat of the role: what you’re paying your new hire and details on their full remuneration package.

● Call to action - clear information on how to apply; clarification on the recruitment flow (whom the application is going to, how long the process could take etc), and links to further reading, such as a company career page, social media pages or recruiters’ LinkedIn pages.

Things to watch out for when it comes to writing a job advert.

Job seekers want three things:

● They want to know how they’ll be remunerated - is the salary in keeping with my expectations?

● They want to know where they’re working - does the role have remote work options (the no.1 candidate demand)?

● They want to know your brand purpose - does the company's purpose match my expectations, views, and vision for what my labour means. Does each candidate understand and feel a sense of value in their work?

These three aspects of a job ad answer the most pressing post-pandemic candidate questions around building a viable, sustainable career.

Details matter - remove all vagaries in job role, responsibility, pay or benefits. Be specific and be honest about it.

Make your call to action clear - the trick to effective recruitment in the age of the great resignation is you want to make sure by the time your perfect candidate has read the job advert, they do one of two things - dive further into your brand (either via links to your website, career page or social media pages), or be so inspired they simply have to apply straight away.

Both points of contact need easy to access, clear hyperlinks, web addresses, email addresses or phone numbers. Make it easy for your candidate to get in touch with you and explore your brand!

Evolve

Sectors within the Medical Sales industry

• Pharmaceuticals
• Medical Devices / Medical Technology
• Healthcare
• Life Sciences

What does the role of a Medical Sales Representative involve?

• Medical Sales roles are predominantly field based and you will be responsible for a specific territory. This means that there is usually lots of travel involved
• Arrange appointments with customers both face to face and virtually
• Promote and sell your company’s products to key customers in the NHS or private sector
• Educate and train customers on the products you are selling by doing presentations and demonstrations
• Build strong relationships with customers and key stakeholders
• Provide after-sales services
• Meet and exceed sales targets
• Organise and attend medical conferences when required

How to get into Medical Sales

Graduate training programmes – Evolve has a dedicated Graduate Recruitment programme to help recent graduates start their career in medical sales industry

Apprenticeships / Internships

University courses

• Scientific: Biomedical Science, Biological Science, Pharmacology & Pharmaceutical Science, Biology, Medical Engineering, Biochemistry, Sports Science, and any other science related subjects
• Non-Scientific: Business Studies, Marketing

Skills and Knowledge required

• Full driving licence is essential, as the majority of medical sales positions are field based which involves travelling to visit customers face to face
• In-depth research into the Medical Sales industry, learning about key customers and the structure of the NHS
• Shadowing experience of a Medical Sales Representative is highly advantageous
• Excellent communication skills – verbal, written and listening
• Experience in a customer-facing environment
• Good customer service skills
• Ability to work well in a team and on your own
• Commitment, persistence, and determination
• Ability to accept criticism and overcome rejection
• Ambition and a desire to succeed

Progression opportunities

With experience and a good track record in sales, you could progress into a senior sales role or management, or even move into a marketing position.

Here at Evolve, we have a dedicated Graduate recruitment team that works closely alongside recent graduates with a keen ambition to step into medical sales, providing excellent tips into research, CV writing and interview techniques.

Contact the Graduate recruitment team to discuss!

So, you’re building a salary and benefits package - where do you start?

There has never been a better time to take a microscope to your compensation package strategy, and even though money and job perks have always been incredibly important to workers - and a vital element of attracting best-in-class talent to a company - a full remuneration package has to be more than attractive.

It has to be sustainable, meaningful and personal.

What do we mean by that? Well, ask yourself the following questions:

● Sustainable - is your compensation package well thought out and commensurate with the rest of the company and the wider industry?

● Meaningful - is your compensation package serving a purpose eg. Do your benefits and perks reflect your company vision and mission, and do they involve your staff beyond getting a pay packet at the end of the month?

● Personal - do you tweak your compensation package (reasonably) for each staff member, department on hierarchy?

To illuminate all three points, let’s elaborate:

If you refuse to offer a sustainable compensation package that meets the expectations of the wider industry, you will neither attract nor retain good staff. If that package is at odds with your internal pay bandings, or you pay the same level of staff inconsistently, you'll create resentment and anger, not to mention run into some legal trouble.

If your compensation packages simply don’t match your company vision - for example, if you operate a community healthcare business, but your work perks simply don’t match the culture of your company (such as offering restaurant discounts, which isn’t a bad thing, but what about mileage on the gallon for fuel? Or reduced nursery costs for working mums?) - you won’t hire the right people and you’ll be seen as not wanting the best for your staff.

And if you’re not making an effort to make sure every staff member feels wanted at work - and in the age of hyper-personalisation you cannot afford not to - then you’ll find your staff don’t feel looked after. I’m not suggesting you bend over backwards to accommodate every staff member’s whims, but if you’re finding your entry-level Gen Z talent want to take volunteer days to help in the local community rather than a gym membership, why can’t you accommodate that?

Let's get back to basics - what do candidates want from a job in 2022?

Perhaps rather than lean on "what do they want from work?", the best way to look at this question is "what do your people want from their work life?"

The driving rationale behind the Great Resignation wasn’t rank unhappiness with work - it was a lack of a safety net in work and life; a lack of cohesion between labour and outcome; and unhappiness in the face of inflexibility of in-office work in the digital age.

In fact, this is the very question asked by the World Economic Forum in their piece titled, unambiguously, What do employees want most from their work life in 2022?

They broke it down into two constitute parts - the rise of the home office, and a sense of wellbeing and shared culture, and the stats support this:

Remote and Hybrid Work.

● “67% of UK technology candidates are now looking to work entirely remotely”.

● “The term “remote jobs” is now searched for over 18,000 times per month in the UK on Google – a 410% increase over the last 5 years”.

● “57% of British workers want to be able to work from home”.

Wellbeing and company purpose.

● “Employees want a more human employment value proposition: They want employers to recognise their value and provide value to them on a human level. Monetary compensation is important for surviving, but deeper relationships, a strong sense of community and purpose-driven work are essential to thriving”.

● “89% of workers at companies that support well-being initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work”.

What do candidates want from a remuneration package?

There is no quick fix to offering the perfect remuneration package - it takes time to craft the perfect balance of attractive, competitive salary bandings (and in public service organisations this is more rigid than in private), and personalisation of benefit and perk.

But our advice is simply to follow the above as a guideline and create a positive remuneration culture, and then craft something affordable and relevant to your industry.

Here are some great examples beyond the standard fare of commission bonuses and vague promises of “training” that could pique your interest:

● Unlimited time off - from Netflix to Kickstarter, many companies offer unlimited time off for their teams.

● Paid parental leave - a huge perk for working parents and enormously attractive to older workers.

● Remote and flexible working - a now-standard offer, and one that more and more workers want.

● Child Care assistance - a fantastic benefit to working parents especially when childcare costs are rising.

● Career development training - one of the more sought-after perks, this can be offered in a variety of ways, from in-work mentoring to apprenticeships, training courses, or certifications paid for by the employer.

● Personal development training - more personal than career development training, it’s no less important for people to feel like they can develop both their career and mentality within work.

● Private health insurance - especially offers like free dental or private healthcare, both of which are attractive perks for workers in the UK.

● Employee appreciation benefits - this is a widely used, sometimes vague term that incorporates a lot of great things like gifts, away days, bonuses, team dinners and more.

● Bucket List awards - although more extreme in outlay, being able to help staff do some bucket list events is a huge perk, such as bungee jumping, or even a subsidised holiday!

● Care packages - smaller on scale to a bucket list gift, but more affordable - companies like Perkbox, Thanks Ben and Reward Gateway are examples of companies that help package these sorts of offers.

● Wellness programmes - companies such as Headspace, Libratum and Mercer offer customisable wellness programmes for employers across the UK.

● Home office budget - set aside money to help your home-working employees benefit from an up-to-date, ergonomic workspace at home.

● Company equity - more relevant for startups and senior hires, offering equity aside from salary and bonuses creates advocacy and determination to help the company thrive.

● Flexible gym membership - rather than book your people into a fixed space, offer something closer to home or family.

● Commuting assistance - the price of commuting is skyrocketing. So help your people get to your office in a way that’s sustainable and you’ll see a marked improvement in in-office working and new hires wanting to work for you.

For further reading, there are some great references from the CIPD on workplace benefits which you can read here.

The bottom line.

Fair remuneration means more than simply paying talent what they’re worth. It’s about creating a positive compensation culture that meets the demands of a modern workforce.

For more information, contact Evolve

There are plenty of guidelines about how to write a good CV online, but we want to focus on what Evolve does best – to provide actionable advice for talent looking to build a career in Life Sciences, MedTech, Medical Sales and the wider Pharmaceutical sector.

The recent proliferation of digital tools, portfolios and online resumes has threatened to push the humble CV into the dustbin of recruitment history. But CVs are timeless pieces of professional documentation because they serve one key purpose - to inspire your prospective employer.

CVs offer a concise, clearly communicated window into your career, your passions, your drives and your experience, and their relative simplicity (in form, layout, order, and design) creates a level playing field for every applicant to be judged equally.

As of yet, no one has created a fairer or simpler way to summarise a career.

Let’s get some of the basics right.

In our industry, as in any other industry, a CV needs to have order, but that order serves a purpose - to tell your story.

When considering the scale of recent UK Life Science investment, and the predicted rise in wearable tech, digital transformation, biotech, data science and privacy and drug creation, there has never been a better time to hone in on this amazing industry - and your CV offers a unique, personal way of communicating your interest in this growing industry.

Further to that, remember that every interaction you have with a potential employer will either increase or decrease their desire to take you further up the recruitment ladder - and your CV is one of the most effective ways of turning an employer’s head.

Here are our key guidelines for writing the perfect Life Sciences, MedTech and Pharma CV:

● Your CV ideally needs to be no longer than 2 pages, and should only be 3 pages or more if there are requirements to attach particular proof of certifications or longer personal statements as per application requirements.

The order of your CV should be the following:

● Your name.

● Your contact information.

● A key summary - 5 or 6 key points that summarise your career to date. For example: * Passionate MedTech Sales Manager * 5 Years’ Experience * Multinational Account Manager * YoY X% Sales Uplift * Specialist in Clinician Business Development * or something of that ilk.

● Personal statement - the why in your application: what drew you to the job, and why you think you’d be the best hire.

● Career to Date - in chronological order, from most recent to oldest. Note: if you are a seasoned careerist with over 10 years of experience, we suggest limiting your career details to only the last decade, to stop your CV sprawling into pages and pages of text.

● Qualifications and Certifications (highlighting the most relevant for the role).

● Reference details (2 or 3 ideally).

And remember the basics really do matter.

● Your CV cannot be a jumble of information - your career, experience, certifications, education, and even your personal contact information needs to be represented in clear order.

● It shouldn’t be loud, bright, or full of graphics - keep your font choice standard (Times New Roman, Arial or similar), remove any multicoloured text and steer away from “enriching” your CV with graphics - keep it clean, and let your future employer’s focus be entirely on the story you’re telling.

● Keep it up to date - for obvious reasons, your CV needs to have all the right up-to-date information relevant for the application, including information about you, your career to date, your certifications, your experience, your references, and a small but detailed personal statement about your desire for a job.

● Finally, triple-check it! - you cannot afford to send a CV to a prospective employer with spelling errors, the wrong email address, or references with incorrect contact information. Triple check every detail, every line, every full stop. A lack of diligence shows a lack of detail or respect for the application or employer, and in the Life Sciences and Pharma sector that’s fatal for a job application.

For more information, contact Evolve

Turning the microscope on your employer branding strategies can be difficult, especially when you know your core messaging works at attracting staff to your organisation - if it ain't broke don’t fix it, right?

But when the recruitment market is as aggressive and hard to navigate as it is, doing a brief yet effective employer branding review could be the difference between a strategy that falters and a strategy that attracts who you want, when you want.

To be able to react to staffing issues at speed, on an agile basis - is where effective employer branding strategy really makes itself felt.

Employer Branding 101.

Employer branding provides the cultural signposts that indicate why you do what you do, and what you expect of your people.

The most important aspect of employer branding is that it's always active.

Unlike your career opportunities being posted on to jobs boards, or social media job promotions reaching into your SM ecosystem, your employer brand is a perennial feature of your company's presence: it’s your employee’s front door, and for prospective staff, your employer brand elements will be one of, if not the first thing they connect with.

Your EB is an incredibly visible facet of your public standing and professional reputation, so don’t you want to make sure that asset is perfectly balanced, and that it tells the right story?

Brand Improvement through agility.

Any business leader who says their employer branding strategy is perfect and requires no tweaking is living in a fairy tale.

Employer branding needs to be flexible to meet the demands of fast-changing industries and the rise of macro-trends across recruitment, such as the ongoing effects of the great resignation, and the shift to digital transformation to shore up business in a post-COVID world.

But above all else you want your employer brand to inspire your candidate base, and to take them on a journey whereby they see themselves reflected in your culture, your business outreach, your reputation and your future.

But candidates change. Different demographics want different things. As the rise of near and offshoring in the technical field rises, it’s become apparent that different countries and cultures demand different forms of staff management and expectation setting than others.

In short, you cannot assume your employer branding strategy is a fixed asset and that it’ll work all the time.

Our Quick guide to conducting an employer brand review.

Faced with tough hiring headwinds, the Evolve team have put together what we feel is an agile 5-step employer brand checklist any employer can utilise to do a quick employer brand review. We’ll be sharing this over the next few days, so stay tuned...

It may be obvious to say that employer branding plays an important role in any recruitment strategy, but it’s fast becoming the most critical asset in an employer's retention strategy too.

In the age of the great resignation, and with niche employers across highly specialist fields struggling to shore up staff numbers against difficult hiring headwinds, it’s risky business to offer a staff attrition silver bullet cure - but employer brand strategies do work effectively to mitigate turnover.

Most employers have, rightly so, found there is no one-size-fits-all approach to holding onto employees. Leaving a job, for any reason, is still a highly personal decision. But employer branding is personal. It's what I like to call a mast - it’s a tangible asset your team ties their personal “flag” to.

That’s because employer branding is more than savvy employer marketing or a well-remunerated referral scheme (however those things do help!). A well-crafted, well-communicated employer brand anchors and binds your company's purpose and your people together, providing guidance and leadership amid one of the toughest recruitment environments in a generation.

It also provides your staff with both career and behavioural direction. It helps focus employees’ time and effort into meaningful graft and gives them context to their work.

In essence, an employer brand provides meaning to your existing teams’ hard work. That is worth investing in. I think it’s absolutely essential that modern employers invest in employer branding curation on a continually evolving basis.

Here is why.

The employer brand promise.

I never tire of asking clients how they feel their employer branding strategy is working out, because good employers know employer brand messaging has to be constantly added to, augmented and allowed to evolve as workforces change, and as the working environment changes.

New marketing innovations and the dominance of social media, for example, have expanded the ways employers can get their brand seen - these platforms are providing a rich vein of creative outlet for many employers and I’m proud to be a part of it.

But let's pull it back a moment and focus on retention as a key strategic focus. How does the basic definition of employer branding affect retention of people? Well, as the CIPD puts it:

● Employer branding is “a set of attributes and qualities, often intangible, that makes an organisation distinctive, promises a particular kind of employment experience, and appeals to those people who will thrive and perform best in its culture”.

My abiding piece of advice for any employer building a retention strategy is never to forget the basics of employer branding.

Never forget the mast - the employment experience you offer - that your teams tie their flags to.

Does that experience end the second your staff sign a contract? Clearly not. Employer branding is something your staff need to feel part of, and need to witness, to feel an attachment to.

For any doubtful employers reading this who forget this cardinal rule of good employment practice, consider the costs of poor employer branding.

The cost of poor employer branding. Even though most employers in this day and age understand the value of a well-crafted employer brand, it’s still worthwhile highlighting the cost of a poorly defined one:

● “Employers who fail to invest in their reputation could be paying up to an additional $4,723 per employee hired” - LinkedIn

● “86% of job seekers say they would not consider working for a company with bad social standing” - Forbes.

● “Companies with a bad reputation or simply who are not attractive are expected to spend at least 10% more per hire” - Subsign.co.

When employees exiting a company complain about a culture clash, toxic work environments, or poor management go back again to the CIPD definition of employer branding. Consider the “employment experience” your current team work within.

• Does it meet their expectations?
• Are they happy?
• Are they fulfilled?
• Are they growing?
• Are they appreciated?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions on a staff member-by-staff member basis, you don’t have the data to improve not only their lot at work but your entire cultural direction and internal employee management strategy.

The secret power of employer branding within referral networks.

● “Potential applicants trust employees three times more than the company itself to provide candid insights into what it’s truly like to work there” - Reputation.com.

This quote perfectly encapsulates why I think well-curated employer branding is so important to current staff management and retention strategy building.

I could list off a thousand ways to improve the nuts and bolts of employer brand building (and in another blog, I’ll discuss this at length!), but beyond the technical management, brand storytelling, and marketing panache needed, the success of your employer brand hinges on the ability of your staff to advocate for it in your referral networks!

Your employees are your first, and most trusted vector of employer brand communication - they need to embody your employer brand in word and deed and after all, people want to work for companies who share their goals, their passions, their purpose and their mission. This cultural connection between staff and potential new staff is hiring magnetism. It’s also staff retention fuel.

Evolve is a talent lifecycle specialist consultancy within the MedTech, Pharmaceutical, Life Sciences and Healthcare industries.

To read more about our employer branding service, and how it can help your company develop a market-leading employer value proposition to attract, hire and retain the best talent for your business, visit our employer branding page.

With an increasing number of Graduates looking to secure positions within the medical sales sector; our Commercial Director, Colin Prentice, speaks with our Graduate Recruitment Manager, Lauren Ward about the Evolve Graduate Programme. 

Our programme offers Graduates the chance to develop their skills and competencies to assist them in securing a career in the medical sales sector.

We offer tailored recruitment solutions for organisations looking to attract, hire and retain graduate talent in the competitive medical sales sector.

Find out more in the video below!..