Stephanie is joined by Jessica Gurley, a superstar Exec Recruiter from ThinkingAhead’s Life Sciences division, who dives into using technology to actually further humanize your professional interactions, the hugely important act of repetition, and just in time for Halloween, why so many clients these days are getting ghosted. Ooooo, scary.

Discover what sets ThinkingAhead apart, hear stories from recruiters, and browse opportunities by clicking here.

Welcome to The Talent Trade. I am your host,

Stephanie Maas, partner with ThinkingAhead Executive Search.

Today I am super excited to have one of ThinkingAhead's greats

from the life sciences practice with us, Jessica Gurley, welcome

Jessica.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Yay. So Jessica recruits in our life sciences

practice a life changing niche. Jessica, what I'd love to do is

turn it over to you, do a little bit more of an introduction of

yourself and your niche, and then we'll talk about how you as

a recruiter in that space stand out from the crowd?

Great. So a quick definition of Life

Sciences is anything from pharmaceutical companies, device

companies, biotech diagnostics, so anything that you would

consume from a health perspective is considered Life

Sciences. Actually, even veterinary stuff is considered

Life Sciences. My specific niches are more what we would

refer to as the commercial side of the business. So that would

be sales. So the sales reps that go into the office, marketing

the people behind the scenes, creating the specific stories,

access, health economics, which helps and supports access, being

able to approach insurance companies the government to make

cases on why access should be allowed for this. They do

economic models and spreadsheets and then additionally

reimbursement. So after you get a prescription or something

given to you by your doctor, the rebates, the rewards, the

coding, all of those things, reimbursement is something else

that I recruit in.

Sounds super complicated, but good. Okay, so

you have been in this niche. You rule the roost. Tell us, what do

you do different than other recruiters in your space, other

recruiters, period. How do you stand out from the crowd?

One of the first things I do, no matter what the

situation is, I don't come out at a potential client or a

candidate pitching something at them, whether it be my services

or the job that I'm currently working on. I work and

intentionally position myself as wanting to get to know my

candidate. I always do a little pre ramble or preface of I don't

know what other recruiters you've worked with, but I'm not

going to come out here and pitch at you. That's not my style. I

would rather take a few minutes to learn about you, especially

from the candidate side, with the client side, I might

approach it a little bit differently. We'll say, Hey,

thank you so much for taking this call. What would you like

to discuss first? Would you like to discuss your needs or your

organization or things that I should know about you? Or would

you like to talk of what thinking ahead can do? I always

put the ball in their court and try to set up a conversation

about them first, or what makes sense for them to talk about and

get out first. I just think it disarms them, and it really

makes me seem because I am more invested in them as either a

person or an organization, versus my own agenda and what

I'm trying to accomplish. One of the other things that I do, that

I hear as the biggest complaint, and that I'm so thankful that

thinking ahead trains on in our culture is follow through. I

actually was talking to a COO yesterday, and she was telling

me about some of her experiences, or some of her, you

know, high level colleagues experiences on how

unprofessional it is to coast candidates. And she would say,

even at C suite level recruiters that are working with CEOs coo

CFOs, they're getting ghosted even after like two interviews,

and not hearing back from the recruiter on their status of

their the progress and the interview process. And she was

saying it is so bad out there. It's wild that recruiters would

even consider that being something ethical to do or

something that's okay to do. It's interesting to hear that,

because that would never have been something that I thought

was okay. I'm happy that thinking ahead has trained and

is really adamant about the way that we conduct ourselves in the

marketplace. And you know, the truth of it is we are paid to

deliver good news and we are paid to deliver bad news. That's

our job is to coach people through the ups and the downs.

Think about any job that you've had. It can be scary. It can be

intimidating, depending on where you are in your life or where

you are in your career. Our job is to help support them. And if

you ghost them, that only looks bad on you, and that leaves them

kind of feeling like, Well, did I do something? You know, it's

really about supporting that person through the process from

the very beginning to either an offer acceptance or through the

middle, where it's like, hey, they are going to move forward

with another candidate, and these are the reasons why. So

ghosting is something that I hear very, very, very frequently

as the number one issue that people have with recruiters. So

follow through. Are important. Consistency, I would say, is the

other piece of how I work and stand out. And the longer I've

been doing this, the more I hear this feedback. You know,

repetition really works. The way that thinking ahead sets up

culture with the training, the way that we operate in the

marketplace and our business model is repetition. I did some

Googling and, you know, just backed up some of the things

that we were taught that the brain needs five to seven times

before it can transition from a short term to a long term

memory. So it's really important that when you're first starting

to reach out to somebody, that you're doing it consistently,

and you're doing it in a pattern that will help them remember

you? I've had people, after a year of me calling on them and

just doing this pattern, say you've been so persistent, you

haven't given up. Your name is recognizable to me now, and I'm

reaching out to you to talk about this specific thing. The

other thing once you have that initial conversation is keeping

in touch with them quarterly at a minimum, but typically it is

best to come to an agreement on what that should look like. And

I always make sure that I ask that, is it okay that we stay in

touch every three months, or does it need to be more

frequent? Does it need to be less frequent and getting that

buy in on what the consistency would look like, and then again,

following through and doing it, and even if it's just as simple

as a message of, we haven't talked in three months like we

talked about, I am holding up my part of the bargain. I'm giving

you a call being intentional. And as I continue to do this

process again, received so much positive feedback about how

effective this is. I was also talking with another C suite

individual, and she was telling me her product just got FDA

approval, which means it can go from a clinical stage into the

FDA to then be able to be released to the public. And she

said that she was so agitated that recruiters came out of the

woodwork to reach out to her about something very

transactional. And she was like, why would I even consider a

relationship with them when they weren't previously consistent?

She's like, you call me, you know, very consistently. But she

was like, you're one of the only recruiters that I actually pick

up, because you've been consistent through the downs.

And she just, I mean, flat out, said, annoys me when random

recruiters I've talked to once come out of the woodwork when

they see an announcement about something that's just not a good

way to build ongoing relationships and trust,

especially with people in this industry that get bombarded with

recruiters. And Life Sciences is a very saturated market with

recruiters.

It sounds like one of your cornerstones for standing

apart from the crowd is how you treat people. It's about them,

not about you. You do follow through. You do what you say

you're going to do. There's consistency. Sounds like you

bring a lot of empathy to your practice, and just have made a

practice of treating people well.

Oh, thank you. That's very sweet. I mean, I try

to treat people like people. I mean, that's why I got into this

business, was because I wanted to feel very emotionally

connected to the thing that I was doing every day. And like I

took one of those quizzes about what you should do with your

life at like, 38 and nurturing and hospitality and care came up

at the very top of my skill set. So one of the reasons that

attracted me to recruiting was the long, ongoing relationships

and getting to the point where you're talking about not only

business related things, but very personal things. Like,

people know how old my children are. They know what grade

they're going into. You know, it's building these more in

depth things than just, hey, this drug is launching. Hey,

you're expanding. How can I work with you to put money in my

pocket? Yeah, I really love that part of the business, and I say

that to people when I'm getting to know them as I love to hear

people's stories. What made you get into this? What made you

pick the transitions that you did? So it's always specifically

interesting to hear one of those more niche things and like, how

did you fall into that? Or what interests you about it? Well,

tell me about what made you want to do this and starting the

conversation out that way. So yeah, I mean, I would would say,

I do pride myself on being a very relational person and

finding a lot of joy in that day in and day out.

And that definitely makes you stand out. Now, what I

think is super fascinating about you is you have this high human

touch, Relational Approach, and yet you become one of the firm's

kind of gurus, innovators of this technological approach to

doing what you do.

I really lean into technology. You know, to

learn things. I listen to audiobooks, I listen to

podcasts, I watch a lot of documentaries. That's my

learning style, is audio and visual. I have a harder time.

I'm a slightly dyslexic, and I have a harder time reading and

comprehending information that way. So I lean in technology in

those ways, because I see the better. Fits of it. So some of

the things that help me, and I feel like can bring a more

differentiating fact, where other recruiters don't do it,

but then it can either cut down on time, or it can help

personalize you. So technology can be your friend if you use it

effectively. Too much of anything is bad, but chatgpt

helps me when I need it to just be smoother and more concise

with my messaging, especially the end of the day, when my

brain is really tired and I'm trying to write a message and

it's just these ongoing I have a really hard time with run on

sentences. That's always been an issue of mine since I was a

small child, I would get dinged constantly for that. And so I

will put ideas down in my crazy long run on sentences and put

them in a chat GPT when I just don't have any more brain power.

And I usually say, make it smoother, more concise and more

professional, and it will help me funnel my thoughts into a way

that are just more readable. Secondly, I really struggled

with this job being very phone based, because I had always done

outside sales, and I always attribute it my sales success,

true or not. Maybe it's my own insecurities, but from the fact

that people could see me and inner interact with me, see my

energy, see my hand motions, just see my smile and just my

energy of who I am. So a phone job, at some level, really

intimidated me, because I'm like, they're not getting to

know me. They're not seeing me. They're not seeing the

enthusiasm that I'm bringing. They're not seeing my the

nuances of how I interact with someone. So I use LinkedIn as a

way to not only discuss personal things, where I'll post about my

postpartum depression or my stepdaughter in Alabama, or my

son or my other, you know, my family or whatever. But I also

use it as professional engagement, because it gives me

a more holistic image, I guess, in the marketplace is the best

way to put it or brand, where I just don't go on and talk about,

hey, I have this job listing. Hey, I have this job listing.

Hey, I have this job listing. You know, I think with

technology, it's it can be a two edged sword, where you do feel

more distance because it's not as personal, but you can use

that tools, those tools, to make yourself a more holistic person,

to somebody. The other thing that I do to cut down on time is

I do use a bookings link, but I do it, I feel like in an

appropriate manner where it still is very personalized. I

don't just say book here. It's like I might have an engagement

through LinkedIn or through a phone call, and I'll say, Hey,

I'm gonna send you an email, the fastest way for both of us to do

this, instead of going back and forth 100 times or missing it is

I'm going to send you an email, click the red link and pick a

time for us to connect like I don't do it as just shoving it

out into the marketplace and being super impersonal about it.

I use it as a personal way to help streamline interactions.

And I don't do it all the time. It really depends on the

scenario, and I feel like I use it to my advantage when I think

it's necessary, and then sometimes I don't when I feel

like it makes it more impersonal. It just is a kind of

a toss up and a gut reaction. The last thing that I do, that I

have found to be very effective, is using video marketing

campaigns to engage with potential candidates. And the

reason that I really leaned into this was because it made sense

to me again. I learned through video content. I learned through

documentaries, through little short snippets on Instagram or

reels or whatever, to learn about a specific topic in a very

short amount of time to then retain it. And when the idea

came up, I was like, Oh, I instantly connect to this, which

probably has fed into my success, because I believe in

how it can work and impact someone. So one of the things

that I do is, when I do have a search, I sit and put together a

minute to a minute and a half overview of what the position

is, why it's an exciting company, the benefits of the

company or the job, and then just some list out items of

qualifications and who the company is looking For, and if

you feel like you're the right fit, feel free to reach out to

me or pass it on to somebody else. And the responses that

I've gotten from candidates has been so overwhelmingly positive,

where they say things like, I wouldn't have reached out to

you. It made it more intriguing. It made me feel more comfortable

calling you. It excited me about the opportunity, and that

engagement and more initial buy in makes it having a more easier

conversation on the back end, about getting to know them, and

then additionally talking about because they have, like, a

little preview of what what it is that they're engaging with.

Additionally, I've taken that concept and talked to hiring

manager. About it, and they really understand it, and it's

so different than any of the other recruiters that they have

engaged with where they're like, Oh, that makes tons of sense,

because everyone kind of understands that we live in a

very add space. Now, with our culture, you have someone's

attention for a minute, a minute and a half, and then you use

them. So, you know, videos made up 82% of all internet traffic

in 2022 over 2.6 billion people around the world use YouTube

every month, and viewers retain 95% of messages when watching it

on video, versus 10% through text. And I've seen that tenfold

in my efforts this year with recruiting, it's just the way

that our society learns. So why not utilize it in a way to

again, personalize yourself and stand out where people know my

name, they know my voice, they know my face. I'm not just a

flat screen to them, I'm three dimensional. And then pull a lot

of energy behind what I'm talking about, and they can see

the enthusiasm that I have about the opportunity and transfer it

to them. Dude, that's awesome. I really feel like you bring this

ying and yang of being incredibly focused on the human,

the individual, and yet, at the same time, what we just heard

was a tremendous amount of relying on technology for

efficiencies and to get to folks you wouldn't otherwise get to,

to get to the human Yeah, so I was a sales rep. I did call on

these people, and I did have interactions with the people

that I recruit. And I understand how that train works together,

so I understand if the economic story doesn't work, then you can

have access. If you can have access, then you have a more

challenging marketing story. If you have a challenging marketing

story, the sales rep can't do their job. So because of my

experience in life sciences, with some of the positions I

had, it's really easy for me to pull through that narrative and

understand the nuances of those five buckets to be super

effective, not only in in focus, but in how everyone collaborates

together, and then at the end of the day, how those things help

reach patients, to help have a better quality of life, or even

save their life. So I think that previous experience before

becoming a recruiter in this space also makes me stand out,

because I can have very transparent conversations with

Hey, when I was a rep, I understood that access I

couldn't do my job without it, and I understand that you can't

make good access stories if you don't have the right economic

models. And if you don't have the right economic models, it's

because the clinical trials are missing something. So it is this

domino effect that I can very confidently speak to across

those five or six areas, and especially within marketing and

sales. Being a sales rep, it's given me a lot of confidence and

buy in and security and like the circle of trust, because I've

been those people, and that just immediately takes down walls

with the marketing people. The same thing, you know, I

understand what their work is. I understand their interactions

with sales people. I feel like that also helps me stand out and

give me an edge against other life science recruiters.

So folks, couple key takeaways here, treat your

humans like humans. Use technology to give you an edge

and get to those humans faster and recruiting in a niche that

you have a passion for, it is a difference maker, and it sounds

like you have definitely found your people, too.

Thank you.