Elise Gay, Recruiter with the Life Sciences team at ThinkingAhead, talks about having the space to "fail it forward" to win at the end, shares one of her favorite success stories, and explains what drives her in her work.

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I came to ThinkingAhead from a business to business sales as well as an internal recruitment background.

I was feeling very unsatisfied and my personal career path and truly felt ready to take an educated risk on my own skill set.

And my own career path in order to achieve greater financial earnings, greater professional satisfaction, and greater personal happiness.

A career in search is really well suited for you.

If you consider yourself to be a self motivated and autonomous person, if you are ready to put that trust in yourself and your own skill set, if you're hardworking, And if you have great emotional intelligence, you're able to tap in to and fulfill the needs of others while being an excellent listener, working fully remotely and autonomously was extremely important to me, but I also relish and I'm so grateful for the transparent and supportive team that we do have here at thinking ahead, who enables me and empowers me to To be my most successful self every day, we do have colleagues and associates who work fully remote all over the country and all over the world and enable us to build an internal team and camaraderie here at thinking ahead, as well as to service clients all over the country and all over the world.

Thinking Ahead provides top notch training, top notch peer group discussions, fun, excellent resources in terms of equipment and software that enable us to connect and stay motivated and communicative with our clients and candidates.

I truly believe that we have a team that wants to see every colleague succeed, and this team truly gives me the ability to fail it forward every day.

This is an industry and a career where you have to fail a lot in order to win, and thinking ahead really allows me to fail it forward, supports me in doing so, and enables me to win at the end.

While we are a boutique recruitment firm and we service clients in many different niche areas, the area that I specialize in is life sciences and particularly pharmaceuticals.

In the pharmaceutical industry, the only thing that is constant is change.

Our clients and candidates are constantly experiencing changing landscapes in their own career path due to just the simple nature of the pharmaceutical industry and to the life cycle of drugs.

In the same way that I am inspired to take an educated risk on myself, I'm really able to bring that full circle in educating and inspiring my candidates to take those calculated risks and make changes in their own personal career paths that are ultimately going to lead them to a more rewarding and well balanced place.

Within the pharmaceutical industry, even the most respected, tenured, and well educated candidates can find themselves unemployed or needing to make a career transition quickly.

And one of my favorite success stories from the recent past is a candidate that I was working with.

She was an employee of a well known pharmaceutical company, a loyal employee, and had been there almost a decade.

However, she was impacted.

By a layoff, which affected multiple people in her department.

This news was announced right before the holiday season.

And this candidate also happened to be a single mother.

I was working on the other end with a small but growing client, a pharmaceutical company who was expanding their team due to growth.

And it just so happened that this candidate skill set was right in line with what the client was looking for.

And they had a an open in her geography.

So this particular candidate was able to enter an interview process and get to a final offer.

In about three to four weeks, so right before the end of the year.

So this person who was a single mother was able to provide a holiday season for her family was able to sleep at night knowing that she was going to be able to provide for her family.

And when I spoke to my client, once they had her on board, Several weeks later, they just raved about this particular candidate.

What a strong skill set she brought to their team, but also what a perfect cultural match she was for the team.

So that is what makes me get up and do this every day.

That's what helps me to go to bed with a smile every night is knowing those impacts that we can have on both our clients and our candidates being able to help people and help them achieve greater professional and personal happiness is really what makes search worth it for me.