Case study: Helping a cell & gene therapy start-up 10x their headcount

The situation
During a candidate check-in, one of our previous candidates informed us he’d joined an upcoming clinical stage cell and gene therapy company that had developed new labs.
They were a small team of 5 people and needed to bulk hire GMP technician and production scientist for a bulk project.
As a small team in a highly competitive industry, they struggled with the resources and reach to attract top candidates with the required skillsets.
Based on our previous relationship with the senior vice president, we arranged a site visit to discuss how Hobson Prior could help them increase their headcount.
Hobson Prior solution
At the initial meeting, we identified the – Basically, found out as much as we could about the company and the project they were working on, so we could best represent them to the talent in the industry. As well as agree a budget and timescale – from this we tailored a recruitment package to suit them.
We utilised our international candidate pools of pre-screened candidates with the required skillsets. Our technical operations recruitment team spoke to these candidates to ensure they were appropriately skilled, available and to ensure they were engaged and excited by the opportunity to join the project. We were quickly able to source a list of 20 candidates that would be suitable for the role.
As resources and time were key areas of concern for the company, we suggested using our digital interview system, HireVue, to give them more control over the initial stages of interview review.
Each of the 20 submitted candidates completed a video interview that could be quickly and simply reviewed by the company to ensure we maximised their time. From these 20, 10 were taken into a final face-to -face interview.
The result
Within 6 weeks, we had sourced, screened and placed 8 candidates. 9 out of the 10 final interviews were offered jobs and we have been working with this cell and gene therapy company since.
Their team has grown from 5 members to over 50, with Hobson Prior responsible for the pre-screen checks, gathering references and on-boarding for half of these new hires.
In fact, the last 4 placements made by Hobson Prior were for a team reporting into one of the original 8 we helped place.
We are proud to be a trusted part in this innovative company’s rapid growth as the continue to research ground-breaking developments in the life sciences industry.