We are pleased to announce, Nicola Walsh, Senior Team Lead, Sigmar Recruitment, will be speaking at our “Meet Our Partners & Board” webinar on 15th February 2022 at 11am-12:00pm GMT
Please tell us a little about yourself and your role as Senior Team Lead in Sigmar Recruitment?
I work as a Senior Team Lead in Sigmar Galway Offices. I have been working in Recruitment for over 12 years. Having spent over 8 years working internally within the Medtech sector as a Senior Talent Specialist, I feel I bring a unique blend of experience from both internal and agency recruitment. My clients include multinationals and SMEs across a wide range of industries. I especially really enjoy working with startups.
What is a typical working day like for you?
This is what I love about the Recruitment world, there is no such thing as typical day! With my current role each day involves a mix of Client and Candidate Management. Working with my team on achieving their goals. Market insights for our clients. Cross functional collaboration with my colleagues in Sigmar.
How important is it for Sigmar Recruitment to support female entrepreneurs working in digital health and life science?
Diversity is still an issue in digital health and life science – we need role models, both for consumers and for attraction of new people into digital health and life science careers.
All data shows that a more gender diverse industry makes it more robust and profitable.
What advice would you give female entrepreneurs recruiting in 2022?
• Make sure you are aware of the local market (Competitor analysis)
• Work on your employer value proposition – what is it that makes your company attractive to your target audience of hires? Why should someone trade in the career they have somewhere else to join you?
• Treat all your potential candidates like your nearest and dearest loved ones – especially those that you don’t hire – they will become advocates for your business, recommending friends and colleagues and potentially applying again in the future
• Partner with a reputable recruitment partner early on in the process as you can leverage off their expertise/knowledge which can help you scale faster
• Recruitment partners can help you make sure you are putting your best foot forward in terms of branding/ building culture and reputation within the market
• Make sure to have a detailed plan of your key hires as well as deadlines on when you want to have them in place (otherwise you will keep putting it off and risk burnout of your team)
Should a start-up hire early? If so, why?
People have limited capacity for scalability (Can’t clone people yet!) so, it is important that entrepreneurs hire in a 2nd in command early in the process.This person should preferably have a different skillset to complement the founder.
Important to establish culture on the right track at the beginning – if you get this wrong it can be a very expensive mistake early on and hard to come back from.
Help you to sustain the energy you had at the outset of the start-up, bring in complementary skills to yours (e.g., commercial skills, accountancy, skills to bring product to market, logistics, digital, etc)
What steps can be put in place to aim to hire the right people?
• Work on employer value proposition
• Build a network of people in the sector – who will be your advocates or people who will refer to you?
• Get PR
How can a start-up compete with larger organisations, when it comes to attracting top talent into their organisation?
Pre-Covid, smaller businesses struggled to attract certain talent as they found it hard to compete with larger organizations who offered extensive benefits (bells and whistles – free food, bean bags, ping pong tables etc)
Now that candidates are working from home and can no longer avail of these benefits, they are instead looking at the job and this is what gives smaller organizations the advantage.
Candidates are now driven by how interesting a project is, what impact they can have on the business as a whole (working end-to end rather than being siloed into one particular area – all hands-on deck vs pigeon-holed into one area with no real impact), opportunity for upskilling/reskilling as well as potential for career progression – all of these benefits/ selling points are where start-ups tend to win the war on talent.
Also potential for equity, or some kind of accelerated bonus linked to growth (depending on what stage the company is in)
What are your thoughts on the Grit International Female Accelerator and why did Sigmar Recruitment sponsor and become a partner?
Great initiative for empowering women at Senior Levels (Severely under-represented)
Sigmar have very close ties to businesses in Life Science and Med-dev space both nationally and internationally.
As part of our partner masterclass, what topic will Sigmar Recruitment be delivering?
We will be leading out a masterclass on leadership, strategies to grow your team and hire the right people!
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