Nate W. wrote:Dear DX,
The HR guru and the forum's behavioral therapist. I would think you work in HR by the language you use rather than medical affairs. Your comments provoke a few thoughts:
Let me temporarily leave with this question based on your experiences at a large multinational Pharma (s):
How often does a HR department overrule a hiring decision made by a director or VP manager (i.e. whereby the decision was made by himself or collectively among his group)? Unless there was a serious compliance issue; a criminal record or nepotism.
PS: Yes, we can assume that managers can by themselves make hiring decisions or invite networking candidates for an extemporize (i.e. nothing formal sent out by HR after reviewing applicants) group interview. This does happen at multinational companies like GSK, Alcon, or PPD. I have seen it happen and I got a job this way with a large CRO by stargetically networking with a VP of Research; no group or HR interview!
Hi Nate,
Answering your question, HR is not there to "overrule" any hiring decision by a hiring manager. They are there as a Partner to make recomomendations when needed. You gave good examples of hard no goes.
However those recommendations are taken as part of an overall assessment in decision making. It also depends on the level of recruitment job title wise. At low level positions consitent with the ones this audience would be targeting, the process would generally include an HR assessment, more and more in the big companies, personality tests are beging done to get more insights into a candidates works style - bench scientist or not how you are engaging with other people is really looked at to ensure no arrogants or disruptive people are brought in.
As i mentioned the people who can have EVEN MORE influence than HR in the interview process are the Team members be in within function or cross-function. I can tell you that if you'r interviewing for a Medical role and say one of your cross functional stake-holders, say a REgulatory Affairs person picks up a red-flag - you can be assured the Hiring Manager in Medical will have thier ears wide open! Hiring someone who is not a team fit, despite their technical godliness can be detrimential to the hiring manager's credibility.
And I've seen this, its not a pretty picture and the outcomes were not good for those hiring managers who didn't listen or act. Put it this way, they're no longer in those positions and company.
Now cross functional they can't over-rule the highing managers decision but if say someone in Reg or Clinical pick up something that's a red-flag, that's like a near de-factor override - the Hiring Manager will have thinking to do. And this is in fact generally the case. Hiring Managers recruit for a team - they want the team to work.
Now you did mention hirings done with out large HR involvement, but that does happen with more senior levels, it starts to happen at my level (Director level) and expecially at much higher levels because at that level well network, reputation, among many other things are contributing and NOT RELEVANT to the audience here.
As far as my language more linked to that of HR than Medical Affairs, well that's a complement. At my level of career or say part of career development is about learning how to work and communicate with many people to get business objectives accomplished. Yes my subject matter expertise is Medical (and Marketing) however as one grows in career, success is determined by how you're getting others to follow your lead, wth thier willingness to allocate their time and resources to you without you being their boss. That's what gets you to the next level, complementary to developed technical skills if not secondary - i can screw up say a small tactic that i'm only responsible for no one will really care too much, but screw up a project where I'm the project team lead due to not get getting others to align and react in a timely manner and with "their" resources...I'm dead in the water. So that's why I find that a complement. And certainly HR is playing a role in accessing how you work with people.
I don't know the split between who hires scientist from academia, i.e. small vs. big but I still say networking is not about bypassing a process, its about getting into a process...HR or no HR.
I guess in small companies for bench scientist maybe you don't need much team work (i don't know) but if team work is not a part of work then my question is then do those people advance? at some point if they want to grow they will have to lead a project team and get those who are not thier reports to work for them? Do they get that in a small company? What are thier growth prospects like? ..I don't know - I wonder if Dave can comment.
Best,
DX