Biotech HR: Be the Best Resource with Eva Quinn, Senior HR Business Partner at Higher EQ

We have such a treat for you. We just finished our interview with Eva and it was so much fun. She is so passionate about what she does and helping build companies.

Eva is one of the most bubbly, just joyous people. And if you want to hear someone who describes themselves as a Mary Poppins of hr, this is your episode.

Absolutely. So she is the senior human resources business partner at Higher EQ and she specializes in all things human resources, and she does a little bit of recruiting. And we are just so pleased that she agreed to be on the show. We've worked with her for years across multiple different clients, so we can attest to how good she is at her job.

Welcome to Building Biotechs by Recredomics Consulting. We've helped over 90 biotech, life sciences and venture capital firms strategize and hire thousands of employees to scale companies that impact human health. We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground up. I'm Karina Klingman, founder and principal at Recredomics Consulting.

Enjoy the show. Thank you so much for being here, Eva. We're so excited to chat with you.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Yeah.

So we always like to start with the same question, which is, what did you want to be when you were 7? What are you now? And how did you get there?

For my whole childhood, I always wanted to be a veterinarian, and I did head off to college as a pre vet. I'm pre med in Northern Minnesota, and I just had a really good mentor in college who said, you know, get some on the ground experience. And when I got into the veterinary world, I really loved it. But I also saw when you're running a department of one, the business is much more or as important as the medicine. And so I just love that program that I was in with that same mentor. It was in the humanities department of our college. And so I switched to do a bachelor of arts with a focus on humanities. A little bit of hr, not directly, and then accounting and finance so that I could get out and get into veterinary practice management. Still doing what I love, but a bit adjacent and without a lot of the cost and the emotional weight that a lot of veterinarians have.

I did not know we had that in common. I was also pre vet and I changed for many of the same reasons. Yeah, the emotional weight was pretty staggering.

And I think that was one of the things. When I first met you, I remember hearing you talking about horses sitting behind me at one of Our clients. And I just turned out and was like, let's talk about quarter horses. Because I got into horses as well for a bit. And I think that was our first connection was over animals before business.

Often it is. I connect with a lot of people about horses. It's kind of weird.

No, it's great. It's so specific here, too. In New England. You know, I think in Minnesota, we have so much land and a lot of people have tons of pets or tons of animals. And out here, if you have horses, like, you gotta find land, like, all the different things that come with it.

Absolutely.

I love that you decided that the emotional labor was going to be the hard part. And then you went into hr, which is like the most laborious job you can have when it comes to dealing with people.

That's a good point, because I think one of the things I love about both areas is just helping people. Like, I want to be the best resource. So when I worked in veterinary practice management, I got promoted very quickly to always be training people on communication styles to do a lot of the hiring and screening the employees that we would have that were coming into each of the hospitals that I worked at. Because I think that at the end of the day, the people pay the bills, they bring their pets in for rechecks. You have to take that bandage off in so many hours from now. Like, that communication piece of, you can love working with animals and you can love pipetting. Like, it was very easy for me to switch from business management into biotech and to do the HR here, because there's a lot of similar communication things that need to happen for us to cure genetic diseases or cancer or whatever the different therapies might be.

How did you make that switch? What was like the pivotal moment where you jumped over into biotech?

Part of it was soul searching and part of it was burnout. You know, I think that the emotional load in moving to Boston, there's just a very different level of care and expectation that comes from the veterinary staff. There wasn't as hard of a line of this as a pet. Like, it's a fur baby, it's a child. So part of it was burnout. And then I really started looking at my own resume and I did this exercise, which I now do as a living. I professionally help people career transition all the time. Because I'm like, look at your resume and how you describe yourself. For me, it was, I love being in leadership. I love helping others. I love being a resource. And it just showed me as I was looking At Job Descriptions online, I was matching keywords from my resume to keywords and job descriptions and how I sparked my own joy. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I want to do professionally. And also having the medical background and working in veterinary, like, I was the supervisor for the veterinary oncology department for three years. Getting into biotech was seamless as far as loving working with the tech and the medicine. And I do have a few favorites right now. Like when a client reaches out and they're like, oh, we work in gene therapy or XYZ tech. I'm like, yes. Like, I don't even have room to talk to you right now, now. But we're going to meet and I'm going to work with you because when you're passionate about it, it's not extra work. And so that's where I think I really have shine in hr. And that's where I think clients gravitate to my style. And it's something that I talk about too when I coach about how to interview or putting barriers up around your culture and mission for my clients. Like, I'm not everyone's type. They should be repulsed by me. If they don't want to work with my style, I don't want to work with them. That's a mutual fit. And same thing with job descriptions. If you're writing a job description for certain types of people to come in the door, it shouldn't just be so generic. It should have some hard lines because those hard lines will attract the right type of people. That will be a culture addition. And it also reject the type of people who don't want work from home or that do want certain perks. You know, I just get so passionate about the specific areas of hr and then I find companies that want to embrace this and deal with it.

Yeah, I love that. That really resonates when we're talking with candidates about their resumes and their LinkedIn profiles. I do a lot of coaching around LinkedIn profiles. And your LinkedIn profile is your advertisement, right? Your marketing yourself. And good marketing attracts the right people and repulses the wrong people. And so that's the same thing with job descriptions and with LinkedIn profiles. You're all looking for the match. What do you enjoy most about working in human resources these days?

So I kind of love a little bit of all of it. It's really ridiculous, but my mantra is be the best resource. You know, I want to help people. I want to help them find the best answer, even if that answer is not from me, because it shouldn't be. I don't want to be great at all the things. I want to be like awesome at the things I love. And I want to pass them on to somebody else who's as passionate about I am about 401k or, you know, what other adjacent areas. I think that one of the areas that I've really started shining in is I want to write really strong policies that someone might, a year or two from now get 12 to 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave at a client that they don't even know I worked there because it's not on my LinkedIn or it's not advertised that I was a part of it. But they're getting an amazing benefit because of something that I set in stone a year or two before that happened. So it's one of the things I really love. I don't need any direct tie to some of these benefits or policies that people are taking advantage of, but that people are just being treated better regardless of if I'm there or not. You know, like we should be lifting up society as a whole. And I can do that very passively and aggressively when I'm hiring. But I think that's where we can really make a difference as recruiters. We make a difference. We're changing someone's life by hiring somebody, bringing them into a culture that they love, and suddenly give some flexibility to be a parent or get to that veterinary appointment or whatever things they might have in their life. And then to do great tech. I have research associates who can't wait to work a Saturday and I'm like, awesome, here you go. Come into this place. You know, like, it's so rewarding to see them thrive.

I'm really interested with all those policies you mentioned, which, by the way, I love all of that and those are life changing. And I love the idea that you put something into place and it affects someone down the line that you never know about, but you did, you changed their life, you made it better. I love that in terms of how benefits and benefit packages and policies have changed over like, let's say the last five years. Have you seen a major shift in how employers and companies are starting to think about these long term policies or what they're doing benefit wise, that maybe five years ago you would have been like, oh, I have no idea why we'd offer that.

Sure. I think not as much as I wish. I wish it was more drastic. One of my perks of working in biotech is we have so much money to take great care of the employees. And it's so competitive. To get great talent, you have to cover almost 100% of the premiums. A fully funded HRA, a fully funded deductible. Like all of these things that have been in place when I started hire EQ about seven, eight years ago, I'd say that it's been close to 90 to 100% benefits coverage that whole time. But during the pandemic, one of the things that I love, my silver lining through the whole pandemic is we are trusting each other so much more, especially for the bench scientists to be able to do data analysis from home because they normally have a two, three hour commute or they had an appointment that day and now they can just go do their work. Like my silver lining was still having culture, like through a screen, they were able to do that for three or four years and then to maintain it. For the companies that are able to, to really have work, life balance has been a huge benefit. I can't think of any hard line benefits like leaves PTO holidays that have really changed since the pandemic, but zoom and like a lot of these other culture aspects. You know, like normally we do a pumpkin carving just in the office and only people who were on site that day would get to do it. Well, I sure as heck send pumpkins out to California and Iowa and wherever the heck we had employees during the pandemic. You know, like we created culture and we created budget because that was one of the other things. Like if our spending was set for this amount, we suddenly had to have flexibility to really have people be a part of it.

I love that idea of the pumpkin carving. I might steal that for our company. That's really fun.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of easy for some people. I did just have to send them like a $20 voucher to trader Joe's or whatever, just so, you know, like you can't find pumpkins and ship them everywhere. But it was fun.

Well, picking your pumpkin's kind of a personal thing too. Maybe you really care about the shape of the pumpkin. So.

Yeah, well. And we did like desk decorating. That's an easy one. You could send people like a little kit so that they remotely. Everyone gets the same base supplies, so it's not just the people on site who are getting all the reward of being with the company. I think for me a big one was just ableism. There's people of all different abilities. And for us to say DEI and belonging and then exclude people who Might need a special type of keyboard or a setup at home or just a comfort or a bathroom right next to them. Like there are so many different hidden things that I think the pandemic allowed us to recognize as far as mental health and to start accepting that we need to bring into the workplace, not just have a policy for accommodation or whatever thing. I think a lot of companies started walking the walk to have that flexibility.

That was going to be. My next question is around the mental health resources. That was one of the big things that I noticed, benefits wise, that's come out of the pandemic. That realization that people are whole people and sometimes you can't do your best work if something is amiss. And the policies and the things that we put into place for mental health, has that been something that you have also noticed in your clients?

Definitely. And I think the flexibility has been a big one to allow people to get to those appointments and then also keeping that in mind when they're adding benefits. Like if a copay is changing at a benefits renewal and the copay is Suddenly going up $60 from $20, I have had companies that will say, no, we're actually going to spend an extra couple thousand on our renewal because we want to keep this co pay low for our employees. And I think that's very respectful to do because they could easily pass that cost along. And I think pre pandemic they would have. You don't know if people are using it or not, so you just kind of pass on it. But now people are like, we don't know if they're using it or not. We want to make sure they can.

So one of the benefits you mentioned about working in HR in biotech was that the budgets are typically pretty sizable. There's usually a good amount of funding that we can parlay into different employee benefits. What are the HR challenges that you face that are unique to the biotech and life science industry?

I mean, there's so many. And I think that every industry, in a way, we all have the same problems because we're all humans dealing with other humans. I think one that's very specific to biotech is in hiring and also in some of the personalities. If I am working with three different clients and I'm hiring a research associate for each of those clients, I really need to know the technology enough to phone screen and be like, yes, this person's got a great depth of knowledge in this very, very super specific niche. Keeping in mind that in Boston, of the major five or six venture capital companies they might spend five or ten baby biotechs a month. So that's 40 new companies doing 40 new very specific techniques. So I think that just being able to screen candidates and employees for depth of knowledge and then keeping them really satisfied and then curating that culture to differentiate and be competitive to that one across the street, because Boston just has so much opportunity. So I think that we have both really great clients and we have really great candidates and we have so much of both of those things. But then also how do we differentiate? This one's really different and this candidate is the perfect match for that person.

Yeah.

So following on with that and how do you structure interviews or help people to structure interviews so that you are making sure you're getting the right people for the right companies?

So that's where I was getting feisty about coming in to do a podcast, because I am fired up with companies taking far too long not having coordinated processes. I think the time in the process has just gotten ridiculous to where if an average candidate is on the market for 10 days, that means if they're looking on Monday, by the following Wednesday they will likely have an offer in hand. So for a lot of these companies, unless you're really big and you've got a very specific culture or tech or mission or a reason that people are going to hang on for a four to five week interview process, I think we got to get the processes under wrap. The first thing I do with all my clients is I just show them a template. Here's what the process can look like. How do we need to do this? Because I want to move as quickly as possible. I think one thing that HR needs to do a better job of is owning the process and then training other people. The way that I work as a consultant, I might come in, help a client with just a very specific project, and then the way that my relationship ends with them is either I get replaced with a full time person, which is ideal because that means I've gotten them to a 30, 40 person headcount and they're awesome and they're going off to college and like graduating onto their next step and I've helped build some baseline processes for that next person to build off of, or I just come in and do a very specific hiring project or performance review or coaching or whatever the 15 different options might be, I think if they can have a really strong interview process from start to finish, where HR comes in and says, okay, here's how we're going to do it, this is the gold standard. Let's make sure that how you guys want to do it aligns with this let's have an interview philosophy. Let's be prepared, let's be well spoken. Let's have a company pitch that we all kind of agree to the same two sentences of what is our technology and what is our culture here again, under that guise of attracting the right people and repelling the people that we don't want to be a part of this culture. And then I think if they, if the HR person can instill enough of that into the hiring managers when we, I call it Mary Poppins, I bippity boppity boop out of the situation. I want those hiring managers to retain that best practice and have it be built around what their actual needs are.

I love that image of you coming in like Mary Poppins and then being like, hi.

Well, because a lot of times by the time they reach out to me, they needed HR six months ago or whatever their pain point might be that they finally reached out. It's because they did the best they could for as long as they can. And now they're like, okay, I need outside expertise. Because that's the thing about biotech startup is it's a lot of generalists or it's a first time CEO who just got out of a 13 year PhD and has been in 20 years of academia and now they've got $6 million. They need to hire quickly, they need to know the pace of biotech, they need to make some great decisions, set up processes. And I'm like, here, template, template, customize. Let's go bring in your culture. Kind of building up being a thought partner with them.

So I have two follow up questions for that. But I just wanted to say one of the reasons we love working with you is that you are so strict on the process.

Because that's true.

I mean it's so nice because we sometimes, to your point, will come into a company and there is no HR support and we have to put those processes into place. It's not easy. So we have a lot of respect for how you do that. I'll just say, and when we don't have an HR partner, we always recommend you because we know that if you can come in, you'll clean that up for us. So you were saying people usually call you in a little bit too late and you would have wished to have been there earlier. When is the ideal time for a client to call in your services?

One of the things I love about the clients I end up working with is self Awareness. It's something that I always screen for when I have a first interview meeting with them. Like I call it an intake meeting because I'm making sure that they're the right fit for me as well as I'm the right fit for what they need. Or I send them five different directions, including to you guys, and I'm like, oh, you just need to hire, go talk to these guys. I think that just having that self awareness of what they don't know can be really nice. And one of the things I'm working on as part of my business right now is just having like a helpline, basically where they're like, oh my gosh, this budget is due. I need to hire three people. Can someone just benchmark this for me? That's like an email that I can easily help them and give them precise numbers on. I guess I would love for them sooner on when they're getting that business support to have somebody who kind of has the HR mindset. Because if we can set up a lot of these processes from the start with an HR and a DEI focus, you're already walking the walk. So there's nothing reactive that they have to correct or do later on, or even if it's a disciplinary thing that I get called in to just manage that situation, a lot of these things could maybe be avoided or at least be more proactively planned for.

So when you marry Poppins into a company, what are all the services that someone could call you for? Because, I mean, you've mentioned so many different things and is it just everything or are there like specific things that you're just like, oh, I love this so much and that's like your core business.

So they can call me for anything and then I will find them the best resource for that. And I also like to feel out where they're at in their thought process with it. So if they're like, oh my gosh, handbook is so important to us, we really need this to get done. I kind of do love working on handbooks because of the reason I stated earlier. You know, I'm setting up policies that show employees this is how the company feels about this. And later at let's say it's a snow day, instead of having to call out and be like, what do I do? They can just go check this handbook and be like, oh, here's this. And I know how the company feels about it and the company knows how I'm going to react in that situation. So I kind of love handbooks because a lot of People, especially if you're maybe more passive or introverted or shy, you think that the line is right here that you're going to cross when really it's way the heck over there. So I think it gives people a lot more freedom. I always use the example of going to the zoo where the handbook is like the fence. You've got the animal that you're viewing on one side. It helps protect the animal on the one side and the viewers on the other side. Whoever you want to have as leadership versus employees, you know, I think that it's like a nice barrier to have that actually helps people feel safer because it's there.

Yes. Everyone kind of despises the handbook. I feel like it sounds like it's the book of rules, but when you have a good handbook, it makes a huge difference. Because, like, as a manager, if someone's like, oh, I didn't have to ask you this question at 6am because the handbook was so clear, great. As the employee who at 5am is like, what do I do when I'm sick? And it's right there, good handbook is very valuable. The zoo analogy is incredible. I love that.

I mean, to answer it more. I just really love what I do. Anything that falls under one of the main pillars, like if I have a board that's coming after one of my CEOs, I get really spiky and protective. That person. I'm like, okay, right now I'm doing risk management, or I'm going to make sure that this person is aware or communicating to or knows, like, hey, this was kind of disrespectful. And then I'm more of a thought partner. Sometimes I'm devil's advocate for how a company might want to roll something out. And I'm like, is this the best way to do this? To just send it and be like, hey, sign this. Maybe we can ask for some input first and get some perspective because people feel like it's less shoved at them. And basically being a mediary between what corporate HR used to be, Even up to five or 10 years ago, I think we had a big shift in what HR means. We call it People and Operations. Now we're changing the words and the language we use to talk about HR so that people realize how accessible it is not just to change the definition, but to change the title is pretty big too. And I don't necessarily love recruiting, which maybe I shouldn't say on a recording, but I think doing it well is so important and critical, especially to my clients that only have three or seven employees. Every single hire at that point is just huge. And so it really needs to be done correctly. So even if I'm not the recruiter, again, setting up a process that can make sure that we hire the best person correctly the first time, that is so significant. So I don't know. I love working on, like, impactful projects, whatever that might be.

It's funny because people really fall on one side of that line or another with recruiting. A lot of the HR partners that we work with, they're like, yeah, I'll do recruiting, but it's not my favorite. And then for us, we're like, we don't want to do hr, we want to do the recruiting. So when a client ropes us into something HR related, we're usually trying to hot potato that out as soon as we can because we're not equipped for it. And also, we know that there are people like you who are so passionate about it.

So.

Right.

If I could clone myself, I'd have one of me in recruiting and one of me in hr and we would just rule the world. I do think that there's such a need for it. I just have a stronger, like, 51% of me loves HR more.

Yeah, it's clear that you love people and you're really passionate about building good companies. Hey there. Just a quick break. I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this podcast because you are exploring careers in biotech, which it turns out, quite a few of our listeners actually are, you might be interested in the Biotech Career Coach podcast. It is brought to you by our sister company, the collaboratory Career Hub, which is our career development community. If you would like actionable tips on job seeking and career development, that is the place for you. It is a companion podcast to our Career Coach column that we write monthly in Biospace. But we go a little more in depth and sometimes we have special workshops and all of that good stuff. So if that sounds interesting, click the link in the show notes or search for the biotech career coach on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts back to the show.

So when a candidate comes into interview, what are your tips for them? What makes a candidate really shine out? And what questions do you think people should be asking that they're not asking in the interviews that are so important?

I think that right now a big driver is just mission and values. I think that companies need to really state their mission and values because at the end of the day, you can be competitive on salary and benefits. And technology like those are going to be drivers of if somebody's going to reply to your job description or not. But then if you've got five different companies that each have those three things and spades, your mission and your culture is going to really reflect if somebody has a or first interview, just even a phone screen like that's your reputation on the line. And now if somebody else asks, hey, I'm going to apply for this company, did you interview there? They're going to have their own telephone version of how that call went that maybe comes across positive or negative based on that experience. So I really think that companies need to do a better job with it. I think the communication from the companies for sure needs to get a lot more clear and timely. Within 24 hours of every single phone screen interview, et cetera. You've got to get back to people. I just had two amazing candidates, both of my besties, both looking for jobs in biotech but in completely different. They're more on the gna side. One of them was in an interview process for six weeks and of course she got scooped up by someone else. But the six week one she really, really wanted to be there and she really loved the culture and she was willing to put up with this process. But along the way came someone else who offered a lot more in all the different categories and scooped her up. And I felt bad for that company that lost her and even the other one, I just think that the communication piece has got to get amped up and then same thing for candidates. You know, if I have a hundred resumes apply for any level of a position and I only am going to phone screen the top 10, those 10 resumes are black and white. It's not like a Facebook where you get a photo and a quote or whatever. Social media things like this is black and white. And out of a hundred I'm going to pick you. You really have to have other people Pro freedom make sure that your resume game, it's so easy to Google chatgpt it. Like whatever tools you need to do to get a beautiful resume, it is really important to be black and white and have that stand out. And then I think just the communication during the interview. I really want people to be their whole selves. Like come don't try to mirror the interviewer. Like don't try. I think a lot of the tips that are still floating around of how to have a successful interview, it's not about doing everything perfectly. It's just don't be a punk or don't be a jerk or don't be like, don't do things wrong during the interview, but really show your true self because then that person, that interview is going to see you and be like, yes, this person's a great fit because they're also shy. They're going to be a culture addition rather than a culture fit to our team because they're showing their whole selves. So I think that there's communication and timeliness for both of them I think is just so important.

It's a fantastic answer. I love the culture ad that you just plugged. It's something that we're trying to reframe big time for our clients. Yeah, it's so important.

Where do you see yourself in the next phase of your career and what would your dream retirement be if you're willing to share?

For sure? I think in the next like 3 to 5 years, I want to add another 5 ish employees working next to me or under me where I can really be doing a lot of the client management and like the CEO leadership development. But I think there's not enough boutique HR who can just do five hours a week for baby biotechs who don't need as much as a lot of other places are doing. And also for the cost. You know, I think just because they have a great budget doesn't mean they should put it 50 or 100k into a larger firm that is not doing as much on the ground or isn't really curated to their culture. So I would love to do more of that because I think there's such a great need. But I also think every dollar we don't spend on science is not solving or that diagnostic for that therapy that we desperately need. And we're all there to support. Support. I'd love to keep growing and slowly take over the world. And then I think for retirement I just am such a hobbyist. A place by the ocean or traveling a ton. But I would just love to have a couple hours to myself to do pottery, crochet, jewelry making. Like, I'm from northern Minnesota, so all like indoor cozy activities are kind of my jam. That being said, I did chainsaw down a tree this afternoon, so I also love to garden and landscape.

You are a jack of all trades. You will not have a boring retirement, that's for sure.

No, I just gotta like, yeah, I gotta keep it together.

So what piece of advice would you offer someone that's sort of on the cusp of launching their own biotech venture? We talk to a lot of consultants or people thinking about becoming consultants. Maybe they were a VP or exec of something. What would you say to them?

Interview several sources. It's one of the biggest things that I see my first time. Leaders not have vetted. So, like, their board might say, hey, go with this lawyer, because they're amazing. But that board member doesn't realize, this lawyer is $6,000 an hour. And I know that they can get the same exact job done for 450 an hour. And I think also ending up with different vendors who aren't a culture match for, like, their spirit of leadership. You can get referred to all these again. We're Boston. There's so much opportunity, and there's 10 versions of every single thing, even if it's just graphic design or every level. But I really think people should start customizing it to their own culture and their own intentions as a manager or consultants.

So I think to that end, we have a resource that we've just put together because we get asked so much by our clients, which is just, we have XYZ need who do you know? And so we've just put together this thing, and it's like 10 pages long already of just vendors that we know that have worked with different clients that we like. So, yes, there's variety, There are choices. I think the interviewing process is really important. But if anyone wants that resource, we'll link it in the show notes. Any baby biotechs that are thinking, I need an expert in this area so badly?

Yeah, absolutely.

So my favorite question of every episode. What is your favorite fiction or nonfiction book? And it can be from all time. It can be something you read recently. Just something that you think everybody should read because it was so good about anything.

Yeah. My golden book and person who I love to follow is Simon Sinek. Start with why. It is the first book. I refer to anybody. I have it as a closing slide on every single public speaking presentation at any level of anything that I talk to people about. Because I think it's great personally for you to start with your why of why are you doing this? What's next? And especially for companies that are growing out and developing their culture and as their organization is changing and developing, going from 10 people to 30 people is a huge culture shift. You know, you gotta come back to your why and redefine that. So I celebrate Simon Sinek's entire catalog.

Amazing. I'm gonna add it to our list. We have another list going. We have a resources list, and we have a book list.

Awesome. I have two other favorites I'll send you for your list.

Ooh, can you tell us what they.

Are belonging And I'm forgetting her name, the author and then Radical Candor. Radical Candor is a great one because I think that one of the things I'm seeing a big difference in is just between male and female CEO, let alone all the different DEIs or minority groups of leaders. And I think that Radical Candor can be a really great one for how we can adjust as leaders, especially from the next generations coming up after us who are wanting more of that directness and be more open. And there isn't as many levels as there used to be in an organization. People are a lot more generalist, at least on the business side. So that's another good one that I like.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Yeah, Simon Sinek has a great email newsletter. If you're not signed up for that, you might really enjoy it. It's once a week and just little pearls of wisdom in my inbox. I love it.

Awesome. I definitely need to subscribe right now. I just LinkedIn and I sit there and just like, yes, Simon, yes, keep it coming 100%.

So on that note, I'm really curious how you have perceived any shifts in the leadership. We are seeing slowly more women coming into those executive roles. You know, how are you seeing that in your field?

I think that it's getting significantly better. However, I also still think there's a long, long way to go. I think the last three to five years opened up a lot as far as Black Lives Matter, you know, really pushing for dei. However, I think a lot of companies are still missing the beat on defining what does DEI mean? You know, like, you have a blue lamp and I don't have a blue lamp. Like, we're diverse and we have different reasons for how we have different things in our lives. And I think when we're at leadership tables, we need to just have as much variety of experience and expertise that we can. So I'm working on that, especially with how my male CEOs and my female CEOs are treated. Like the way that their investor or board will question them, they'll have to do 10 extra slides just on an answer that some of my male CEOs will never even be asked that question. And it is just heartbreaking because I'm seeing it because I'm a consultant working with usually 3ish clients at a time. And then I cycle through 2, 3 times a year, ending up with around 10 people. And I'm seeing those differences and how Do I call that out? How do I name that? Especially with investors who I have very little interaction with, and with the board, I want to make sure that that person is representing what they need to communicate, but also at a certain point, like, they should just be able to be assertive. And so I do a lot of coaching on, like, writing scripts for answers or how to assertively project whatever answers or thing that they're kind of struggling with. But I am very fortunate that biotech as an industry is aware of DEI initiatives and that we need to add a lot more belonging, because I still don't think a lot of other industries have caught up with that.

Eva, as far as HR and being an HR leader, what keeps you up at night?

There's kind of two big pieces, and it's because I loathe working with them, but I've become an expert because of it. So one is benefits and immigration. I think that there are two big pieces that companies really, really need support with. And I think whenever there's fear or they're not sure about doing something right, a lot of people tend to do nothing or do the bare minimum. And so with benefits, there is so much more that we can be offering. Like, my onboarding, as you can tell, is probably quite meticulous because I want to always educate, especially for people coming into their first job. Like, this is what benefits really mean, and this is what a dental rollover is, because almost every dental plan has rollover. If you didn't both know that, I'd love to educate you on it. And I love having older people in my meetings be like, wow, I never knew that was a thing. I've had my whole career. So I think that we need to have some experts who kind of know this stuff or bring in a broker for free, because brokers are free who can present your benefits. And then for immigration support, a lot of companies, they think it's going to be a huge time commitment and a huge cost. Talking to a immigration attorney is free. Doing a lot of that paperwork is like two or $3,000 to hire the best person to cure cancer. It's six pages. You got to sign it in three spots. Like, you know, I think someone to translate that. But you need to have a cheerleader on your team to advocate for both of those areas. And I just don't think a lot of, even in my own field, I don't think a lot of HR people definitely don't have a passion for it. But you need to. We have to push forward to really be the Best resource and take care of people.

That's a really good answer. I can see both those things. I can see benefits being a little bit of a check the box thing, like, oh, we've always had this benefit. We know exactly how it works. And immigration, I feel like it seems so overwhelming and I can't speak to what the process is. I haven't had to handle hiring through an immigration attorney or anything like that, but it sounds overwhelming. It seems overwhelming. But to your point, with the right experts in place, probably pretty straightforward. Not a problem.

No.

Our team has had to prepare documents for attorneys and really it's a matter of that we'll get this job description and we need to justify why this individual is the right pick. And we know they are. So it's actually really easy because we hired them, we're excited about them, and for one of our scientists to go through that job description and say, this is exactly why this is the expert we need. It takes half an hour of work. And then to your point, it's really not a big deal. But convincing our clients of that sometimes really is a big deal.

And then it goes back to the changing someone's life. If you've given someone the opportunity to stay here and do the thing that they are so good at doing and they should have that opportunity, it changes their life and those who come after them. Once leadership knows this is very straightforward, not a big deal.

And as those companies dissolve too, I think that's one of the things startup biotech is. I don't know. There's probably a statistic on how many of those companies make it, but let's say it's 50%. If we have a really great process. And now 50% of those leaders are out in the world and they're going on to be leaders at other companies and bring that influence of, oh, this was a really easy process, or oh, this is why it was important for HR to guide us through benefits or a great broker. I think that having just those best practices and even like you guys are putting together a resource manual, there's a reason that some of us are really great at what we're doing and we're super passionate about it and we keep pushing, getting pushed along and being referred to other places to keep doing it.

Absolutely. Hey, Eva, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you?

So my LinkedIn is definitely the best and easiest way. I have a strict barrier in my home life balance. I keep no work on my phone. It's one of my favorite things if people want to reach out next time I happen to log onto my computer, which is like a good 12 hours a day, but I can always get right back to people and do one offs or find great resources for them.

Excellent. Well, we'll link that in our show notes so people can click right through. This was amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Do you have anything else you want to share with our audience?

No. I mean, it was a pleasure. I think that finding people who are passionate about what they're doing, when you're passionate about it, it's not going to be extra work and it's going to be such a natural to get to work with those people in that area. And one of the things I've been working with my first time CEOs is on trust, especially for interviewing. Once you get to 15, 20 people headcount, that CEO can't be on every single whatever level in the company interview. So you have to just hire the right people, trust them, have a great process, and then keep elevating yourself. That's what my company name for higher EQ is, is having a higher emotional intelligence and helping my clients to elevate so that they can kind of blossom. So, you know, I hope that through today we can kind of give them more resources and help spark that joy for them to get to hire great people to do that with them as well.

Yeah, I'm sure we will. Thank you so much. This was fantastic.

Yeah, it's great to see you guys. Great to chat.

Building Biotechs is brought to you by Recruitomics Consulting. You can find Building Biotechs in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes and join our mailing list for a weekly dose of biotech news and a podcast overview. And if you need to install a recruitment engine that saves time and money for your growing company, reach out for a free strategy session. I'm always happy to share my expertise and show you techniques to simplify your hiring process and maximize returns. On behalf of the team here at Recruitomics Consulting, thanks for listening.