[Sales] How to stand out in the hiring process with James Higgins
13 Feb 2024 · 31 min
Podcast conversation with James Higgins, a Life Sciences recruiter, about how candidates can stand out in hiring processes and how hiring managers should screen and build commercial teams. Covers James's career start during COVID, challenges hiring managers face (technical skills vs. commercial skills, willingness to travel, and fitting all requirements within budget), practical tactics for candidates (proactive outreach, multichannel approach, tailored CVs), screening and reference checks, and unconscious bias after post‑COVID hiring/salary shifts. Concludes with contact info (LinkedIn/email) for Xenopa recruiter James Higgins.
Chapters
A good Life Sciences recruiter will be able to listen to what you say and recommend companies off the back of that. They'll know if they're in excellent or they know hiring managers that fit you. They can facilitate conversations from there, whether it's prospectively, like, there's some people that I've sent for a company, and then six months later they're in an interview because they weren't ready at the time. But the thing is, is getting you in, your foot in the door, and then it's the added support after that. It comes from both ways. So going back to the candidate, actually being quite transparent of where you're at, this is the. What I wrote. I like this role. I don't like this role. This is what I don't like about this, but I like this about this role. And then you're comparing them all, and you're having quite an open conversation because there is a stigma about recruiters. You know, it's. It's for the fee only, but realistically, if that process isn't managed properly, you won't get the end fee.
All right, we got another great podcast for you here. We've got James Higgins. He's a recruiter for Life Sciences, specifically focusing on commercial. So that's bd, marketing, sales, all of those great roles. So we go really deep with him on how to stand out in the recruiting process, how to be proactive when you're working with recruiters. Some of the different challenges that hiring managers face. But yeah, a lot of great stuff, really tactical. Nick, what would you like most about this conversation?
Yeah, I think what I like most about this is the fresh perspective for me. So I've been a hiring manager. I've been hired, thankfully. But also now I'm seeing the behind the curtain. Like, we're getting some insight into what the recruiters think about this process, hiring managers and hiring reps. And that's really useful, I think, for anybody who's been or going to go through this process again.
Yeah, I think a lot of parallels, too, between recruiting and sales, and so touch on that a little bit in here as well.
So I got to start recruiting.
Well, actually, if you're a manager and you have a team, right, recruiting is probably the most important part of your job.
So it's the biggest part. If you recruit right, you don't have to do anything.
There you go. All right, well, let's go ahead and dive right on into the conversation. Hey, James, welcome to the show. Pumped to have you.
Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. On much appreciate.
So we did prep you for this, so hopefully you got a good story for us. We asked the same thing to every guest. What's a crazy or funny story that's happened to you in your career?
Yeah, I've got a good one and I'll tell it like, like a four, but it's, you know, I started my career in, in recruitment, which I'll go into in a bit later. And within, you know, the first couple of months I was banished from the office due. Due to Covid, I think it was. I was straight out of school, I was 18 years old and never had a desk job ever. And I basically had to, you know, with some mentorship. I was learning basically on my own every day talking to candidates, basically trying to learn the market independently away from everyone else, working from home for 18 months to two years, which has had a massive effect on, I think, my career and what I'm doing now.
Yeah, how so? You're positively, negatively.
Positively, definitely. Because it's had to gain skills that necessarily you would have been taught, I think by others. But I think it's enhanced the ability which giving some context. Like during that time it was incredibly difficult to discover really good life science reps. It was a really candid short market. So we had to come up with quite unique ways to gain engagement, being able to close candidates in the right way. So we developed sales skills quite heavily over. Over that time. In a really early period into my career at Zanopa, I think it was really beneficial for that reason, just being really independent. And it was quite crazy looking back on it now because we have how many more people have joined since then that have quite a lot of attention mentorship in the office all the time. So back then, a lot of the newbies at the time were kind of left on their own for a little bit just because of the way of the time and the way the market was.
Yeah, I think a lot of people coming out of school at that point of time, out of university were, you know, kind of thrown into the job market, be like, hey, you got to go figure this thing out. I remember when I started, I had tons of people around me, right? You can make friends, you're in the office, you've got the camaraderie, you've got the, you know, the commotion. You can learn real time from people. And so, yeah, I imagine that was pretty tough, but sounds like you made the most of it and you're probably better for it at this point too.
Definitely the added challenge for you there which was probably an unseen challenge, was that you were thrown into it, right, with no skills and got to learn on the fly. Your manager was thrown into trying to train someone virtually that they're in the fly because they've never done that, they've been in the office doing it the way you was expecting to learn. So I think you had the double whammy of not being able to join your own experience and those guys probably being a bit lost too.
Yeah, definitely. I think I was really lucky to, you know, my, my mentors that I had in the business had been at that business for. For a long time. And I mean, we had elements of remote working. So I think they. I was able to learn stuff, but I think it was having no one being able to listen to what I'm saying, you know, like constantly giving feedback on the job. I think that that's, that's the bit that was unique. But, you know, there was a lot of learnings for us as a business back then to actually how do we manage these young guys, like remotely? And obviously we, we've got it nailed to a T now. But I think, I think you're absolutely right. I think it was a massive learning curve for so many of us.
Makes a lot of sense. Tough times for, I think everyone across the board. Covid was an interesting time, but I guess maybe kind of leaning into that a bit is the job market has changed a lot as well over the last few years. Right. Lots of ups and downs. Canada, heavy markets, company heavy markets. What have you seen kind of from a recruiting standpoint, you know, that's challenging. You know, let's start with the company side first. You know, what are some of the challenges your hiring managers are facing?
Yeah, of course. I think, you know, my background's mainly been commercial, so supporting sales, marketing and applications leaders. I think there's three or four consistent challenges across all of them just to go through. I mean, the first one is obviously finding technical or application knowledge. You know, that is the first one finding that real accurate experience. But the second one for a lot of commercial leaders is actually finding the first one in like, in sales, in marketing, can they actually do the role and the behaviors that are required? The third one with commercial roles, as you both know, is willingness to travel. Are they going to be happy to pick up their bags and days and go. And the foot of the fourth one is actually, can you find 1, 2 and 3 altogether in your. In your price branding? Because a lot of people can't. So there's four main challenges that people really find. But it's the combination of the 1, 2 and 3 that makes the fourth the hardest.
That is, that is good. I like that. And I can totally resonate where, you know, back when we were hiring as well, it's, you know, you're, you're, you almost kind of have to decide. You're saying, hey, do I want somebody that's technical, that has the technical skills, but I got to teach them up on the sales side order. I want somebody that's got sales experience but maybe don't understand the technical stuff I'm going to teach them up there. So you have to balance and figure out, well, which one do I want to invest my time into? I heard a quote the other day that said, you know, we could teach a salesperson how to, we could teach a scientist how to sell within a year, but it would take six years to teach a sales rep you how to do science. So I don't, I don't 100% agree necessarily, but I think it's, you know, an interesting perspective as well.
It also depends on the structure of business, right? So if you've got 10 FAs already and you're building your sales team, then you can make a different call as.
If you got no one. Definitely. And it really depends on the business as well. Like, you know, we, we've as an opa, we've supported companies that sell liquid handling consumables up to proteomic instruments. You know, it's two very different cells and you know, the profile that's required for someone selling plastics or someone that's selling like things like liquid handling automation, for example, is two very different skill sets. And that, that's where it really comes out in the briefs we have with hiring managers and leaders is like, you know, can you flex on the technical or can you flex on the commercials? Because, you know, a lot of them, technical roles leading up the other end, you can take a sort of commercially minded fas, which I remember Nick, you, you were an FAS to begin with, weren't you? Then you moved over to sales. Like you, if you get technically minded FAS and move them over to sales, that can be as effective sometimes as hiring a rep that's done liquid handling sales. So it's, it's very, very differs per company, per the hiring manager and what actually the business needs for that year.
Have you seen success or more success with either of those, you know, saying, you know, technical first or sales first?
I think goes back to the point of what you're Actually selling who you're selling to, you know, I always find that, you know, a lot, a lot of the market I work in with diagnostics and each of diagnostics, they like having people that have got that bench experience. You know, people that have worked in NHS laboratories that they, they've been there, they've done certain regulatory, they've done procedures, they've been through the system, they've got their specialist portfolios. Like the, sometimes like, you know, I use the example of consumables, again, like it's a bit more transactional, you can kind of walk in there, come out of an order. But some of these like managed service processes in ibd, it takes a more considerable time and you need to have a bit more of that. You need to be able to put yourself in their shoes, I think. So to actually answer your question, I don't think that it really depends on the company, the what you're selling and who you're talking to. So yeah, it's difficult.
It's interesting. I think you have something interesting about this industry is that you can hire your customers and then become your sales reps, which I think is a really interesting way to think about, you know, a hiring perspective is there.
So let me maybe frame this. I often see that lots of hiring managers have preconceptions about what their candidate needs. And I can, I can hold my hands up to this myself. A shout out to Angelo De Rossa, who is a great rep, always hit target. Right. But I wasn't sure I wanted to hire him because he wasn't outgoing enough. Yeah, but he didn't need to be me to be successful because obviously I thought I was done a reasonable job because I'm an egotist. But he didn't need to be me to be successful. Yeah, but I couldn't see that initially and like through conversations internally, we hired him and actually routinely smashed target. Okay.
Yeah.
I've seen other people say like you need to have this thing or no, what's your feeling on that? Those kind of hiring managers that are that rigid.
I, I, you know, I've had battles with that because it, you know, people try to hire a million thems in their team, which isn't necessarily what they need. You know, you know, if you're, if you're like we, we use a lot our business and over, we use a lot of insights, profiles and like testing, you know, we have like the red, yellow, blue, green, for example. And for example we, we creating teams around certain profiles that come together. So to answer your question, Like I have battles with that because I think there's people that complement each other that aren't as clearly not necessarily as strong as them in different areas. But self admittedly I'm more of a red or yellow profile, which is what we use, which is quite direct. But you can have a conversation for a long time. When it comes to blue, which is the detail I can't do, you know, I'm terrible detail, but I've got some great colleagues that work alongside me that are excellent on the detail and it complements each other. So my honest opinion is, is that I think the preconception sometimes is that they are drastically wrong. But I do put myself in their shoes and understand this is what's worked for them. So they do think that way because they haven't seen any difference. So that's really what my job has been, to show that there is excellence in other areas. And you know, we've seen it in some cases with businesses where they've ended up with really high performance. As you've seen from your example, that necessarily on paper aren't necessarily who is the best.
Well, that kind of leads to another question that I have, is that a lot of people today kind of just go on LinkedIn and they click that easy apply button. They want to go get a job which puts their resume in the stack of, you know, 700 other people for that same job. And now when you take that approach, now the hiring manager has to one sort through all of these, which is horrible. Like this is time consuming. Right. But then everything is biased based on what you've got on your resume. There's nothing that's personable about, you know, a way to stand out like even in a batch of like 700 resumes. So how do you kind of think about that challenge both from like a recruiting standpoint but also from an individual that's trying to get hired.
Yeah, of course. And I think there's, you know, CVs are being looked at less and less these days. I think LinkedIn for a lot of hiring managers is the go to. But CVs are often seen as transactional. This isn't the case for everyone. But like this is, I find with PhD to scientists going into like their first rep role, those are still important and it's really highlighting, I think some tips would be, you know, having all your technical expertise so key techniques, you know, what company's instruments or products have you used in there. And then actually some examples of if you are looking at commercial facing roles, when have you Been like working, collaborating on projects in research, like, or any form of like project management. I find a lot in research can be transferable into a sales role. So it's difficult, like you say, with the easy apply, because I think a lot of people just use their research CV and they send on the easy apply and they don't manage to get anywhere. And that's the same with experienced reps as well. They kind of see, look, I've got my experience at this company, in this company they're a competitor, so I'm easy going to get in. But there's actually sometimes some one or two year profiles that have their CV looks great. They've got all the examples. They've gone that extra mile with either contacting a hiring manager direct with a video or even sometimes I've seen calling them, which is an interesting approach, but it does work. And he's standing out a little bit further that showing the more proactive behaviors, I think, which you can't see on paper.
Yeah, they need a dress for the job that you want. Well, yeah, I think for sales, like you should actually like take action for the job that you want. Right? You're going to. If your role is going to be to like be in sales, your job is going to be to create new opportunities and drive new business. So in order to do that you got to call people, you got to go and like, prospect. So if you can show those skills. Yeah, I think it's a way to stand out. There was a rep that we hired a while back and he actually listened to a podcast that I did like three years ago, four years ago, probably now at this point. And he listened to the episode, reached out to me personally, said, hey, I love the episode. Especially like these specific, specific talking points that you had. You also would love to come work at syo, literally. I forwarded that message directly to the person that's hiring. I said, hey, schedule an interview. So we got the interview scheduled and hired them. It's like that. When you, when you stand out like that and you take that proactive approach, it makes a huge difference.
Well, we talk about multichanneling in sales, right? And that's what you're doing. You're selling yourself. You got to pick these multi channels and I'll probably sell your job a little bit here for you. James. I think that if you see a job online, if you're just going to click easy apply, the one thing that you can do that's better than that and very little effort is to cut and paste a link from that job, send it to a recruiter and say I'm interested in this, can you help me? Because now the guy's got, you're gonna love that. That's a hot lead for you to go find what you need to do and they're going to get somebody working on their behalf for them. So if, if nothing else, that's an easy way to do it.
Yeah, exactly. I've had that, you know, many a time and had some good outcomes. Especially you know, if you're a current client, you've got terms agree with that account that they're happy to always speak to people that you recommend if you've got that relationship. So you know, he's talking. There's some, there are some great, you know, UK based life science recruiters like there's loads of them and it's the same for the US a lot. Obviously there's a lot of UK recruiters that cover the US market as well now. So it is for both sides. But I think with a lot of people you can get in that way from someone who is respected in the industry in your niche. So I, Nick, I completely agree and it's really beneficial just to get that extra push in early and it helps you put your top of the pile. Nothing.
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Yeah, definitely, for sure. I think it's, it's worth setting the context back from, you know, after the COVID times in the life science boom where recruiters were having a great time with you know, numerous jobs coming in every week, like the demand for support was so high and everyone was working on a million roles at a time. That there was, because there was no candidates available. And it kind of led to the point where there was a lot of people that were getting jobs that probably shouldn't have been getting them jobs, to be honest, because they were so candidate short. And last year we, after the 18 months, you know, it's two years before you have to give reason to for someone to be removed from the business. At 18 months, we were seeing a lot of people being exited out the business, either on an ROI basis or a culture basis. But often the one thing they took was a massive hike in salary. So we saw salary was boosted up probably 15, 20k, especially in the UK. In the US it was probably considerably more than that as well. So that kind of brings me on to the point of 2023. All these people exit out the business with considerably less jobs than they were in 2021 and 2022. So you had more candidates fighting over the same jobs, very little jobs in that case. So what happened was there was all these candidates that had been laid off, fired or looking actively because they hated their job, because they took a massive salary increase. But the same people that got the jobs were the people that were still in jobs at that time. And a lot of hiring managers were saying, look, I'm, I'm conscious of the fact they've we. Everyone was kind of aware of this trend that they've either been fired, made redundant from a sales role, which I do understand it's a revenue generation role. But obviously there are companies that made layoffs. So there was an unconscious bias between these candidates. And companies were still taking the comfortable but curious, as I call them, seekers because they were still in jobs, performing and looked after. So it's been an issue. There are, have been some people that I know in the industry that have been out of work for a year that are incredibly good salespeople just because of that unconscious bias.
It's also what they don't take into account there in that bias is actually the ethos of the people that are hiring, slash firing. So I've been in positions before like where I wasn't making hiring decision or firing decision, but there's people around me that haven't hit even 50 of their quota for over a year and yet they're kept around. And then there's other companies. You miss it two quarters in a row and you're done. So you could be like 79 out of 80, but that's not good enough for us. So you're a better rep than the one in a job. But You've been let go, you know. So I think that there's so many variables in it and see it as black and white. Doesn't work.
Yeah, and that, that's what I was referring to because there's different statistics, different standards at every company, you know, the like. I always find that the startups always going to be more aggressive because the ROI needs to be driven there consistently. You can get away with it more like a thermo or because you've got more support and more like you're probably going to sell more a big corporate because you've got the branding and the support behind you where a lot of the time it's not transactional. If you're in a small business where products unknown, you've got no process, you've got no reputation, the sell is obviously considerably harder and the need for results is higher as well. So like I think you're completely right and I think that's what a lot of people have struggled with. I mean I use the example that we said with a large genomics company that had some issues last year where a lot of their candidates were coming on the market. They had all the skills or they had all the technical knowledge in the world, but after six months they were being fired because they were only selling before a brand and a company that had the massive market share that they didn't actually have to sell anything. So. And they got away with misperformance there because of who they were.
Do you think there's a way to screen for that? You know, like to know ahead of time, you know, any tips, tricks that might help? Because it's a, it's an issue all the time. Like you get the, you get the person that sells at the big company, they've got like all the contacts, right? Yeah, hey, I know everybody at this account or that account, but then they go to the startup and they struggle. So kind of curious what you can think about from a screening perspective.
Yeah, from a screening perspective I think it's really understanding about one thing that we always ask is, you know, we, we, we do want to see sales performance. You know, I'm, I'm conscious when I ask it that there's always going to be some misrepresentation from people that is going to happen. But realistically that stuff can always be checked in reference.
You know, he's, you have everybody, everybody made president's club, right? Everybody hit that number, you know, four quarters in a row. Everybody made president's club, Everybody's award winning sales rep. Yeah, yeah, this is what.
I kind of say. And so if you, if you've been an account manager for 15 years and you're not a senior or in a strategic buy after five or seven, I'm kind of like, right, you know, why not like, is that on you or is that on them? So, and you have to have these quite direct conversations with people to actually get to the bottom of like, what actually are you doing currently? And when it's on your sales performances, what is next for you? Have you got stuff internally and you can kind of craft a picture of it? If they're telling me, oh, you know, I, you know, I haven't got much lined up. I've been in this role for six years and it's thinking, you know, like more. The high performing sales reps I see are moving up internally every two to three years. Generally, I think that's a good turnaround. So you have to ask direct questions and you have to make an understanding, but you have to ask extras to create a picture of, you know, that performance especially. It all will come out and reference, it's a small market and people can find out this stuff easily as well. So it's interesting.
I think a lot of people skip references though. I think a lot of people skip the references. I think references are. A lot of managers get lazy with references. Maybe they call a couple of them, but then again those are the references that the person gave you. And yeah, there's probably a whole lot of stuff that you can't really talk about around, like back channeling. But you know, you gotta find another way to get at this information. And you have to like either dig into second third layer questions with a rep and like specifically like, how did you do these things? Like what did you do specifically to like make an impact so much? Or you have to figure out how do you go, how do you like reach out to other people you might know at that company?
To get the truth on my cv, I've just got three burner phone numbers and I'm really good at access, so I'm all of my references.
That go, yeah, I can, yeah, I think, you know, it comes back to that, asking direct questions, you know, it's what have you done? And it's almost understanding like, like a sales process. What have you done? Why have you done that? What was the impact of this happening? You know, what was the cause of you doing that in this way? And it's kind of, you get a good picture of how one, they, they answer questions, you know, two, how they Behave. And for threes, the big one is how they react to direct questioning, because that's a big thing in sales. You know, you have to be questioned and you have to be held to account. And if people can't be doing that from a recruiter who's not even managing them, how are they going to do it to VP of sales at Start? So I think it's a really valid point and I think people, the people that do well in them. An early conversation from the right recruiter generally breeze through processes really easy.
Yeah, I mean, recruiting is very much like sales, right? I mean, you're selling yourself, you're selling the role, you're selling the company. You know, it's just, I don't, I don't know why people don't necessarily think of them as very similar. I imagine there'd be a lot of great recruiters that would be great sales reps at a lot of these different companies. But I don't know that you always see that path.
Yeah, I think like, you know, there's been a real. For the recruitment market in general. Last year we saw a massive decrease in jobs and business development became a real big focus for a lot of companies. You know, before if you had a good reputation in the market and you're consistent, you would have picked up jobs. But last year was a real focus to actually nail and actually try to understand the sales process. Like a lot of recruiters you'll see have started taking tips from SaaS, sales reps who probably are the, the, the purest form of sales that we have, the most complex form of sales, along with life sciences as well. But we've been taking a lot of tips from actually identifying pain points, you know, and actually doing emails on. We are a recruitment agency. And this, this, this, and this is actually picking up, like picking out the pain points, giving a solution and closing and actually selling in a structured way consistently, not just telling them who you are and what you do, which is what we did five years ago. But our process now is very slick and consistent and scalable, which has allowed us to, I think we generated, you know, a considerable. I won't put a figure on it, but we do put a considerable amount last year that we didn't have before.
Another thing that you mentioned was this comfortable but curious. I think you subtly mentioned it earlier, but I really like this concept, which is somebody's at their role today, they're comfortable in it and maybe they're curious about what else is out there. But then they also have like, there's this other angle, which is maybe they're in a role they don't really love, but it's not painful yet enough for them to want to leave. So how, how do you as a recruiter. Well, I guess both ends again, right? Because you get access to both of these signs like from a recruiter. How do you engage those people in an effective way? And then from a sales perspective, how should you be thinking about working with recruiters if you're in one of these phases, you know, comfortable but curious or, you know, painful but not painful enough?
Yeah. I'll start with, with the candidate basis that you. First thing I do is, is identify your recruiters in the market. You know, who are your, your top five life science recruiters? Or if you have a preferred one, go to your preferred one. But who realistically is going to give me the, the first best advice to an actual solution to, to your problem? And three, who can represent you in the right way and your needs and have an understanding of that. So that's the first thing you do. And you'd reach out to them and say, look, explain your situation. You know, there's, there's generally seven things I would say that a candidate would consider when they're approaching a role. But you might, you pick one of them. Say, you know, I've been three years selling consumables, but I want something a bit more complex. I really like the role. I'm being paid well, but there's something just lacking. That's how I take my career to the next step. I go into more of a technical cell. Okay. And then flipping onto the recruiter. The recruiter needs to spend, you know, I generally have 30 minutes for, we call them RI response interviews as an OPA. But it's actually understanding first of all, you know, what is your current situation? So what's all the great things about your role? You know, you've got good pay, good manager, good technologies, you know, you travel a reasonable amount, but what's the thing that you don't actually like, like, why are we even having this conversation? You know, and then they'll go into it. You say, oh, you know, I want to do a bit more of this, bit more of that, etc. And then for example, we can then start crafting an idea of what really looks like a good life sciences recruiter will be able to listen to what you say and recommend companies off the back of that. They'll know if they're in excellent or they know hiring managers that fit you. They can facilitate Conversations from there, whether it's prospectively, like, there's some people that I've said for a company and then six months later they're in an interview because they weren't ready at the time. But the thing is, is getting you in the. Your foot in the door and then it's the added support after that. And it comes from both ways. So going back to the. The candidate, you know, actually being quite transparent of where you're at, you know, this is the. What I wrote. I like this role. I don't like this role. This is what I don't like about this role, but I like this about this role. And then you're comparing them all and you're having quite an open conversation because obviously everyone knows there is a stigma about recruiters. You know, it's. It's for the fee only. But realistically, if that process isn't managed properly, you won't get the end fee. And the most important bit is the middle part. You know, when they're actually in process, the reg. The registering of a candidate and the offer part can be done quite easily, but actually managing the candidate through an interview process is the bit where you add the most value. So that needs to come both ways.
And I think I made the mistake early in my career when talking to recruiters and they would ask me what I want and I'd give them the job title or a department I want to work in. Right. Rather than saying, actually, what I've learned in more recent years, when someone says, what do you want for a job? Like, what size company? What X, what Y? My response was when my last went, this could be a company of 10 people or it could be a department in a company of 20,000 people. But it has to be something new, shiny, that's accelerating growth and it has to be doing something like, you have to be passion behind it and then I'll be interested. Whereas before I might have just said, oh, I want VP or director or head off, because I thought out of aggression.
Yeah.
What advice do you give? What could they be thinking about?
Yeah. So I think, I think you're exactly right. And one of the questions that we always ask is, company size is such an important one because it's really the mission that they're on at the time and it's the stage of the business that needs them type of skills. And for example, if you're a. To use example again, like if you're at Thermo and it's a head of like or a president role of that Division, like someone who's good at retaining business and keeping that steady is probably someone that's better than a hypersonic growth mindset. But like if you're in a startup where you know you've got a really innovative product, you're going to need someone that's you know, heavily BD focus can drive and generate new business and bring everyone else up with him or her. So I think what I think to answer your question is pretty much you need to consider where actually what does your skill set lie and is it, you know, things like key account management in a first tier level, you know, are you actually more of like a man manager that can manage managers or managers or are you someone that leads strategic growth? And that's the question that you should ask yourself first before engaging. But the second one is actually unlike you say is it head of VP or director? And I always say that, you know, a lot of life science companies, they have quite ominous job titles like, because I've seen heads of that in some companies could be a CCO and a CCO in some companies that could be a sales rep. So it's kind of like you need to, in that process you need to actually ask like realistically what really is this role? Because I mean self I've taken roles on and self admittedly advertised them as sales directors and really, I mean it's a BDM with potential of becoming a sales leader. So and that's what people advertise them as. So I think it's really understanding that and talking to your recruiter, talking to your hiring manager, like what really is the responsibilities of this level? But it's, it's asking them about their honest opinion on the mission that they're going on and what they're trying to achieve from this role.
Awesome. This has been fantastic. Lots of great, you know, tips, tricks, techniques, things that we can do both from a rep perspective, hiring manager as a recruiter, you know so much, you know, stuff jam packed in here. But we're running out of time. So if people want to get in touch with you, you know, maybe they're looking to find their next sales role. You know, what's the best way to find you?
Yeah, so the best way is either LinkedIn or email. So my email I can share with you guys after. But on LinkedIn is James Higgins on there work a company called Xenopa and you'll be we, we do more than just life science. We do medical and pharma and medical communications as well, field service. So if it's not just. If you're not just a sales rep in diagnostics or omics, but you're in another market within the healthcare space, please reach out and we can redirect you to the best place.
Awesome. James, this has been great. Appreciate you coming on.
Thank you. Thanks, guys, for having me. I'll catch you soon.
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