What’s Hot – July

We’re flying through the Summer here in Life Science Towers, with plenty to keep us busy. Here’s our latest monthly round-up of some of our active jobs:
I’m looking for Clinical Research professionals in many guises. From CTA to CRA and a Clinical Operations Specialist, it’s an area we seem to be seeing a lot of [...]

Explain Yourself!

We see a LOT of CVs on a daily basis (I even see CVs in my sleep on weekends – OK maybe not!).
Some points that occurred to me recently that are very important:
-NEVER address an email to Sir / Madam or “To Whom it Concerns”. This is lazy. Go onto LinkedIn, find the name of [...]

We’re growing!

We’re delighted to welcome James Cassidy onto the Life Science team. Coming from a strong Scientific / Business and Recruitment background, James fits into the Life Science mould perfectly.
As James says:
“I’m delighted to join the team in Life Science as principal medical device consultant. Having worked for the last 2 ½ in the life science [...]

What’s Hot – June

Another fast month, some holidays and sunshine have been and gone, hopefully there’s some sun left though!
Things are busy in Life Science, we’re looking for a number of varied roles across many areas.
Eamonn is constantly seeking MSLs and people looking to move into the Medical Science Liaison (MSL) arena. Must be PhD qualified with commercial [...]

What’s Hot – May

Wow, June is nearly upon – that was quick!
It’s been a good month in Life Science Towers on various fronts, here’s a run down of the roles were working hard on currently:
Health Quality professionals. We’re working exclusively with this Client to provide them with a number of people who have previous experience in the Healthcare [...]

What’s Hot – April

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “What’s Hot” piece, so what a better way to finish off the month by looking back on April?
On the Technical side, we have some interesting QA roles. Mostly on the non-manufacturing side, distribution and commercial. Pharmacists and other people with experience dealing with the IMB are particularly [...]

Using Social Media to Recruit

OK, this isn’t quite the magician sharing his secrets, but below are our views and what we believe are the advantages of using social media to recruit.
Facebook. Having 500+ fans, we can get our message to a large, active and interested audience immediately. From feedback to blog posts to actually getting candidates to respond through [...]

Keeping your finger on the pulse (while not working)

So you’ve just graduated and are looking for your first job, or recently been made redundant? It’s important to keep that fire burning by staying in touch with current scientific issues. This will come across very well at interview when they ask you something along the lines of: “so what are your interests?” or “tell [...]

Would you fire this person?

I had an interesting online conversation with a friend who is based in the States last night.The chat came round to a lab supervisor who was upset that a person they had recently hired had “embelllished” and added details onto their CV. Essentially, they had lied in order to get themselves ahead of the pack. [...]

Career Advice from Industry Experts

I’ve tweeted and posted this on Facebook already (as well as blogged about it before), but I think it’s worthy of a lot more than that.
All Life Science jobseekers should check out this video: HERE.
It’s 4 Irish industry leaders: Owen Treacy (GM, Novo Nordisk Ireland), David Lloyd (Dean of Research, TCD), Joe Keenan (Director Sales [...]

Being Creative in a Tough Market

It’s a tough market for jobs. No one prizes there. If you are as unfortunate as to be out of work at the present time, differentiation is key. This can’t be stressed enough. As well as the usual advice you’ll be given (knock on as many doors as possible, follow up all contact, keep yourself busy and in good shape), there are other things you can be doing.

It can’t be stressed how much potential lies in the internet. IT professionals can get outsourced work, people can open ecommerce shops in minutes (eBay) and everyone and the uncle seems to be an “expert” at something or other (“social media guru anyone??!). However, if you are willing to dig deep and work harder than the next person, opportunities will come your way:

Naming your scientific Start-Up company (for guaranteed success)

I was once told by my chemistry lecturer that the key to naming new drugs was for it to be easy enough for the public to say and understand, yet complex enough for the doctors to not feel left out. This is of course referring to their commercial names, not scientific names.
I feel the same [...]

The importance of RSS feeds to today’s job seeker

Recently, we have been working in conjunction with Clients on some more junior roles.
The majority of our roles are quite senior and we may not have more than 3-4 very suitable candidates for each, possibly even only 1 depending on the specificity of the requirements. However, for these recent Lab Tech roles, we have a [...]

Organisational overview of the Pharmaceutical Sector – Part A Clinical Affairs

The pharmaceutical sector plays an important role in Ireland and is responsible for a significant majority of Irish exports. The following is breakdown of the functions and organisation of the Clinical Affairs department within a typical pharmaceutical company. The clinical affairs department acts on the whole in tandem, with all departments interrelated and working together.

“The Future of the Life Sciences Industry” article

Below is our article as featured on pgs 46-47 of the “Life Science Industry” Reference/Yearbook 2009/2010.
Brian Christensen from Life Science Recruitment examines how the recent economic difficulties have affected the Life Sciences industry in Ireland.
The Life Science industry in Ireland has weathered the economic storm relatively unscathed. A sweeping statement perhaps? But one we believe [...]

Job Seeking over Christmas

A couple of notes about your Christmas job hunt.
-Don’t send CVs out over the Christmas period. It’s a sure-fire way to make sure your CV gets lost in an inbox. A much better tactic is to use the Christmas vacation as a research break, and find the names and contact people of who you want [...]

Study (for free) in Sweden

While reading a recent issue of New Scientist which got delivered to us (thanks New Scientist!) yesterday, I fell upon an add which brought me back to my college days. They weren’t that long ago….

Having graduated from Medicinal Chemistry, I onluy knew 1 thing, I didn’t want to work in a lab. I was uninterested in teh daily lab work during my research project in Madrid, and wanted to try something different. So if it wasn’t a PhD and it wasn’t a job in an industrial lab, what was it?

What’s Hot (December)

Plenty of interesting new roles since last time – a quick rundown:

Clinical / IT / LIMS Applications Specialistsl: we are working on one project for a large Client. They require people skilled in various IT applications across all Life Sciences sectors. So if you (or anyone you know) has experience in LIMS / PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) / Patient Management systems and is interested in a new opportunity with huge scope for flexibility, then do get in touch. We have been personally very involved in the recruitment process for this role, having gone as far as taking the online assessment tests ourselves (and passed!), so we are in a strong position to be able to guide candidates through the process.

Medical Device Engineering – an overview

As we seem to be very busy with a number of medical device jobs, I thought it would be useful to do a quick overview of the medical device engineering industry and skills involved. This information can be used for both experienced candidates to get an industry overview as well as new graduates or Life [...]

More CV tips

An interesting CV arrived in last week, something I had not seen before. At the bottom was a whole paragraph of tags, which the candidate was obviously hoping would be picked up by our database as it scanned the CV for key word skills. He CV would then show up in more searches which he then hoped woudl result in his CV being more visible to us and us calling him more often in relation to available opportunities. This is similar to “black-hat” webpage search optimisation which has since been discovered by Google. People would hide a multitude of keywords in the background text on their website, often in the same colour oas the background itself (say white words on a white background which would be picked up the the search bot). Needless to say, this did not look very good on the CV and didn’t strike me as being hugely professional, for someone that had a lot of experience.