Biotech's natural selectors

One of the spin-offs of Australia's burgeoning biotech sector is an increasingly competitive recruitment sector.

While five years ago it would have been hard to find one recruitment company that directed even some of its activities into biotechnology, now there are several.

Jeremy Wurm, whose company Brooker Consulting is one of the longer established firms in the biotech space, describes the sector as "dog eat dog - and there aren't enough dogs to go around."

"I've been doing this for 15 years," he says. "I came back to Australia in 1989, when there was virtually no bioscience sector. CSL would not have called itself a bioscience company back then, and there were very few spin-offs or start-ups.

"But when I discovered [Queensland Premier] Peter Beattie had gone to [US-based business conference] Bio 99, I realised things were changing."

The key differentiator for a successful biotech recruitment firm, Wurm says, is its little black book of overseas contacts, which it guards ferociously. "That's our intellectual property," he says. "That's why people will go to a headhunter.

"Everyone talks about headhunting, but very few people actively headhunt. Sticking an ad in the paper is not headhunting."

Overseas contacts are crucial, Wurm says, because upwardly-mobile Australian biotechs and their financial partners want to hire people with international experience. But luring talent down under is not easy.

Wurm asks, "Why would you leave the US and go to a backwater, such as Australia? If you did, you'd come as a CEO, not as a business development manager."

Salary scale

Dr Amanda Reid, managing director at Melbourne company Daryl Alexander, agrees.

"But it's easy to lure [Australians] back from the UK - when you compare the cost of living and the weather, we don't really have to lure them," she says.

"But in terms of the US, I tell my clients to not even bother to try. The salaries don't compare, and I don't think we'll ever be able to offer US-scale salaries.

"Australia is still very conservative when it comes to putting money into biotechnology. In the States, they can raise funding and look to the long term."

But these days it's easier to recruit within Australia, Reid says. She is currently recruiting a CEO for a biotech start-up, and has 50 candidates from which to choose.

"Biotech is a high-risk area," she says. "It takes a certain kind of person - people who can see the opportunities that come from the risks."

Many of the people she recruits for top-end biotech management positions do have science backgrounds, she says, but they might go "way back".

"When I did my PhD, nine or ten of us went through, but only one is still in academia," she explains.

Risk-takers

Greg McKenzie, managing director of Human Capital Partners, also says biotech needs to recruit more entrepreneurial risk-takers.

"Biotech needs more entrepreneurs, but I don't believe they have to be scientists," he says. "I think that what some of the biotechs need to do is determine what roles they will require. There will come a point of time when an injection of professional management will be required.

"That's not to say that [that management] can't be a PhD."

So, should scientists add an MBA to their qualifications? McKenzie says it's more important to have experience in the school of hard knocks - racking up time in larger organisations and developing new skill sets.

McKenzie works with venture capitalists who are seeking to recruit talented management for their investee companies.

"I think VCs are frustrated by the lack of depth of management," he says. "They're entranced by the science but shy of investing."

Suzy Baxter, a biotech recruitment specialist at Davidson Recruitingin Brisbane, is a member of a panel set up by the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council to specifically address the issue of management skills in small to medium-sized biotechs.

Business-savvy scientists

But she's more positive than most on the issue of the sector's management skill levels. "Personally, I think there are a lot of business-savvy scientists out there," she says.

Baxter says her workload has increased dramatically in the last 12 months, and that executive-level positions have been in great demand. There are new biotech hotspots like Brisbane and Adelaide, and international biotechs want to recruit pioneering Aussies to head their Australian or Asia-Pacific divisions.

One interesting trend that she has noted is a result of governments banging the drum for Australian biotech, which is obviously working.

"We've had individuals contacting us from overseas, saying 'how can you help me to come home?' and wanting to know more about the industry," Baxter says.

She says her own science background is useful in her profession. "You need some sort of credibility and you need to understand what they're talking about," she says. "I do as much research as possible."

Frank Soros, managing director at Sydney company Ab Initio, says that as well as recruiting management, more biotechs are seeking effective boards.

Greater sophistication

"It's interesting," he says. "Sometimes companies are seeking people who don't have a science background. A balance on the board reflects greater sophistication."

And from his viewpoint, he says, the biotech market is increasingly sophisticated. But as far as management skill levels are concerned, biotech is no different to any other start-up business - "the people who develop the IP don't always have management experience, and at some point in time, professional management will need to be involved."

Wayne Bruce is CEO of one of the sector's newcomers, Ccentric. He has focused on biotech for about a year, and has found that salary is often by no means the main issue when it comes to bringing talented management to Australia.

"Demand for good senior people exceeds supply, so candidates can be discerning," he says. "It's not just about the money. It's the quality of people they work with, the company's culture, who they will have as a mentor, whether they will have options.

"The money is a threshold factor, and it's the softer issues that make the difference."

Overseas competition

With countries like Singapore increasingly hungry for bio-business, Bruce says, the competition for talented Australians to manage biotech now comes from overseas as well.

McKenzie says that when it comes to being competitive, Australia doesn't have to create a massive multinational, just a solid, viable industry.

"There are some experienced managers in the biotech space," he says. "I'm not sure the market is as accepting of people from the biotech space as it should be. We have wonderful IP in this country, and R&D. What we're very bad at is commercialising that - we're 10 to 15 years behind the rest of the world.

"The dilemma now is filling the 10-15 year void in commercialising good IP, and that means taking products to market."