December 11, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer has a novel way of hiring its Swedish employees: The company told in-Pharm Technologist this week that it employs an “American Idol” style auditioning system when hiring new talent.
That included no resumes, no job descriptions, an in-depth personal view questionnaire and even a round where candidates were given three minutes to talk about the “most burning question for you.”
“We had a couple of vacancies this spring and we sent out an announcement, ‘we are looking for the future employee.’ And that was about it,” said Kim Sandell, director of supply and Operational Excellence at Pfizer Health AB in Sweden, told inPharmatechnologist.com, about the firm’s recent hiring near its Strängnäs site.
The ad, placed without any role specification, netted 200 candidates for only six positions—and Pfizer said it didn’t look at anything other than how applicants interacted.
“We tried it because we don’t really know what the future Pfizer employee looks like,” she said. “We know it’s more focused on how I am and how I interact with other people than which PhD I have.”
That “audition style” hiring process also included the verboten practice of ignoring applicant’s resumes or even qualifications to do the roles Pfizer was filling. Instead, the HR team involved asking candidates “five questions about their core beliefs – anything from the political state of Sweden to how you feel about healthcare,” said Sandell.
“I didn’t want to rule out people because their CV wasn’t good,” she said. “I think we unconsciously [reject] people if we read a CV and I’m sure we miss out on talent that way.”
The task revealed important insights into candidates’ personalities and how they interact with other people, Sandell said. “From that we started to pick good talent. And then we opened their CVs and saw what kind of background they had.”
After the group had been whittled down based on their answers and interactions, Pfizer then chose its new hires based on how well they fit with the company’s culture and mission. They eventually got everything from seasoned pros with chemistry PhDs to rookies with only a few years in pharma, sometimes even as entry level as an operator.
All six are now happily ensconced in the Stockholm-area plant and Pfizer told inPharmatechnologist.com that everything about the process was helpful, for both management and the new hires.
“The recruitment process gives them a very interesting starting point – it gives you [different] expectations of the workplace,” said Malin Parkler, MD of Swedish Pfizer told the website.
