How can Life Sciences companies hire faster without compromising quality?

Through my work with Panda International across Quality, Engineering and Validation hiring, I regularly see a pattern that does not get enough attention. A company describes a hire as urgent, and the need is genuine. The intended start date is ambitious. But the internal hiring process is not always ready to move at the pace that urgency implies. Candidate reviews take longer than planned. Interview slots are difficult to coordinate. Feedback circles back slowly. Internal approvals stall. And while all of this happens, the specialist candidates who could fill the role are often having conversations with other employers.

The question I keep returning to is whether a hiring process is genuinely prepared to make a good decision quickly when the right candidate appears.

In my experience, the first bottleneck is often the waiting that happens between steps rather than the interviews or assessments themselves. Companies usually establish timelines for reviewing profiles, scheduling interviews and making decisions, but those timelines can start shifting once the search is underway and the reality of coordinating multiple stakeholders sets in.

I see delays beginning as early as the first candidate review. A hiring manager receives a shortlist of strong profiles, but the review can take longer than expected because the criteria have not been fully agreed, or because the people who need to weigh in have not blocked out time. Interviews then get pushed because availability is limited. Feedback is delayed because the right people are not in the room at the same time, or because no one has been assigned to own that step.

These situations are understandable. Life sciences hiring often involves multiple internal stakeholders, regulatory requirements and busy functional leaders whose schedules are already under pressure. Thinking through the process before profiles start arriving can make it much easier to maintain momentum once a strong candidate enters the process.

When candidates are exploring several opportunities, consistent communication can influence how engaged they remain with each process. An employer that provides clear next steps and timely feedback gives candidates greater confidence in what is happening and what they can expect. In the searches I work on, strong specialist candidates are rarely having only one conversation at a time, and the employer that keeps things moving is usually the one that stays front of mind.

Research from the Talent Board's CandE 2025 benchmark, based on more than 66,000 candidates across 110 companies globally, found that award winning employers consistently make a go or no go decision within three to five days after interviews, while most organisations miss that window by at least a week. The study is global and not specific to life sciences, but the principle is one I recognise in every search I run. Candidates who experience momentum and clear communication tend to stay more engaged, even when the outcome is not immediately certain.

Speed matters in specialist hiring because the combination of skills companies are looking for can narrow the relevant talent pool considerably. In Quality, Engineering and Validation roles, I regularly see companies seeking very specific combinations of technical knowledge, industry experience and regulatory expertise. The more specific that combination becomes, the smaller the pool of genuinely suitable candidates tends to be.

Broader labour market data adds useful context here. UWV, the Dutch employment agency, reported a vacancy rate of 3.9% in the Netherlands in the fourth quarter of 2025, nearly double the EU average of 2.0%, and the highest ratio of vacancies to unemployed persons among the 26 EER+ countries it compared. UWV findings reported by HRMorgen also identify engineers among currently tight occupational groups and forecast continued pressure through 2030. In Flanders, VDAB's 2025 shortage occupation list contains 251 occupations, including technical roles and functions related to quality control.

Official labour market data does not isolate Quality, Engineering and Validation roles within life sciences, so these figures provide broader context rather than a direct measure of the QEV talent pool. What they do show is that the technical and engineering labour market in the Netherlands and Belgium is tight, and that companies hiring for specialist technical roles are operating in a context where suitable candidates are not abundant.

In the searches I work on, the relevant market is not always confined to one local geography. Candidates may be comparing roles across the Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe, particularly when the role requires a specific technical and regulatory mix.

A faster process can still include the full level of assessment required for a specialist life sciences hire. The biggest opportunity is often in how those assessment stages are organised, particularly the time between interviews, feedback and decisions, rather than in reducing the assessment itself. Life sciences companies operate in highly regulated environments, and hiring the wrong person into a critical Quality, Engineering or Validation position can carry significant consequences for compliance, product quality and patient safety. Rigorous assessment matters, and the caution I see in hiring teams is often entirely justified.

There is a meaningful difference between necessary evaluation and unnecessary waiting between evaluation stages. The time a company spends assessing whether a candidate has the right technical knowledge, regulatory experience and cultural fit is time well spent. The time a candidate spends waiting for feedback that has already been discussed internally, or for an interview slot that could have been reserved earlier, is simply adding delay without adding quality.

Research on selection methods supports this perspective. A foundational meta-analysis by Schmidt and Hunter, summarising 85 years of research in personnel selection, found that structured interviews are significantly more predictive of job performance than unstructured ones. The practical implication is that a well designed, structured assessment process can help teams assess candidates thoroughly while keeping each stage moving.

Most of the unnecessary delays I see in hiring come from things that could have been resolved before the search started. Hiring teams that have already thought through what is genuinely essential for the role, who needs to participate in the decision, what the interview process will look like and when interviewers are available tend to move much more smoothly once candidates enter the process.

When I speak with hiring managers about an upcoming search, there are a few practical questions that can help identify potential delays before candidates enter the process.

• Have we agreed which requirements are genuinely essential for this hire?

• Who needs to interview the candidate, and can we reserve their availability now?

• Who has final responsibility for making the hiring decision?

• Who owns feedback after each interview, and how quickly can we realistically provide it?

• Are there any internal approvals that could delay an offer later?

• Can we explain the full process and expected timeline clearly to a candidate from the first conversation?

• If we met the right person tomorrow, would we actually be ready to move forward?

That last question is the one I come back to most often, because it captures the core issue in a way that is easy to overlook during the early stages of a search. Answering these questions early can reveal where a process is likely to slow down and create a shared understanding of how the hire will be made before the pressure of an active search takes over.

Global hiring data reinforces what I see in practice. Greenhouse, analysing more than 6,000 companies and 640 million applications, found that time to fill increased from roughly 44 days in 2022 to 60 days in 2025, even as applications per job more than doubled. The finding is a useful reminder that higher application volumes do not necessarily lead to shorter hiring processes. How efficiently candidates can be reviewed, assessed and moved through internal decision making also plays an important role.

For me, the biggest opportunity is preparation. When the requirements, interview stages, decision makers and approvals are clear before a search begins, hiring teams are in a much better position to respond when the right specialist enters the process. That creates a better experience for everyone involved while still giving the company the time and information it needs to make a considered decision.

In conversations with hiring managers, I often come back to a simple reflection. If the right candidate appeared tomorrow, would the team genuinely be ready to move forward, or would they still be working out who needs to interview, when feedback is due and who signs off on the offer? The teams that can answer that question confidently before going to market tend to be the ones that hire most effectively.

If you're currently hiring Quality, Engineering or Validation specialists and would like to discuss what we're seeing in the market, feel free to reach out to me directly at m.vansloun@panda-int.com.