What’s the Buzz?! HR and Hiring Veterans in Biotech

Bre Cameron, Owner, HonorService Consulting, and Chris Frew, CEO, BioBuzz Networks, sat down to buzz about trends, insights, and the current landscape in HR and hiring in biotech for veterans.

December 14, 2023

BioBuzz has been connecting the life science workforce since 2009. We’ve built an expansive community in the Mid-Atlantic with a national readership that spans from Massachusettes to Florida, and New York to California. For our next chapter, we’re building a proprietary talent logistics model to help employers source and hire life science talent. Learn more.

Layering on top of our community of tens of thousands of life science professionals and employers, BioBuzz is looking to disrupt the $3.8 US life sciences staffing market with the Talent Lab.

Using the latest technologies, BioBuzz wants to solve today’s greatest challenges in hiring and career development and:

• Search, match, and hire talent on demand (full-time, contract, project & gig, consulting, and fractional executives).
• Close the skills/opportunity gap and diversify the talent pool.
• Strike an equilibrium between hiring supply and demand.
• Build community intelligence in and around biohubs, building a stronger regional ecosystem.

Bre Cameron, Owner, HonorService Consulting, and Chris Frew, CEO, BioBuzz Networks, dig in more. Watch the video below to catch up on their conversation or keep scrolling for the full transcript.

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Chris: Hi, everybody, it’s Chris Frew with BioBuzz. Welcome to another edition of “What’s the Buzz?” Today we’re talking to a veteran, veteran, veteran recruiter. She’s a Navy vet. She’s also a veteran of the recruiting industry for the past twelve years. And she’s a veteran recruiter who recently just started her own consulting company. Bre Cameron. Bre, welcome. Do you want to do a quick introduction?

Bre: Yeah, absolutely. So thank you so much, Chris. I’m so excited to be here. So, yes, I am a Navy veteran. I served from 2001 to 2006, stationed in San Diego. I was a photographer’s mate, which you don’t hear of a lot of those. And then after the Navy, I used my MGI bill to get my bachelor’s degree.

But even after getting my bachelor’s, I had a really tough time finding employment where I didn’t have to start completely over. Flash forward, five years after getting out I finally landed a role in talent acquisition. Someone finally took a chance on me, and even though I did have to start over and I started in a part-time position, I was able to work my way up quickly, become a recruiter, and then after about five years of working as a recruiter in various industries, various different positions, I got approached about becoming a veteran recruiter for a biotech company.

I had no experience recruiting just veterans. I thought it would be fairly easy, but little did I know it’s totally different recruiting veterans than it is non-veterans, and there’s a lot more involved. So I spent five years with that company, building their veteran hiring program and managing that, and then moved on to another biotech company where I also stood up their veteran hiring program there.

And then just yesterday, I launched my consulting company so that I can help more companies build their veteran hiring programs and hopefully have a bigger impact on the veteran community.

Chris: Well, that’s pretty exciting. We get you on just a day after the new journey begins. So that’s super exciting. I love it. So the name of your new company is HonorService Consulting, is that right?

Bre: Yes. And those are words that we use in the military, the Navy.

Chris: I’m getting a little bit of delay here, Bre. I don’t know if that’s you or me. Can you hear me? Oh, we lost her. All right, well, we’ll have her back on in just a second. Let’s see.

[30 second delay]

Bre: Sorry.

Chris: There you go. No worries. Technical difficulties?

Bre: Yeah. I’m not sure where I cut off.

Chris: You were just about to tell us about honor service consulting, right?

Bre: Yes. So HonorService Consulting. The Navy motto was honor, courage, commitment. I felt like it kind of mirrored that, and it was an honor to serve. It’s an honor to continue to serve veterans in some way, and I’m happy to help veterans who want to continue to serve various companies and industries as well.

Chris: That’s great. We’re launching this new platform called the Talent Lab and in doing so, we’re actually doing a lot of focus groups. So we just did a focus group with some consultants recently. And believe it or not, coincidentally, one of the things that came up, a theme that came up in that was service was a big reason why they were doing it. There was a very strong customer service mindset. So almost a servant leadership attitude that a lot of consultants really seem to embrace. So it sounds to me like that’s something that kind of you hold true internally as well.

Bre: Of course, yes. Absolutely.

Chris: So today we’re talking about HR hiring, especially hiring veterans in the military, kind of what’s the state of the state and things going on. So there’s a lot that we can cover today. I bet you and I could probably chat for well over 30 minutes.

As kind of maybe a starting point, could you tell us… I’m really impressed that you were able to, and I think it shows a need that you were brought on to help several biotech companies stand up or grow their veteran recruiting practices.

Both of them were large companies it looks like that you were part of. So could you tell us a little bit about what that was like standing up and what were the things that you learned? What were the really, I guess, learning moments?

You mentioned earlier that veteran recruiting is not like traditional recruiting. So can you just tell us a little bit about. Open up the hood and let us know what’s underneath?

Bre: Yeah, absolutely. So my first company, I had no idea what biotech was. I was familiar with pharmaceutical. I didn’t understand the difference between the two. They’re very similar, but there are differences. So for me, at first, it was learning the industry, trying to figure out where would veterans fit in here. When I first started with that company, the direction I was given was just to try to get as many veterans to apply as possible. And I was going to a lot of events.

I was meeting a lot of veterans, a lot of really great veterans. I was getting them to apply, but they never made it to phone screen interview steps, let alone offer and hired. And so I realized there’s a gap here. I need to figure out what it is that I can do to get them to those next steps. So it took a lot of training the recruiters, training hiring managers; trying to figure out where in the company have we had the most success in hiring veterans? And come to find out, a lot of times those areas had veterans in them that were kind of pulling in their friends. So the network, realizing how important networking was.

And then also one of the trends I was seeing was that every time I would take a hiring manager or recruiter, a civilian hiring manager or recruiter to one of the events, they would walk away just flabbergasted. I cannot believe how talented these individuals are, and they are so much more qualified than I realized.

And just kind of seeing that light bulb go off in their head. And then I had a believer after that. And so figuring out how can I do that on a larger scale? How can I get more veterans actually face to face with recruiters, with hiring managers, so that they too can see the valuable talent that they would be getting?So creating different types of events, different types of initiatives that would allow for more face-to-face interaction. Because no matter how hard you work on a resume, military resume, it is hard to understand. It’s hard for civilians to understand no matter how well you try to translate it. So that’s kind of the approach I took. It took me five years in that first company to kind of crack the code and get things rolling.

So with the second company, I knew exactly what to do, and I hit the ground running. I was able to make a bigger impact sooner, thankfully.

Chris: Yeah, that’s great. So it sounds like just awareness and understanding from your client side, like from the hiring manager as the client. Sounds like that’s one of the roadblocks or one of the issues you mentioned. Also, it’s hard for a civilian hiring manager to read a military resume. Did you do anything special to solve that problem or to address that in the recruiting process?

Bre: So a lot of times I would end up kind of having to create, like, a little paragraph when I would send it over to the recruiters about this is what they were doing in the military. They would be a really good fit for this. This is what this means.

Because a lot of times, the recruiters and hiring managers I worked with, they just assumed that all veterans would have to start in an entry-level position, which just isn’t feasible at all for any level of veteran. It’s very rare that anyone would. They’re going to be way too overqualified. They’re not going to be happy in that role, they’ve had much more responsibility. Even if they only served four years in the military, they had a certain level of responsibility that they were used to.

So when it came to the resumes, a lot of times I would have to translate that myself. But with all these initiatives, with all these face-to-face initiatives that I was implementing, after a while, managers, recruiters, I think they kind of started to understand a little bit better what some of these logistics, petty officer meant and things like that due to the trainings that I was doing.

But also they would see a veteran resume come across and they’d be like, yeah, we want to talk to them. Because they were so intrigued and impressed with the veterans that they had met so far that it started to kind of, yeah, if they’re a veteran, I want to talk to them. And they also started making referrals. Like, they’re not a good fit for my role, but I know someone else who has an opening. And so almost like bypassing that resume in a way. But we held workshops and all kinds of things, too, mock interviews.

That really helped to kind of bridge that gap as well.

Chris: Yeah, it’s really interesting. It sounds like just like with any type of cohort or population or different demographic, so much of it is just a learning element. We as humans, we only know what we know. Right? We get accustomed to our own bias and our own kind of world we live in.

So I just innately don’t believe we’re bad people. When people don’t know something, education is so important. If you don’t know, you’re just not going to go down that path.

And that’s the way with veteran hiring as well as in a lot of other populations, I feel like so much is just educating the end user or the client, the hiring manager.

Bre: Absolutely. And it was more or less, instead of just telling them that this is what they should do, it was showing them why they should do it. And I think that’s what really helped make the difference.

Chris: Yeah. So you said something earlier that stands out to me, and I’ve heard this before, is there’s a misconception that you come out of the military, you should be teed up for an entry-level job. But a lot of people are coming out with tremendous amount of leadership, responsibility, high-pressure situations where it’s binary results, succeed or don’t succeed. Right? That is definitely not an entry-level role. How did you bridge that gap? It sounds like events were a big part of it. But is there anything else that you bridge that gap? Because I’ve heard that before.

Bre: Right. And so probably the one initiative we had that made the biggest impact and really helped for managers to see the quality of these individuals, the value that they were going to bring to the table was partnering with Hiring our Heroes, doing the DoD SkillBridge Programs. And it’s such a great incentive. You bring them on for three months, three to six months. They work kind of in like an intern status, temporary status. The incentive is that they’re still in the military, so there’s no budget impact to these companies, which they’re like, oh, wow, I get free headcount. Yeah, of course we’ll make this work. So that’s the incentive.

That’s how you get them in. And then once they’re in, the feedback I kept getting from managers was one, I cannot believe how quickly they picked this up and they would realize, like, okay, they don’t need biotech experience. Not every position is going to need prior biotech experience to be successful in this role. And then two, the other form of feedback I would get is they are so much more qualified than I ever expected. So I was thinking of them for this role, like a supervisor role, but really they’re a good fit for a director role. And I wouldn’t have guessed because they couldn’t decipher the resume.

And so once they can see that the work that they do, and then that carries on, even if they ever only host one veteran through that program, in the future, they’re going to look at veterans differently and realize that they’re going to want to talk to them first and figure out where they could be a good fit.

Chris: You just got to get that one.

Bre: Yeah, it takes time. But by the end of working at that first company, I was bombarded with requests from vice presidents, senior leadership of like, “we want to do more, we’re opening a new site, we want to do more.” So word eventually spread.

Chris: Training is so big in this industry, and I hear that objection that you just shared, too. They don’t have biotech experience. So the SkillsBridge is one application, one program. But in terms of brass tacks internally, what was training like when someone came in with no experience? And what was it like overcoming that objection? Do you have examples outside of those kind of formal programs on how we can educate industry on kind of eliminating that as an objection?

Bre: Right. So what we would do in the fellowship programs that I stood up, and this was true for new hires as well, something that we would try to do for each fellow coming through, Hiring Our Heroes or DoD Skillbridge would have a buddy from our employee resource group. And so this is someone, and we would try to align it to where they had something in common, whether it was they did the same thing in the military, they were in the same branch, or they were on the same team that they’re going to be doing their fellowship on.

And so there were some similarities there where that person would be the most helpful to them. So they always had that buddy throughout their fellowship. And then I started having the hiring managers also assign a buddy on the team, someone that that person could shadow, who could be their point of main point of contact, who they could learn the most from, maybe someone that is also doing that job. And that seemed to be really effective because like I said, after a couple of weeks, they hit the ground running. They’re doing the role after just a few weeks, just a little bit of training.

When it came to hires that did not come in through a fellowship program, first thing I would do is welcome them to the company, introduce them to the employee resource group, try to get them in front of some other veterans, because it felt like veterans were the best people to kind of ease them into that environment, especially if they’re coming straight from the military. They felt comfortable with someone who’d been in their shoes. They knew they could ask the hard questions that maybe they would feel dumb asking someone else on the team because they want to sound like they know what they’re talking about. I relied a lot on my veteran network internally to help with that.

Chris: That’s great. Again, I think community is so important, whether it’s ERG’s. Again, the vet community is close and tight, and they serve each other ongoing serve each other. So that’s great. Can you share in your experience what are some roles or what are some different positions that seemed, that you saw a lot of traction with vets coming into?

Are there any trends that you saw or any particular roles that really aligned? And I know that, again, the vet population is very diverse, right. So there’s a lot of different roles. That might be hard to answer. But just in general, anything in the biotech field that you think align well?

Bre: Absolutely. So I would say with my first company that I worked for, surprisingly, it surprised us all that the top area for hiring veterans was sales. Makes sense, though, if you think about it. They’re used to an untraditional schedule, and they’re very self-disciplined. They like to travel, and they’re very professional and good at speaking with others and hearing no. So it does make sense that that would be a good fit for veterans. And then it was the second cybersecurity, IT type roles was the second highest there.

But I would say overall, when I’m working with candidates, the most popular request I get is for project management or something in operations. And so I think that overall, and that’s why veterans really would be good for any industry. But biotech, I don’t think they realize that in biotech there is this operations component to it. It’s not just sales, it’s not just science. It’s like this whole operations department that keeps it. That is the heart of it.

Yeah, I would definitely say, especially when you need someone in leadership in operations, that finding a veteran, the differences that I would hear that they. That these individuals made on their team after being hired was just phenomenal.

Chris: Yeah, I’ve heard that, too. Sales wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, but that does make sense as I think about it. Biotech, you mentioned operations, but biotech is also a couple different characteristics that I think, especially in the manufacturing or R&D side or even just across the organization, there’s often, it’s very capital intensive. Right? So decisions are very important. So there’s, like, critical decisions that have to be made, which I know is also the case in a lot of military roles. Strict adherence to guidelines, FDA guidelines, right? So coming out of the military, you probably have a similar experience adhering to rules, regulations.

One of the other big ones, I think, is just culturally, and I’d love for you to speak to this and any other reason why you believe that life science makes a great place for vets to consider, but it’s also duty to something bigger than yourself.

And one of the reasons why I love this industry is because I love the idea that the little things I’m doing are making a big impact and that I’m serving a greater population than just my company or the companies I support, but I’m serving a much more bigger cause. And so those are just some of the things I’ve heard in the past. I’d love for you to talk to that. And from your experience, what are those innate characteristics that are why life science should be a consideration and why employers should consider vets?

Bre: Absolutely. So I can speak personally. After the military, for years, I felt like I kind of lost my purpose being in the military, especially during the time that I was in the military. You felt at the end of each day, like, I’m doing something good. I’m a part of something bigger than myself. I’m helping and protecting people in whatever way I can. Whatever part I played in that for years, and it wasn’t until I was about maybe four or six months after working in the biotech industry that I realized I have that feeling back, that feeling of having a purpose and being a part of something that’s bigger than myself and once again helping people. And this time I wasn’t serving my country, I was serving patients in some way, and that was really meaningful to me.

And then just hearing the stories of the people that were helped by the products that these companies were making, that was really meaningful as well. And then watching other veterans after they got hired in, kind of finding that purpose again and feeling that sense of service, I think that’s probably the main thing that it comes down to, is just being a part of something great like that, that’s helping others and being able to make an impact.

Chris: Yeah, I’ve heard that several times, and I’m glad to hear you say the same. I’ve been recruiting for life science companies for almost 20 years now, share my age a little bit, and I can’t tell you how important it is that you have that kind of mission orientation.

This industry takes a long time to get a product to market. There’s a lot of hurdles. There’s a lot of challenges you have to get through. There’s a lot of no’s. There’s a lot of failed experiments, and so much is not the technical background. So much of what makes people succeed is, again, their passion they can bring to the table.

And I just think that if you’re in a life science company right now and you’re recruiting, it’s a tight job market. I know there’s been a lot of layoffs this year. It’s been a rough year for a lot of people, which I send blessings out to, but it’s still a tough job market for a lot of different roles. And there is a great population of people, something like 100,000. What are the numbers? How many retire every year from the military?

Bre: Oh, my gosh. I forget. No, but I think you’re right. I think it is about 100,000 a year that separate at least. Separate from the military.

Chris: Yeah, separate from military. What a prime pool of talent that thinks like you, that’s mission-driven like you, that knows how to follow SOPs. And to me, again, there’s tremendous opportunity now just transitioning.

So you’ve worked with a lot of large companies. I think one of the things I’d love to chat about with you today, just to get your thoughts on, is large companies can afford to hire a veteran recruiter. I’m sure they will be hiring you in HonorService consulting very soon here. And I know it’s only day two, but I have no doubt you have people lined up for that. But what’s the opportunity for mid-size or smaller companies? How do we bring them into the fold and make this easier for them?

Bre: Yes. A very good point, because I do know some smaller companies that would like to hire more veterans. And so what I would say is engaging with your local veteran community if possible. So if there’s a base nearby, they have TAP classes. It sounds fancy, but it actually stands for Transition Assistance Program. And so they give companies the opportunity to go in there and talk about what they do, and that gives the veterans who are getting, usually they’re within a year of transitioning out of the military. And so being able to get in front of a group like that, so they keep you in mind.

Also, any size company can sign up for Hiring Our Heroes or DoD SkillBridge, and I just saw someone put that in the chat, too. So any size company, so even if you just want to host like one or two, you can bring in veterans that way and then hopefully hire them on at the end.

Other things you can do, LinkedIn is an excellent tool for finding veterans. You don’t have to have a LinkedIn recruiter license either. You can find, if you go into previous jobs, you can go in there and just type in Navy, Coast Guard, whatever branches that you’re looking for, and it will pull up veteran individuals. So really easy hack right there. And I use that sometimes, too.

But I would say having someone that, who’s an advocate, who can kind of take that on as an extended duty to reach out to veterans and go to local job, veteran job fairs, local bases, and things like that.

Chris: Yeah, the word community came up several times. It is a community. And just like any recruiting, again, go back to as a recruiter.

So often clients just want to see resumes, and I always bring it back to baseball. They have a farm league. They invest billions of dollars in a farm league for talent, and it’s a talent development program. It’s interesting how, again, sports has kind of figured out some ways to nurture the right talent in other industries are like, just send me resumes when I need to hire. But it’s participating in the community.

And that’s why BioBuzz exists, to nurture a job seeker, a hiring community around different geographies. So I encourage everyone to really participate. We do veteran events. One of our Board of Buzz members runs, is part of a group called Reveille Grounds in Baltimore, and they’re a community for vets.

There’s a lot of programs in Maryland, just where I sit, I know you’re down in Georgia, but again, Kite had a Maryland facility where you were at. Amgen actually just bought Horizon. So Amgen is now part of Maryland’s community, but there’s a huge veteran population here.

We’ve got 5 – 10 ports and bases, like just all around the state. So I really encourage everyone listening from an HR perspective that there is a tremendously untapped opportunity, or maybe not untapped, but not tapped enough, maybe half-tapped opportunity that you need to think about.

And hopefully this discussion is helpful. Hopefully they’ll reach out to you also afterwards here to talk more about that. I know our new Talent Lab, we will have a veteran community in that. So that’s launching end of quarter one in 2024. So we’re very interested in this being a community that we support, that we invest in, that we increase participation in.

Again, if nothing else, just because geographically it makes sense the population is right here and primed for life science careers.

Well, we had some comments. Let me just check to see if anyone asked any questions. SkillBridge came up, it looks like.

Bre: And I see Chris said it was 200,000 to 250,000 who are separating from the military each year.

Chris: No kidding. That’s twice as much as we thought. I mean, hey, that’s even I knew.

Bre: It was in the hundreds of thousands. I just didn’t realize it was that many.

Chris: Yeah. Wow. Well, tremendous opportunity, I guess, in closing, you know, want to kind of keep to everybody’s schedules. One, how can people get in touch with you?

Bre: So you can go to my site. It’s honorserviceconsulting.com. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Bre Cameron, and yeah. And then my contact info is on LinkedIn as well with my business email address. Link to schedule a consultation with me. Yeah, I’m happy to talk to anyone who has veteran recruiting needs and see how I can help.

Chris: That’s great. And you’re helping companies. Are you also helping non-profits and other programs that are trying to support this, or are you really focused on employers right now?

Bre: Yeah, both. So anyone who has veteran hiring needs trying to figure out how I can help, in what way I can help, definitely will be tapping into my candidate network eventually as well. I definitely want to help individuals I’ve been working with for years find employment. But yes, helping other companies stand up their veteran hiring programs or how to implement different initiatives and things like that to increase their hiring.

Chris: That’s great. Well, you and I worked together closely when you were at Kite, and I can attest personally to how impressed I was with the results you did and how you engaged a lot of the candidates.

I actually talked to several candidates who also worked with you who had the same feedback. So I’ll just give my personal plug to anybody interested that you’re going to get a tremendous resource and brief. So thank you for taking the time today. I know this was a last-minute ask of mine to fill in, but I’m super happy that this worked out, especially like the launch of your new is. This is awesome. I can’t wait to hopefully check in with you maybe in six months and we’ll see how things are going.

Bre: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Chris. I’m so grateful and it was so good seeing you and talking to you again.

Chris: Likewise. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in today, and I hope this was a helpful conversation to give you some tips and reasons why you need to look at this community as a source for your next hire. So on that we’ll sign off and we’ll see you again next time. Thank you.

Bre: Thank you.