Tech Talk: The Future of Work in Life Sciences

Alanah Nichole Davis, Lead Baltimore Reporter, Technical.ly, sat down with Chris Frew, CEO, BioBuzz and Workforce Genetics, to talk tech and Talent Lab.

November 3, 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.

Alanah Nichole Davis, Lead Baltimore Reporter, Technical.ly, and Chris Frew, CEO, BioBuzz and Workforce Genetics dig in more. Watch the video below to catch up on their conversation or keep scrolling for the full transcript.

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Alanah: Hello everybody and welcome to LinkedIn Live. My name is Alanah Nichole Davis, and I’m the lead reporter for the Baltimore Market at Technical.ly. We write to an audience of aspiring and established technologists and I’m here with Chris Frew. He is the CEO of BioBuzz. Hi Chris.

Chris: Hi Alanah. Thanks for chatting with me today.

Alanah: Of course. I understand that you started out in biology because you love science and it turns out that maybe there was a little faux pax with organic chemistry. Can you talk to us about how you got here and how you became the CEO of BioBuzz?

Chris: Absolutely. Someone shared my dirty secrets, huh? Yeah, so, I love science.

I always have as a little kid. I went to Towson University just north of Baltimore and I started off for a year and a half in the biology major. And then I hit organic chemistry and I’m like, this is really tough. And it was a kind of, it really hit a wall and I said, this is something I really want to do.

And, at the time, the career, you know, I didn’t know what other careers there were out there with a biology background. And so I ended up pivoting into business. And then when I graduated I found out that you can love two things and do two things, you know, in the workforce, which I didn’t know as a student.

You know, you’re young, you’re naive and I got into recruiting and realized that I could recruit scientists and engineers and I could recruit for life sciences, and I didn’t have to be on the bench making things up or blowing up labs. I could just help; I could help the people that were helping the patients.

And, so that was the start of my journey into the life sciences space. I was kind of an intrapreneur before an entrepreneur, so I worked for a local tech recruiting company. And propositioned them to start the life science division, which I grew over 10 years grew to a decent-sized portion of the company.

And I haven’t looked back. I mean, I think the life science market is amazing. The community’s amazing. The mission is amazing. In fact, you might be able to see behind me, you know, our, we have a saying we say here, “Changing lives through work.” Changing lives through work is something we think about every day with what we do at BioBuzz.

And I also run a recruiting company, so it really hits home. I mean, the work that the people in our community do changes lives. It changes lives for families and patients and saves lives. So we think about that each and every day.

Alanah: Well, thanks for sharing that origin story and sort of changing of minds and our lives and sharing, you know, sort of the essence of what life sciences is doing here in Baltimore. And shout out to the Tigers over at Towson University as well as Patrick. He’s the director of entrepreneurship over there. I’ve had many conversations with them. Yeah. But we’re here to talk about what BioBuzz is doing.

You’re building a talent marketplace. Before we sort of dig into that, I just want to talk about what brings us here. You’re about to enter a new chapter, so I’m sort of interested to hear what your vision is to tech-enable your talent marketplace.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. This is, I would say, is kind of like chapter three for us.

So, you know, if I start at the beginning, I would start with BioBuzz. BioBuzz started in Baltimore. So we’ve been a Baltimore-based, made in Baltimore, and this is all over who we are. We started in Baltimore during a tough time, 2008, 2009 when there was a recession going on, and the region lost about a thousand jobs.

A lot of them in biomanufacturing, which are really good, well-paying jobs in the area. Lonza left Baltimore, Baxter left Baltimore, Activist Shire. We had all these companies shut down in Baltimore and suddenly there was all this workforce that was left without, you know, left without work.

So we started BioBuzz as a way to better connect the workforce. To build community, to help one another out really. And I think that roots us and has always rooted us in the workforce. Community has been at the core of who we are and who we’ve always been.

Fast forward a little bit and just the fact that we were building this workforce community I started volunteering. I started, you know, working on different boards. I was on the Life Governor’s Life Science Advisory Board subcommittee, not the board, but the subcommittee for Workforce Development and Connectivity.

In about 2016, what was happening in Maryland was that we were going through this brand identity crisis. We were like, how, how do we compete nationally here in Baltimore and across Maryland? How do we compete nationally with Boston and San Francisco? We needed a brand, we needed a rallying cry. So, you know, during that experience and working with CEOs and working with groups like BioHealth Innovation and MedImmune at the time, we uncovered was there wasn’t a media partner for the biotech industry exclusively, like just focused on biotech.

Like you all celebrate entrepreneurs in tech. Just to shout out to Technical.ly, you guys do such a good job at rallying around the entrepreneurship community and what we found was there were silos. It was actually in Baltimore here that I got to meet Steve Case, the AOL Co-founder.

And he said, “I travel around the country and every entrepreneur ecosystem needs a media partner to celebrate it.” And it was that moment I went home, I told my wife and said, “Hey, we’re gonna take that networking event that we’ve been doing and we’re gonna turn it into a media company.” Because we need to celebrate this biotech industry better, and we need to, you know, promote this workforce better.

That was like chapter two, you know, and we started celebrating the community as we started celebrating the entrepreneurs. And we also then found out that companies were looking to us and saying, “Hey, I’m trying to hire executives from other markets and I need you to showcase this region for more than just, you know, one or two companies.”

I need you to showcase this region that there are lots of options for executives to move their family here. So we realized that a portion of our revenue was coming from employers who were leaning on us for employer branding, for recruiting, marketing campaigns, for really kind of getting the word out.

Again, Alanah, I come back to the fact that talent and workforce, no matter which chapter has always been at the center of what we’ve done. We’ve always had a talent marketplace. Really it’s just been in different forms, you know, organically as an event and then through more kind of stories and media and, and then soon through, through technology.

Alanah: It sounds like you guys are doing some amazing stuff. And thank you so much for, you know, coupling that with a celebration of what Technical.ly does to sort of cover the entrepreneurship and the job marketplace here in Baltimore and beyond. As you know, we’re in a couple of other cities like Philly, Pittsburgh, DC and we launched a tech economy dashboard earlier this year, and we know that there have been some layoffs because we said so in our coverage.

I interviewed you and had the opportunity to chat with BioBuzz Back in September, I think you guys were doing a job fair. And at the time we spoke it was happening over in the Baltimore Peninsula, which is where just before we started this live, you told me your offices are located. S shout out to MAG Partners and all the folks over there who were sort of developing that area of Baltimore.

There were like 150 folks registered when we talked. I want to hear about how that fair was. And you know, how you guys are going about being on the ground, you know, to make sure that folks are getting into those roles the way you spoke about a little bit earlier.

Chris: Yeah, great question. And, and that’s another good example of BioBuzz’s brand when those layoffs happen.

The Emergent employees reached out to BioBuzz and said, “Hey, there’s something happening that we don’t like in this community. We’re gonna need help. Can you help us?” So I think that also speaks to the fact that just, you know, our community looks to us for things like that, to support them when it comes to jobs and workforce.

So that was something that Randy, one of the employees over at Emergent, reached out to us about. And so we had 20 employers over 150 of those employees came to the job fair and we’ve gotten probably at least maybe 10 or so people that give really good feedback about interviews and jobs that has come out from the fair itself.

The whole point when we really kind of responded was, “Hey, we need to rally and keep these jobs in Maryland. Keep ’em in Baltimore.” It’s important. For every one biotech job it creates 3.94 or something like, I don’t know how you create a 0.94 other jobs, but it’s got a 3.94 impact when other jobs.

So that’s a big loss for Baltimore when you have 200 plus people that lose jobs in the city. So for us, it was really important to step up and we had a lot of sponsors and supporters that came up for that.

But one of the things we learned from that is that the existing model is inefficient. Right? So that’s the part of what has taken us to this talent marketplace.

You know job fairs, job boards, recruiters… the job becomes the most important element when in reality I think talent is the most important element. Talent is the asset, talent is the people, that’s the most important piece.

And what we realized through the job fair was it was hard to keep people connected. I mean, we created an open-to-work list and we were sending that out to employers and we were sharing that with employers, but it was still very kind of manual and it was still inefficient.

So it really helped us continue to step back and look at things. The current job-centric model that we all operate in is where a job board is almost at the center, or a job position is at the center. If you look at a talent marketplace, it puts people at the center and that’s what we want to move to.

We want to focus on emphasizing building profiles and building people and helping to make that the important part of it. And again, it’s happening in other industries, right? Like Upwork and MarketerHire; platforms out there have done this, created a marketplace, a freelancer marketplace, or a jobs marketplace where the assets become the talent.

And I think back to the job fair again, that,, for me, was an important element and I’m really proud of the results we had and the people that stood up. But it also emphasized that there is a better way that we can create, you know, to connect employers and job seekers more seamlessly.

And especially, sorry to keep talking about it, but especially, most systems are set up for full-time jobs right now in biotech. There aren’t a lot of platforms that help biotech workers get consulting jobs, get gigs fractional executive work or you know, and again, that is what people come to BioBuzz for the past 14 years to do to find the next consulting job or to hire the next, you know, fractional executive or to find the next lab tech.

So again, we’re just tech-enabling what we’ve been doing for years and making the whole process more efficient.

Alanah: Thanks so much for sharing that. And it’s a sentiment that I share, and I know that Technical.ly shares that. You know, we’re a news organization that sort of focuses on and connects and challenges a community of technologists.

We’re talking about the people. It’s not just about the roles. And so I know we share that as, as you know, we also come up on our 15 year mark next year. So I know that, you know, there are partners in this work who are continuing to sort of believe in the innovation that’s coming. From anyone anywhere.

Right. But especially Baltimore. So, yeah, I’m excited. You know that Baltimore is a topic that’s near and dear to both of our hearts. So I want to talk about what role Baltimore plays for you in this next stage of national growth.

Chris: Yeah, great question. Well, it’s played a role in our growth and our history and everything else, so it’s gonna play an important role in our next chapter as well.

We are very proud of participating in the Tech Hubs grant application with GBC; they did a tremendous job on that, and we’re excited for this next phase to help Baltimore win. The phase two grant and the opportunity to build a biotech and AI hub in Baltimore is just such a game changer for this city.

You know, in general, Baltimore also reflects a lot of other markets that are emerging in biotech. A lot of potential. But we need to do more, right? We need to do more to really codify the community. Baltimore has tremendous assets when it comes to the universities around here. Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, UMB, UMBC, Morgan State.

There’s just great, you know, engineering and scientific innovation that’s coming out. Unfortunately, a lot of that doesn’t hit the streets of Baltimore. Some of it leaves before the people even graduate. They’re already starting companies in Boston or San Francisco, and I think, you know, talent and capital are really important for fostering our economy here.

We can’t change, the capital landscape, but we can absolutely change the talent landscape. So where we want to really wrap our arms around Baltimore as a case study and show a couple things and on our platform, we have a couple segments of workers we’re going to really empower.

One is that emerging workforce, whether you’re coming from an underrepresented community or community outside of biotech or from the military, you’re figuring out how do I get one of those high-paying jobs in biotech?

How do I showcase my transferable skills? That’s a population, that’s a persona or a group that we really want to wrap our hands around and show that there’s a way to enter. So we’ve talked about like democratizing access to life science careers.

So in Baltimore we have a tremendous workforce. We have a long history in manufacturing, a long history in textiles. We’ve got a really diverse workforce ideal for a biomanufacturing type of employment. We just don’t have enough employers.

We also have great startups. The other population we want to help startups with is fractional executives and consultants because startups have great technology and ideas, but not a lot of capital.

So, you know, there’s a great way that we can connect startups with executives all around the country. Through, you know, the platform we’re building so that they can become more fundable without having to have those people here in the city. So the technology can be here, they can build a company or they can stay here, but they get the resources they need to scale their company.

Those two groups especially we are really interested in. In the Baltimore market and you know, we’ve had a great relationship with BTI, which does lab tech training programs for Baltimore City. And I think that what we can do collectively as Baltimore and collectively with, with the support we want to provide is to showcase that we can build a really strong workforce here.

And if we show the workforce can come and we can show the potential, then more companies will come. And that’s what we really need. You know, we need some larger companies, especially since Emergent, one of the three top employers, is not here. So we want to do everything we can to showcase that the talent is here.

We know the talent is here, the technology’s here, the innovation’s here. The passion is here. I mean, Baltimore residents are passionate. I mean, there’s a lot of great people that love this city. So I think from a BioBuzz perspective, we wanna show that we can upskill and we can, we can showcase a workforce that is ready and able to fill those biomanufacturing jobs, especially all when all the jobs that are created.

When we get the tech, that second tech of grant coming in, role in workforce development, and then just. Connectivity, you know, help connect the region.

Alanah: Thanks for, you know, answering that and just for talking a little bit about that Tech Hub designation. Shout out to Baltimore and that consortium of over 38 initiatives, organizations, and institutions, yours included.

That sort of, you know, contributed to us being able to get that designation from EDA. I had an opportunity to moderate another conversation earlier this week at the Baltimore Together Summit. I believe some of your folks were there as well too.

I had a conversation with the CEO over at GBC, Mark Anthony Thomas, who once again, like we talk about, highlights individuals in Baltimore and in our market who are just fascinating. I mean, these folks are coming from all sorts of different cities. I found out that he’s a filmmaker and a poet who would think, you know, they mean that you’re connecting these sorts of opportunities to people who you wouldn’t necessarily see in those roles.

But he is just smashing it. He introduced President Biden at the announcement for Tech Hubs. I was just so excited, you know, to sort of see Baltimore representing on a national, on a global level. And so I’m excited as you guys continue to scale those opportunities for jobs in specifically the biotech sector.

I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t shout out TWIJ. It’s TWIJ, that’s one of Technically’s newsletters where we’re sort of introduce folks in our markets to jobs, you know, all across the sort of places that we cover. And I know that you guys do a similar thing.

So I’m interested, as you get a little bit more tech-enabled with what you’re gonna do, what does that look like? What should people be looking out for in their inboxes on LinkedIn? Where can folks be following BioBuzz and what’s coming up in this third chapter?

Chris: Absolutely. So, uh, obviously biobus.io is, is our, you know, home base. So come and, and follow us, subscribe to our newsletter. We are, we’re, we’re definitely going through this transformative process right now.

So we had a job board and we sunset it. We closed down the job board and now we have people signing up every day to be part of the talent community. And what we’re doing right now is building it.

If I could frame the picture of what we’re doing for the talent marketplace and the technology, that might help people understand how they could get involved, how they could sign up, and what they should keep an eye out for.

So the talent marketplace, it’s a two-sided talent marketplace, right? We have opportunities on one side from employers, and we have talent profiles on the other, and then they meet in the middle around gigs or full-time jobs or fractional executive jobs, or emerging jobs for entry-level workers or apprenticships and internships, but it’s the two-sided element that’s important.

So we have job seekers signing up right now and building and providing some basic information on their profiles and who they are and what careers they’re looking for. The next phase as we emerge from this crowdfund is to really invest in the product development.

So we’ve done a lot of specking out of the technology and product roadmap and what we want to build, but right now, while we’re building demand, we’re working on the talent profiles. So understanding skills and what type of roles people are looking for.

So that basic profile. Then, at the same time we’re onboarding employers who are interested in hiring for the platform as we build it. So once we launch, we’ll already have some basic matchmaking that we’ll be able to accomplish. But the challenge with the two-sided marketplace is you have to build both sides, right?

So we’re in the process. Before launching, we’re really building the talent pool and understanding the talent pool, who they are, skills they have, and career goals they have, and we’re not starting from scratch. We have a 30,000 person community that we’ve grown over the years with BioBuzz.

We’re also partnering with my recruiting company to really further expedite and tech enable the conversations we’re having with job seekers each and every day to better build the profiles. So that’s the state we’re in right now. We’re really kind of building the candidate marketplace side of things right now and really trying to build out as strong as we can.

So when we’re ready to open up the employer side of the marketplace, we’ve got really good data and really good information on candidates, especially at those levels, right? The consultant, fractional executive level, the kind of mid-level people who are looking for more full-time or temporary contract work. And then that emerging student or transitioning level from other industries.

That’s where right now. To get involved right now, come to the Talent Lab. It’s a tab on the BioBuzz website and you just start your profile. It’s a very basic build right now. And then what’ll happen is you’re going to, as we hit the next technical milestones, you’re going to get an email. We’ll reach out and say, “Hey Alanah, exciting news! We have the next phase of your profile ready to be developed. Come in and we’ll take you through an onboarding process and you can continue to build that out.

We are going to be taking a very skills-first approach. It’s important to us that we focus on skills, not just resumes. So that’s what the experience you’re going to see as this rolls out; you’re going to be building your profile based on skills, competencies, things like that. Not just upload your resume and we’ll let you know if someone’s interested.

We’re really focusing again on skills, transferable skills, things like that.

Alanah: Thanks so much for getting into that for me. And I just want to affirm, Chris has so many years of experience. I’m hearing from some of the folks over at BioBuzz before this conversation in recruiting. So I know that some of the things that you’re looking to do with this new platform are going to be able to search, match, and hire, like you said.

I know that you’re looking to sort of close the skills gap and that you’re working with some partners here in Baltimore to sort of do that.

In sort of building that community intelligence around biohubs, I know that we’ll be able to build a stronger regional ecosystem that’s so important. I just wanted to sort of affirm that fact.

And I also wanted to get some insights from you. I know that over at Technical.ly, we’ve got an editorial calendar right now of resilient tech careers, and I spoke to a recruiter over at T.Rowe Price the other day, and she sort of, she sort of, that’s a tongue twister, she shared with me some of her insights around what aspiring technologists and even folks who might be in biotech, I guess in this sort of instance, like to know. Because aspiring technologists might be eager to learn about common pitfalls that job seekers might encounter especially when you’re new to a field.

You’re talking about building those skills. So we’re talking about folks who might be coming straight from training programs, and maybe it’s not the resume, but it’s the skills that might need to speak for them. Could you share some advice or strategies for individuals who might be interested in transitioning into biotech?

Chris: Absolutely. And, and thank you for, for recognizing that. I always tell people all the time, like, I feel like I was built for this next chapter. Like I’ve got 20 years of recruiting and staffing. So I’ve talked to hundreds of hiring managers and I still do each and every day as we’re working to hire for them.

And I’ve helped put thousands of people to work. So, you know, this is something that’s just ingrained in who am. I wake up every day ready to change lives through work, and that’s what I’m passionate about.

When I talk to people about coming into the biotech industry, I think one of the things that we really want to help to influence is awareness. A lot of people just aren’t aware of what careers are out there. And I’ll reference this, so we all grow up with these [phones] in our hands, right? We understand what apps are and programming, so everybody has a little bit more of a connection to programming careers or tech careers than they might do.

I mean, most people don’t grow up with a bioreactor in their home. There might be a time when that happens where you’re kind of making, growing your own meat or something like that, But right now it doesn’t. We’re not growing up with a spectrometer in our room or an HPLC machine. The tools that scientists are using to develop medicines and to produce medicines aren’t commonplace in our household.

So I think that it creates a gap, I think for some people to overcome that gap, I think it’s awareness, right? The first thing is awareness. And I think that anybody aspiring to come into this field, don’t be intimidated. They’re just terms; they’re just machines. Everybody can learn these machines. But it’s an awareness element.

You also need to understand that this is a little bit of a different industry because it’s regulated. Some of the barriers that we often see is that if you’re an employer hiring, you’re looking for someone that understands that this is a regulated field. There are very specific processes you have to follow.

They can teach you them, but they need to show you competence so that you can build trust in them. You’re going to follow procedures, come with integrity, come with a natural interest in learning. If you see something that doesn’t look right, you’re going to say something.

So these are just some basic characteristics that we want to start really sharing with this emerging group of people looking to get into the industry so that those aren’t barriers that prevent them. They could have great skills, but if they don’t convince that hiring manager that those characteristics are there, then they’re not going to get the opportunity.

So these are problems we can solve, right? We can help show people and teach people these things because they are bringing the skills. You can bring skills from food manufacturing or manufacturing something else into biotech and do that. And you know, we’re not doing this alone, as I mentioned.

We’ve got a great Board of Advisors helping with the product. We’ve got a group of Ambassadors who are amazing and coming from all aspects of the industry who are advising us and giving us insights into what we need to help solve for. In fact, I’m on with three of them next week doing LinkedIn Lives.

A little plug for next week. One is around HR with Karen Haslback and Nick Droste is doing one about transitioning military into life sciences. and Sarah Boynton and I are going to be talking about talent and, you know, the human elements. I think if you tune in, you’re going to hear us talking a lot about these things.

What are the human elements preventing people from getting into the life sciences careers? From our standpoint, these are solvable problems. There’s no reason anybody that’s interested, that understands what they’re going to be doing for a job every day, shouldn’t be able to get into this field. And we want to enable that. We want to be a change agent that can enable that and make that pathway easier.

Alanah: Well, I know we’re coming up on our end and I know the list goes on of things that we could sort of talk about as it pertains to BioBuzz’s new Talent Lab. I know that you guys are sort of poising or predicting that you’ll be able to disrupt the life sciences staffing industry and that will be in the amount of like $3.2 billion over the next five years over 15 markets.

There’s a lot of different data here and I can’t wait to check back in with you. So I hope that we’re able to get back on LinkedIn Live if you’re not burnt out completely from the conversations you’re set to have next week.

Chris: No way. I would love to continue the conversation.

Alanah: I hope we can follow up about the progress that’s happening around this campaign and that’s happening around the Talent Lab.

Chris: I would love that. And I appreciate all that you all do to celebrate our ecosystem in Baltimore tech and biotech and health tech and all of that combined. And if I could just close with a little bit of a why. I mean, we’ve always been a community-first organization. So as we’ve pivoted into becoming this really tech-enabled business. We really wanted our community to buy into that and understand that this is just a continuation of what we’re doing and a continuation of what we’ve always been so to us its like bringing our community along for the ride.

Whether you want to invest a hundred dollars. Instead of paying a hundred dollars membership fee in a year or two, or you want to invest thousands, or whatever that might be, we really appreciate it and we want to bring our community with us.

Again, we’re community-led, community-driven and now we’re getting to be community funded and to me, nothing could make me more proud. And it is also very humbling knowing that we’ve got so many people that do support us and the work we’re trying to do. So, again, thank you for the opportunity to share our story and talk with you.

Let’s, let’s all support each other. Pretty soon we’re going to turn around and Baltimore’s going to be, you know, leaps and shoulders above where it is today.

Alanah: I think it absolutely will be. I hope that everyone tuning in is able to follow BioBuzz. You can follow them on Instagram at BioBuzz, you can follow them on Twitter, and you can follow technically if you type in “technical.ly” on any platform. So thanks again, Chris, for this conversation.