Are life sciences companies finally starting to value professionals with diverse and non-traditional career paths? 

A few months ago, I was retained to find a medical executive for a growing biotech. The Hiring Manager set forth all of the expected criteria during our briefing, and then something extraordinary happened. “You don’t need to find me a pretty CV,” she instructed. “I’m happy with a messy one.”

“You know, it’s ok if you find someone with diverse experiences,” she continued. “Or who took some time off or traveled the world or whatever.” As the proud owner of a messy — aka nontraditional career path – CV, I was ecstatic with this briefing.

Understanding my joyous response probably requires a little background. You see, thirty years ago, I applied to law school with a pharmacy degree and two years of pharmaceutical industry experience under my belt. I still remember the sting of reading my Harvard Law School rejection letter, which expressly declared my 5-year pharmacy degree to be “vocational training” unsuited for legal studies. Luckily, I have always been the type to persevere and received my law degree despite these narrow-minded rejections — performing quite well, thank you, despite my alleged lack of educational foundation. I then survived the interviewers that told me that I appeared professionally “unstable,” and landed a job at a top international law firm.

I spent the next 14 years pursuing a legal career, even reaching that coveted partnership milestone. The next decade, however, involved more wonderful mess. Expatriate living in two different European countries as a trailing spouse and mom, and my current (perhaps third) career evolution to a partner in a boutique (female-owned and operated) executive search firm. Now, when I walk someone through my professional history, the most common word that comes back at me is “impressive.” And, more importantly, in my current role, literally all of my life experiences are professionally relevant. Given the historical response to my nontraditional career path, the current response to my “messy” CV always makes me smile.

So, what has changed precisely to give a boost to the credibility of the nontraditional CV? The answer is simple. The life sciences business trends are creating working environments that are increasingly dynamic (i.e., a kind word for messy) shifting the types of competencies needed for business success. The pressure to boost pipeline innovation and speed to market — while preserving efficacy, safety, and quality — is creating a business model where cross-functional collaboration and external alliances are the norms. Big Data, digitalization, and artificial intelligence are drastically changing the scope and impact of products, services, and operations. Precision and personalized medicine are creating health care delivery models that are dismantling established treatment norms.

Sustainability of health care ecosystems with limited resources requires that patient access to treatments be value-driven. And, changes in global patient demographics, emerging market demands and opportunities, and an increasingly female talent pool, are presenting the industry with diversity demands that benefit from cross-cultural understanding and inclusion.

In an environment where change is a constant and lots of flexibility and curiosity are needed, the owners of a nontraditional CV experience suddenly have attributes that are recognizable as being valuable to business success. Messy CV owners have proven an ability to challenge the status quo, a quality that is needed to drive and embrace creative and innovative ways of working. Flexibility and change management resilience is derived from both personal and professional life choices. Living and working internationally supports multi-cultural understanding. Engaging in cross-functional roles or educational experiences enhances contribution and collaboration.

So what is our advice? If you are a professional with a nontraditional career path, take a look at the competencies you’ve gained as a result of your varying professional and life experiences and display them confidently in your messy CV. No apologies needed. If you are a hiring manager, don’t be afraid of messy CVs. Nontraditional candidates might have all of the competencies that are required for success in your challenging and dynamic global environment.

Last year, I created a virtual “women in leadership training” trash bin. The dismal statistics across all business sectors were irrefutable. The women in leadership dialogues I had embraced (or been subjected to) for my entire professional career were clearly not working.

Statistics on women in leadership across all business sectors continue to lag at unjustifiable rates, and not just at the C-Suite and board level, but also at the senior manager and director levels as well. Given the facts, I could not in good faith be a true advocate for professional women if I was doing nothing but recycling strategies that had repeatedly proven themselves to be ineffective.

Bin the baggage

So, I created my trash bin. Dumping my own training baggage seemed like a reasonable (and maybe necessary) place to start. I began with the easy targets. Topics like confidence, balance and guilt were the first to go. Be more assertive and be less aggressive were two topics that quickly followed.

Feeling energized, I began to talk to other professional women, inviting them to join in my soul-freeing exercise. As a result of these discussions, my trash bin not only filled-up, but virtually overflowed with tired topics. Delegation. Networking. Dressing for success. Learning to golf. And even with a few misgivings, in went mentoring, sponsorship and bias. No matter how much I liked those topics, they were not yielding results either. And, my absolute favorite topic to toss in the bin? Learning how to overcome the obstacles. Really? If we can identify the obstacles, shouldn’t we just be removing them?

Lift the barriers

And this is when the epiphany struck. Literally years of effort has been wasted on training that was designed to support women’s success in a traditional business environment that is riddled with obstacles. Unburdened by all the prior training noise in my head, the path forward was suddenly very clear to me. It was time to seek (and maybe even demand) changes to the traditional working environment, which honestly is not particularly friendly to anyone. Moreover, I believe the timing to seek these changes is ripe for three primary reasons, all of which have shifted the business motivations for this change.

• Talent demographics: Women have been pouring out of educational institutions worldwide at the BA/BS, MA/MS and PhD levels across disciplines at a rate that outpaces men for several decades now. The skills and experience of women are changing the demographics of the talent pools. As a result, it is more important than ever for companies to provide an environment where women can be successful. Failure to attract and retain a vital part of the world’s talent pool will jeopardize long-term competitive advantages.
• Female buying power: Women represent more than 50% of the world’s population in the majority of industrialized nations. They have always made 80% of the consumer buying decisions, but they are also now an empowered consumer force with their own economic independence. This is a growing market segment that needs to be understood and catered to for profitability, business growth and success in the future.
• Younger generation workers: The younger generation of workers – both male and female – is seeking non-traditional working environments, enabling them to pursue a myriad of work and life ambitions. Companies that refuse to challenge their workplace status quo will be unable to attract and retain the newest generation of workers.

Excuses are no longer justifiable. We must act now to create an environment that not only professionally empowers more than half the talent pool, but that also enables women to thrive. We need to remove the impediments that are keeping women from contributing to their full potential.

Is your training trash getting full? How do you think we can remove the roadblocks to women in leadership? Comment below.