02 Oct What background and experience, both level and type, do you look for?
There are a variety of approaches to building biomanufacturing teams, and they are driven, in part, by the facility certification and the types of work being performed. Many of these roles can be trained for and each of our institutions are positioned to provide extensive training, allowing us to consider candidates with varying levels of education, from those with a high school diploma to those with a PhD. Hands-on experience in the lab or blood banking-environment is much more common. Some roles such as Quality Assurance lend themselves to candidates with prior industry experience. Some institutions make use of med techs with hospital experience, in addition to or in place of team members with research backgrounds and find that their experience with regulated work and the standard of care practices can help to accelerate their training.
“We prefer to hire entry level technicians. Due to the specialization, finding experienced technicians is difficult. We end up paying more for experience that is not relevant to our department”