Talent Spotlight: Ben’s Journey at Meet Life Sciences

Following on from school and college, Ben wanted to get straight into the working world. After a little while, he ‘wanted to get into more of a sales-focused position’ where he spent some time at a recruitment agency that specialized in building maintenance and construction before becoming more interested in both Life Sciences and technology.  

‘I wanted to make a difference in those sorts of industries... so I made an application to work at Meet, and here I am.’  

Talent academy application process 

In Ben’s words, the application process for Meet’s talent academy was ‘really straightforward’. 

‘I saw a posting, made the application and received a message the day after. I then had a call that same day with one of our talent acquisitions. The day after that, I had a quick online interview and the day after that, I came into the office, accepted an offer and signed the contract. It really was that rapid.’ 

Having had previous experience within the talent acquisition industry, Ben found it really refreshing to see that Meet put a lot of time and effort into their own recruitment processes.  

Ben then spoke a bit about the academy itself, and some of the important things he discovered: ‘One massive thing I learnt [during the academy] is the mentality side of things. I think it’s easy enough to do the job and the tasks that come with it, but if you don’t have the right mentality, things get tough’. 

With his mindset, Ben went on to secure his first 360 deal in just 3 months of working here.  

Support from the L&D team 

Ben said that the Learning & Development team were really positive – and helped him with progressing, especially during his early weeks. ‘I was getting guidance while I was on the phone, getting pointers of not necessarily what to say, but what direction to take the call’.  

He felt that, as the team got to know him, they tailored their advice so as to maximize his skillset. ‘They can see where you’re at, and kind of nudge you in the right direction.’ 

Life Sciences 

According to Ben, the world of Life Sciences is ‘an intriguing industry that can have real impact, whether you’re hands on doing these jobs and developing drugs, or if you’re facilitating it by putting the right talent on site.’  

He saw the opportunities that lie within the industry and was interested in learning more about its many fields and sub sectors. He then realized the importance of putting the right Life Sciences talent in the right places and how you’re all working towards the same goal of bringing life-changing medicines to market.  

Ben’s current role and impact 

Ben works in biometrics – an area where people handle, interpret and manage the data that’s pulled from clinical trials. They make sure that all data is correct, concise and are essentially ‘one of the many backbones in driving a successful trial’.  

By placing top talent within the biometrics sector, Ben is impacting how a drug gets taken from the beginning of a trial through to being approved, rolled out onto the market and sold to patients who are in dire need of it.  

Future aspirations 

Over the next couple years, Ben’s aiming to keep doing what he’s doing now – with more placements, more success, more clients and more results. He’d love to get experience managing people in the long run too, but his current goal is to keep driving results and finish the next two years with even more numbers.  

Words of advice  

We closed the interview with Ben by asking him to provide some words of advice for those who may be considering a career in recruitment, or are thinking about joining a future talent academy at Meet.  

His reply was, ‘if you are on the fence [about recruitment], just give it a go – you never know what might happen or how you may progress as a person, whether that’s financially, professionally or personally, as well’.  

And to those who are due to start at one of Meet’s future academies, Ben’s advice was to ‘listen to Nathan’ (the academy manager from our L&D team). He also added: ‘try and listen as much as possible to phone calls and then apply those same practices to your own work’.  

Essentially, observe as much as possible!  

Stay tuned for the next installment of our Talent Spotlight series. We’ll be interviewing people from all across the company and we're looking forward to sharing their exciting stories and journeys!