Spotlight: Stratacuity’s Top 15 Milestones
Stratacuity was founded in 2001, bringing talent to pioneering companies delivering innovations that may cure chronic and deadly diseases. To help celebrate our 15-year anniversary as a staffing outsourcing firm to the biotech industry, we have compiled a Top 15 list of key moments in our history.
- Stratacuity expands recruitment services by adding contract placement and payroll services.
- Stratacuity moves to permanent headquarters at 1 Cate Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
- Stratacuity launches a market-leading Managed Services Provider (MSP) offering.
- Seres Therapeutics chooses Stratacuity as its MSP partner; several others quickly follow.
- Stratacuity partners with Exelare to develop a fully customized biopharma applicant tracking system.
- Stratacuity joins The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, cementing the firm’s strategic role in the regional biotech industry.
- Stratacuity plays an influential role in three strategic corporate relationships leading to several new Cystic Fibrosis (CF) therapeutic programs.
- Stratacuity focuses on biotech staffing areas of Discovery, Tech Ops, Clinical Ops and Regulatory Affairs.
- Stratacuity witnesses the FDA approval of Orkambi, a breakthrough treatment for the underlying cause of CF in people with two copies of the F508del mutation.
- Stratacuity surpasses 2,000 placements.
- Stratacuity launches annual President’s Club for top-performing employees.
- Stratacuity Founder Patrick Marshall’s daughter Kate delivers the opening keynote speech at MassBio’s 2016 Annual Meeting.
- Stratacuity rebrands and launches a modern web platform and tagline, “Proven Scientific Placement.”
- Stratacuity COO Rob Patten awarded Breath of Life by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
- Portsmouth Herald recognizes Stratacuity for its commitment to corporate social responsibility.
We’re grateful to our incredible clients for the opportunity to do great work, and help them thrive in their areas of development and innovation. We’re excited about what the next 15 years may hold!
Hiring Zone: Recent Placements By Stratacuity
- Vice President, Clinical Operations, Cambridge MA. Early-stage company developing breakthrough therapies for rare disease (cystic fibrosis)
- Consulting Director of CMC Regulatory Affairs, Cambridge, MA. Small biologics company with multiple products in development
- Sr. QA Compliance Specialist, Cambridge, MA. Midsize commercial-stage biotech company
- Scientist, Immunology, Waltham, MA. Startup developing immunotherapies
- Sr. Scientist, Immuno-oncology, Watertown, MA. Biotech developing immuno-oncology cell therapies
- Associate Director, In Vivo Pharmacology, Cambridge, MA. Biotech developing protein therapies for muscular, fibrotic, immuno-oncology and autoimmune disorders
- Scientist, Cambridge MA, startup focused in rare genetic diseases and immuno-oncology drug discovery
News to Use: Biotech Company Starts Up With Stratacuity
VC-backed Biotech Startup
A promising venture-capital-backed biotech firm focused on small molecules and biologics, still in stealth mode, needed help developing its launch team. The Boston-area company’s CEO is a prolific inventor and cofounder of multiple early-stage biopharmaceutical companies.
Challenge
The success of an early-stage company depends largely upon hiring the right initial people. Hiring mistakes are costly, burning through capital, time and patent life. Additionally, VC funding can bring specific milestones, deliverables and objectives that must be met to ensure continued funding—making the need for right hires critical. The irony and challenge is: quality of talent is paramount, yet hiring diligence takes away from all the other tasks that need attention.
“Our startup team didn’t have the bandwidth to identify, screen and hire quality candidates,” said the startup’s Vice President of Pharmacology & Biology who leads hiring. “I can’t give a lot of time toward hiring and coffee meetings.”
Solution
From day one, the startup took a thought-out approach to finding the talent it needed to succeed. The founders entrusted Stratacuity with this make-it-or-break-it task. Stratacuity did not disappoint, adding four early employees, including two senior research associates, whose expertise spanned multiple technical disciplines.
“Stratacuity not only took on the role of identifying key candidates, they also significantly streamlined the process,” she said. “Erik [Rocheford] really listened when we discussed the roles we were looking to fill, and he provided a concentrated high-quality talent pool. I generally had relevant CVs within two days. I’m incredibly impressed.”
The VP contacted Stratacuity for help because she’d had good experiences when she’d worked with them at former companies. This time around, she’s using Stratacuity’s new Managed Services Program (MSP) to handle all of the company’s contract workforce needs, scientific and nonscientific, and covering recruiting, benefits management, payroll and reporting.
“Stratacuity understood our needs and did a great job in managing expectations on both sides.”
— Vice President of Pharmacology & Biology, Biotech Startup
Benefits and Results
So far, the Stratacuity MSP program has sourced four of the company’s seven-person team. And, said the VP, “We’re very happy with the quality of the individuals in terms of their contributions to the science and the culture they’ve helped create.”
“Stratacuity is understanding what we’re needing and finding the right people,” she said. “We will continue to use their services for other workforce needs down the road.”
In addition to being a fast-learning and high-performing HR partner, other benefits of Stratacuity’s MSP program include:
Fast access to top-quality candidates
- The hiring process took, on average, two weeks per candidate from the time the hiring manager received the CV.
- All candidates came from larger established biotech companies and had several years of related experience.
- Stratacuity has a proprietary database of more than 50,000 scientific candidates and access to even more high-quality non-scientific candidates through its MSP service.
Rapid onboarding
- The pace of a startup is relentless; Stratacuity helped by not only leading hiring but also by preparing new hires so that they could be productive from day one. “Our additions have to be able to be up and running very quickly,” the VP said.
Streamlined, cost-effective hiring process
- Stratacuity’s 15-year history in the business helped to deliver seasoned candidates in a time crunch. The firm’s efficient and consistent processes that reduce time to fill and MSP volume rebates that reduce cost are the ideal fit for budget-conscious startups.
- The startup has a single point of contact for scientific and nonscientific hires. That means one service-provider relationship to manage.
Excellent fit—contractors become permanent
- Stratacuity’s roots in permanent placement and mantra that Chemistry Is Everything™ in a successful match yields new hires who want to stay and companies that want to keep them.
To learn more about how Stratacuity’s MSP program can help your company rapidly access, hire and manage scientific and nonscientific contract workers, please call Jeff D’Italia at (603) 766-0600 or visit stratacuity.com.
“We’re very happy with the quality of the individuals in terms of their contributions to the science and the culture they’ve helped create.”
— Vice President of Pharmacology & Biology, Biotech Startup