When you're scaling a life sciences start-up or scale-up, finding the right people means seeking individuals who will push boundaries and bring fresh thinking. If you want to build a team of innovators your hiring process needs to go beyond the standard CV reviews, interviews, and meeting the team. Here’s how you can pinpoint the talent that will actually drive innovation.

Look for intellectual curiosity

Innovators are usually driven by a deep sense of curiosity. They’re the people who don’t settle for easy answers or the first solution that comes to mind. In interviews, try to find out how candidates engage with the unknown. Ask them about a recent trend or development in your space that they’ve explored. What caught their attention, and why?

A particularly telling question might be:

• “What’s the last thing you researched out of personal interest or professional necessity? How did it change the way you approached a problem?”

You want to see if their curiosity leads them to act, not just absorb information. Are they the kind of person who takes an insight and puts it into practice? Are they someone that comes up with a lot of initiatives that struggle to make it out of the idea stage?

Problem solving is more than just smarts

Most interview processes already assess problem-solving skills, but to figure out who’s going to be a future innovator you’ll need to go a step further. You want to see how a candidate deals with situations where there aren’t any clear answers. Instead of asking how they solved a previous problem, give them a fake scenario related to your company with incomplete information or an open-ended challenge. This isn’t just about testing creativity; it’s about seeing how they manage complexity and ambiguity.

Ask something like:

• “Imagine you're dropped into a project that’s halfway through, and you disagree with the direction the team is taking. How do you evaluate whether the course is correct? What would you do to influence the outcome?”

This will showcase their adaptability and demonstrate how they handle a scenario where they might be going against the grain.

Look for a pattern of collaboration

Those that are able to work independently and thrive are great, but in a scale-up environment you need excellent collaborators and those who have natural influence. Innovation rarely comes from working alone. You need people who can take an idea, test it, and improve on it with input from others. But don’t just ask them to talk about working in teams—most people can give you that surface-level answer; you need to dig deeper into how they integrate others into their work.

For example, ask them:

• “Tell me about a time when someone else’s perspective fundamentally changed the way you approached a problem. What did you take away from the experience?”

The key here is to gauge whether they are open to change and if they credit others for shaping their thinking. Innovators are able to consider other viewpoints, and know when to pivot because someone introduced a different angle.

Gauge resilience with a different lens

Resilience is key in any scale-up environment but asking the standard “How did you handle a setback?” question might not get you the best insight into how a candidate truly operates under pressure. Instead, get them to share how they would handle a potentially demotivating experience. Try asking something like:

• “When you’ve worked on an idea or project that ended up being shelved or ignored, how did you handle it? What did you do afterwards, and did you revisit it later?”

This question shows you whether they can bounce back, but more importantly, if they’ve got the persistence to push a good idea even after it’s been rejected.

Look for work that shows initiative

A CV can only tell you so much, and interviews can sometimes fall short of demonstrating what a candidate has actually done. Ask for concrete examples of when they took the initiative in previous roles, whether that’s launching a side project, initiating a new process, or taking the lead on something outside their direct responsibilities.

Better yet, ask candidates to walk you through how they identified a problem no one else saw. You’re looking for self-starters who don’t wait to be told what to do and who see opportunities for improvement or innovation where others might see business as usual.

You’re building the future of your company—make sure you’re bringing in the right people to help you shape it. If you’re ready to scale and need support identifying top-tier innovators, get in touch with us. We specialise in connecting life sciences start-ups and scale-ups with the talent they need to thrive.