Celebrating one year

We’re so excited to share with everybody that it’s now more than a year since Apsida launched and although we are in the midst of uncertain times, we still wanted to celebrate and share our journey so far. Being able to work in such an incredible sector and have an impact in spite of a global pandemic has been a huge achievement for us. We’ve summarised some of our thoughts on the last year (as well as our plans for 2021), and we hope you enjoy them.

As a collective, we chose to set up Apsida Life Science because there was a big gap in the market to service clients in an innovative way. Recruitment shouldn’t be transactional, and a ‘one size fits all’ process unfortunately doesn’t work. We saw that there was an opportunity to launch a business that would provide our clients with tailored talent solutions; and our candidates a space where they could talk about the future – not just the here and now of their career. We’ve noticed a huge shift in the way that recruitment businesses operate throughout our tenures, and identified that modern, consultative agencies who focus on having a strong value proposition across more than just recruitment are market leaders. We resonated with the idea of being more than just “another agency” and focused on bespoke, flexible consulting to help both clients and candidates achieve their goals.

The response from the market has been incredible; our team combined has over 35 years of experience in the industry, and we’ve been grateful to candidates and clients who have supported our journey thus far. It always sounds a bit corny to say it, but in essence setting up Apsida Life Science enabled us to chase our dreams and make an impact in our sector. To all of our friends, family, peers and competitors, thank you for supporting us. When Covid-19 started to visibly affect the recruitment industry, admittedly it was a tentative time for us being a start up, and we had to make some quick decisions and become completely remote. Luckily we work in a sector that would directly help the Covid-19 outbreak, so the biggest change for us was embracing a work from home model whilst we were still in the process of building our culture and team. 

Technology has been a huge savior for us during Covid-19, and having the right equipment and software enabled us to push on without interruption. We also made the decision as a leadership team that panic would hinder rather than help us, so focused less on “recruitment” in the general sense and focused more on consulting those in the market who had been affected. This mindset also was applied internally; and over communication, trust and believing in our employees gave us all determination to push through. Clients and candidates need recruiters who can advise, and we saw this as an opportunity to connect with new businesses and demonstrate why we were different and where we could add value.

Our team has been incredible; we wanted to ensure that our hiring was strategic and that every consultant had expert knowledge in their market. Two of our founders Michael and Jamie spent many years training and developing the team that now work with us at Apsida, and we had complete trust that every consultant on board would echo our values to clients and candidates. It can’t get any more challenging than a global pandemic, so let’s hope that Covid-19 was the biggest hiccup we’ll encounter! A company is nothing without their employees, so a huge thank you goes out to every consultant at Apsida who continued to deliver and support the wider business.

The future is something we’re excited about, and our second year of business is going to be focused on building out our contract and interim team as well as taking steps to make an impact in the USA. The Life Sciences market is constantly growing, and having worked internationally for a number of years has given us more appetite to expand and introduce our unique way of working to clients across the pond. Aside from growing in headcount and geography, we want to focus on building an inclusive, dynamic and exciting environment that will enable us to innovate further and be recognised as a leader in our market.

So, thank you – to every client, candidate, referral and supportive message we’ve received over the last year. You never know what to expect (2020 has definitely demonstrated that) but we’re grateful and very excited to expand our business exponentially in 2021 and beyond.