Transferable Skills with Nick Droste

On this episode, I’m talking with Nick Droste from Emergent BioSolutions. Nick is retired from the army and now works as a Supervisor in biotech manufacturing. Nick also volunteers with Vets2Industry a a service for Veterans that provides knowledge, connections, opportunities and, more importantly, HOPE, helping Veterans transfer into civilian jobs.

This episode not only gives a glimpse into the vast and diverse skills that Veterans have and their applicability to biotech but also opens the door (and mind) to a greater conversation:

Transferable skills and the gap the biotech/pharma industry has in leveraging Veterans and other groups for its talent pipeline. Specific strategies and resources are provided for Veterans and other employees who are looking to change industries and support enriching the biotech pipeline.

What You’ll Learn

How to leverage transferable skills to land a job in a new industry

The work Nick and Emergent are doing to strengthen their talent pipeline and support the Veteran community, and how you can get involved

Why diversity of thought is so important and how it can improve productivity, efficiency and performance

Gaps in the current HR/Recruiting systems that overlook qualified talent and what to do instead

How leveraging the skills of Veterans in biotech doesn’t only benefit the company, it could save a life

Featured in This Episode

Vets2Industry: https://vets2industry.org/ and https://vets2industry.org/events-page/ for our monthly networking events

SHRM Veterans to Work Program: https://store.shrm.org/SHRM-Foundation-Veterans-at-Work-Certificate-Program 

American Corporate Partners (ACP, long-term mentoring for transitioning veterans): https://www.acp-usa.org/

Veterati (self-serve mentoring network): https://www.veterati.com/ and Nick’s personal link for mentorship https://go.veterati.com/69mHBU 

Onward to Opportunity (O2O; certification training for veterans and family members): https://ivmf.syracuse.edu/programs/career-training/

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn – His profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-droste/

BioBuzz article for companies: https://biobuzz.io/seeking-top-biotech-talent-veterans-have-just-what-you-need/

BioBuzz article for veteran job seekers: https://biobuzz.io/are-you-a-veteran-on-the-job-market-a-biotech-career-could-be-the-perfect-fit/

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Transcript

Melissa

Welcome to Navigating Your Career. The only podcast that blends personal development, professional skills and psychology to help you get happy at work and live the life you want. If you want to stop feeling stuck and start feeling better, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Melissa Lawrence. Let’s get started. Welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast.

Melissa

This week, I am back again with another special guest, Nick Droste. Nick is a manufacturing supervisor with Emergent BioSolutions, and he’s also the recruiting team lead for Emergence Veterans Employee Resource Group and the director of data Analytics with the Vets to industry. And the reason that I wanted Nick to come on the show is he is doing such amazing work with helping veterans get into the Pharma biotech industry, and he volunteers with them. He mentors, and he really helps companies see the talent that exists within the veteran population, how transferable the skills are.

Melissa

And it’s providing a lot of insight on this episode on the perspective of the veteran community on how transferable the skills really are for the Pharma biotech, how it could really help Pharma biotech get to the next level by leveraging these skills and recruiting and sourcing veterans specifically and the volunteer work that he’s doing and really how as an employee at your company, you can leverage some of his insights to help be more inclusive at your company and to help recruit and source more veterans to do the important work that we do in the Pharma biotech industry.

Melissa

So he provides a lot of great insight and I can’t wait for you to take a listen.

Melissa

So without further Ado.

Melissa

Let’S go ahead and get started.

Melissa

I have Nick Droste here with me who is going to be talking to us about his work with Emergent BioSolutions and how he is helping veterans move into the biotech Pharma space. So Nick, welcome to the show. I am so happy that you’re here.

Nick

Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Melissa

Can you give everyone a little bit more of an introduction about who you are and what you do.

Nick

Certainly. I am an army retiree, retired after 20 years and 13 days from the army a couple of years ago and kind of landed in the biotechnology industry while I was pursuing my master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology and liked it so much that I just kind of kept going and have been learning about it ever since. Also started volunteering with an organization called The Industry, where we help transitioning veterans and veterans throughout their lifecycle, build their skills and networks to leverage their potential more effectively and find a new career and lifestyle.

Melissa

Yeah. I love this work that you’re doing to help vet get into biotech Pharma. I think it’s so needed. There are so many transferable skills that are relevant to the industry, and we’re going to get into all of those details and talk about the role that you have in that space. But before we do, can you share a little bit more about your career journey and how you got into biotech?

Nick

Sure. Funny story. I had never heard of biotechnology. After retiring. I was just looking for a job to do while I finished school and kind of wound up at a veteran’s job fair in Baltimore without a goal, just wanted to talk to everybody and see what the options were. And I wound up hitting it off with an Air Force veteran who was standing behind a table. The more we talked, the more we saw that my background in leadership and quality control processes kind of match what they were looking for.

Nick

And now he’s my mentor and boss.

Melissa

That’s great. So the work that you’re doing is very relatable because you were in that same space.

Nick

No, I was in intelligence analysis. So not really. It doesn’t sound like it would transfer on surface, but when you look into it, it’s quality control, production and analytics of metrics, development of tools and client support.

Melissa

Right. So you made your transferable skills work within industry, and then that’s what you’re helping people do now.

Nick

Exactly.

Melissa

Okay. So what do you love about working in the industry?

Nick

I think for me, the biggest thing is mission and purpose. It’s common in other industries. You’re making a switch for a circuit board or something that does something else. But in biotech and Pharma, what we’re making is things that are immediately going to have an impact on the well being of another human things. That one day you’re helping to cure cancer. You’re creating medical devices that help people improve their life. Everything we do has a significant impact on somebody else’s life. And that gives me a lot of meaning and purpose.

Melissa

Yes. I think that’s what a lot of people really love around working in this industry is just the direct impact you can have to patients and to carry different kind of unmet medical or health needs?

Nick

Absolutely.

Melissa

So what do you think is the biggest challenge of working in the industry.

Nick

Of the industry in particular?

Melissa

Yes. Just work like that. Pharma bio, working in the industry a challenge that you might have. So maybe not the biggest. That might be like a big answer, like solve all of the problems right now, which is a challenge that you see working in the industry.

Nick

I think communication and part of that goes into the kind of the very insular way that our industry has kind of evolved throughout the years. It’s very hard to break into it at anything below entry level. So communicating that there are more than just entry level positions and how to get into that is something that I think the industry as a whole is lacking.

Melissa

Okay. So coming into a position that’s not entry level when you haven’t worked in Pharma biotech before.

Nick

Yeah. Creating a diversity of thought that you don’t really get when you require years of industry specific experience kind of makes you have television and prone to groupthink.

Melissa

Yeah. That’s a really great point. So tell me more about diversity of thought and how maybe bringing in vet specific, but really other people outside of Pharma biotech into a position that’s not entry level and how that would be really positive for the industry.

Nick

Sure. I think a big thing about it is just being able to question everything an issue that a lot of people think with veterans is that we’re just kind of drones. We do it what we’re told, and we don’t question. We just accomplish submission. And that’s not really accurate. If we see something that doesn’t make sense, we question it and we try to identify how to make it operate better. And I think that’s the right mindset that helps bring that diversity of thought. I know we’ve always done it this way, but what if we tried this or why did we do it this way?

Nick

Is it still relevant that we do it because technology at the time didn’t exist, and now it does. So bringing those new perspectives is something that helps drive innovation and improve process development and improvement.

Melissa

Yeah, that’s a really great point, because when you grow up, so to speak, an industry where you start entry level and kind of just stay in the industry, then you do eventually acclimate to the norms that exist within that space where if you come in at a higher level, where maybe you’re having some decision making authority, but you don’t have that background, then you can think about how to solve problems in a different way than people that are used to kind of doing things the way that have always been done.

Nick

Absolutely. And you have enough humility. Maybe that’s not the right word, but enough to recognize that you are not infallible. So having the humility to be like, I think this might be something that could work. But tell me why I’m wrong.

Melissa

No, I like that a lot.

Melissa

So how did you get into volunteering into volunteering specifically for the veteran population, kind of through my own struggles and a few of my friends, I had a significant personal loss a few years ago, long like 20 year friend who had some trouble with his transition and couldn’t see a pathway ahead to support his family, and he ended up taking his life.

Melissa

I’m sorry to hear that.

Nick

Yeah. And knowing that the difference between just his survival, his being able to thrive and support his family was just a job, and just somebody taking the chance to recognize his value is something that really resonates with me. And he’s not alone by any stretch. The number 22 is 21, 22, 23. They’re all thrown out a lot as the number of veterans who take their lives every day. But that doesn’t capture the real meaning. They’re more than just numbers. They’re people who have goals and aspirations and helping them learn how to accomplish those is something that definitely helps me keep on trying.

Melissa

Yeah, that is so meaningful. That is so much more than just transferable skills. Yeah, right. It’s like literally could save someone’s life to look at them as more than a number more than what they’ve done in the past or what their resume might say. But really, what they can bring to the table and the value and the contribution that they can make. And a lot of these positions that they’re already qualified or overqualified for?

Nick

Absolutely.

Melissa

So what do you think is the biggest challenge for the veteran community when trying to use their transferable skills from the military to a traditional civilian role?

Nick

I have to once again go with communication. That’s the most common issue that I see with people that I mentor and talk to is they either sell themselves short because their skills on paper have been tailored to their profession in the military, and they don’t know how to express them in any other industry. Helping them learn how to express what they did in a way that specific industries will understand is a big challenge, and then helping them to really know what industry they want because you come out of the military with a template of what you did.

Nick

But your job title doesn’t capture what you actually did in the military leadership. There’s human resources, there’s operational improvement, advising, counseling. All of these things are built into every position in the military. So people often will look at what their job title was because that’s what they can explain. So learning how to break that down into what they actually did and how it can translate into specific industries is really the biggest challenge, I think.

Melissa

Are there resources for that right now?

Nick

Absolutely. So that’s actually another problem is the amount of resources that are out there is so big that it gets overwhelming a lot of times. There are so many options that it’s hard to pick just one. So a big part of what we do at the industry is we help people learn about the resources based on what their goals and aspirations are. So we have a database of vetted and verified resources on Bestindustry. Org where they can go in and just search based on what they’re looking for.

Nick

And then we also have mentors and guys that can help identify resources that they may not have considered.

Melissa

I like that a lot. So that is really almost like your own guide to help you with all of this overwhelming information to help you figure out what is really most applicable to you and what’s going to really help you based on your unique situation.

Nick

Exactly. Because there’s not just one answer for everybody. Everyone needs a bespoke kind of package for their own goals and their needs.

Melissa

Okay.

Melissa

Do you think that there’s a stigma at all with hiring veterans?

Nick

I think there’s more than just one. The Hollywood stigma that all veterans have PTSD and are kind of a fracture shadow of themselves. They can’t function in high pressure environments. There’s the stigma that every veteran is the same. It’s easy to think of your mental image of veterans probably doesn’t capture the total environment. Veterans are one of the most diverse populations there are. We have diversity, kind of built into it with the huge variety that we have of people and backgrounds being pushed into one to all have to work together to accomplish mission, builds diversity and kind of inclusion into our population that I think is often overlooked.

Melissa

Do you have any suggestions for how some of that stigma can be addressed?

Nick

I think definitely one is to get involved. Whether you’re a veteran or a civilian, there are plenty of organizations that you can provide mentorship through, and you can even start a program in your company. Something that we’ve done at Emergent BioSolutions and are currently working on is a veteran outreach program and mentorship pipeline for transitioning veterans, not just to our company, but for the industry as a whole. And a big part of that is getting involved. Find a nonprofit group whose mission resonates with you and learn about them and get involved more than just making a donation.

Melissa

That’s a great segue. So the next question I wanted to ask you is what you think the biggest opportunity is for companies, especially in biotech, for leveraging the talent within the vet community.

Nick

I think there’s a wide variety of that. Again, with the stigma that we talked about is the type cast. It’s very easy to think. Okay. They’re a veteran. They can do manufacturing, and that’s it. But it’s easy to take for granted. The program management skills, a lot of lean Six Sigma skills are very transferable human resources. There’s a whole array of skills, soft skills that are built into a successful military service. And with Fort Dietrich here in our area, you’ve got chemical, biological, nursing doctors. All of these things are in the veteran population.

Nick

They’re not as actively resourced as they could be, I think so.

Melissa

What do you think companies can do to attract and be more openminded to the veteran population?

Nick

So I think some real indepth job analyses reach into my IO psychology background, actually making sure that the requirements and job descriptions that you’re using fit the role that you’re trying to fill, and it can be read by somebody outside of the industry. If you use the industry specific terms, you might think that you want those, but I can teach somebody what a capital is in about five minutes, and it’s making it more universal to bring in that diversity of thought people that can learn on their feet and actually bring something more to the table than just that background knowledge.

Melissa

Yeah. I like what you said about the job description, because I think a lot of them will say ten years or 15 years industry experience. And so part of it might be questioning, is it really industry experience or just experience that you’re looking for? Because I think not to get too deep on that. But I think there’s a couple of issues. One is a lot of entry level positions, want multiple levels of years of experience. It doesn’t really make sense. So that’s its own problem. But especially when it comes to transferable skills, you’re really looking for something very specific when you say it has to be X number of years within industry.

Melissa

And I just would encourage people to really question, do you need the industry experience? It might be maybe one year industry experience, but you want ten years experience in leading complex projects or whatever it is. But you don’t have to do all of that within the industry.

Nick

Yeah. And then also, I think education is another kind of barrier. I know that chemistry and biology are important in our industry, but I see a lot of job descriptions that don’t really seem like those should be prerequisite like you can do. You can perform the job without having a master’s degree in chemistry or biology. That’s a pretty common thing, too, that it seems like it’s thrown on there just to be a barrier more than.

Melissa

No. I agree. I’ve heard that complaint before, and it doesn’t really benefit the companies. Like if you are having someone sit at a bench and pipette all day long, but you’re requiring someone with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in a scientific field to do that. Those people end up coming in and they’re bored after they finish their training because they’re just sitting there petting all of the time. So that’s a type of position that you don’t really need to have any industry specific experience. It’s just letting go of some of that comfort, really.

Melissa

I feel like we’re circling back to what we said in the beginning about doing things differently than what we’ve done before and questioning that status quo, which is exactly why you would want people outside of industry. So I feel like we’re having this like I’m having that mind blown emoji moment right now.

Nick

We talk about it all the time in the industry. Like, process improvement doesn’t happen by doing the same thing over and over again. But we look at that specific process and not the way we’ve been operating overall.

Melissa

Yeah. So for any veterans that are listening, what advice would you give them to market themselves for the biotech industry specifically?

Nick

I think Step one is always going to be learn the language as a former linguist, that’s kind of my thing. But it goes into the whole communication thing. Like, if you can’t talk to somebody in their language, then you can’t expect them to recognize your value. What I’ve done in the past is podcasts like this one. Listen to all of them and not only listen for the language, that what people are saying but look at the people and then connect with them. Reach out to them on LinkedIn and say, hey, I heard you on this podcast, and I really liked what you said about this and then build the relationship.

Nick

Do that with everyone. You come into contact in this industry, find companies whose missions resonate with you and learn about them, follow them, connect with veterans in their organization, and then leverage tools like American Corporate Partners ACP. They set you up with a long term mentor from Fortune 500 companies that can help you bridge that gap. Learn, look at your background and say, okay, this is how that could translate to this line of work.

Melissa

Yeah. I don’t think you can understate the importance of networking and relationships. This is going to sound a little bit harsh, maybe, but it’s really like getting over yourself when it comes to reaching out to people. I think what prevents people a lot of the time is that they are worried about what people are going to think of them. What if they don’t reply? What if they say no to my request? But you not reaching out at all is just rejecting yourself ahead of time.

Nick

Yeah. If they don’t respond, then it’s their loss. Move on to the next person because there’s so many people out there that can connect with and those people can connect you with other people. That’s how I met you was through a connection.

Melissa

That’s what I was going to say. We wouldn’t even be talking if it wasn’t for that reaching out. Right. Like we’re both connected and engaged with Bio Buzz. And then I saw you post something on LinkedIn. And even though I used to work at Emergent a number of years ago, I didn’t know you. So that’s just kind of a fun fact. And so then just reaching out and saying, hey, I love what you’re doing. Like I want to learn more about it. And I was just really curious, right.

Melissa

And then we have this conversation. And now we’re kind of leveraging this platform to share this story with more people. But it all started with a LinkedIn message, which all started with you just posting and sharing your story through Bio Buzz of what you were doing, which made it more visible. So it’s all just those little decisions that we all make that help get that reach that we want to have.

Nick

Yeah, absolutely. Shout out to Adam Van Babel.

Melissa

Yeah. I’m sure he’s going to love that. So what is your ultimate goal with your volunteer work? You touched on why it’s so important to you? Do you have a goal you’re working toward?

Nick

Really? It’s just more awareness, building the knowledge from the transitioning veteran perspective. And then also from the industry perspective, they both suffer from a lack of awareness. And so that’s really the focus of my efforts is to build both of them up so that they recognize the value of each other. I know there’s a huge amount of veterans that have landed in Biotech, but it’s not an industry that we talk about or think of when we’re transitioning. And it really should be because it’s the missions, the scalable nature of the industry.

Nick

So we can come in at a certain level. And using our tools like the GI Bill or Vocational Rehab or Onward Opportunities certifications, we can mold ourselves to fit a kind of a pipeline of talent down the road that helps us and the organizations that we’re part of.

Melissa

And so what is the impact that you’ve had so far?

Nick

That’s a good question. I’m not sure it’s quantifiable at the moment, but I’d like to think that I’ve opened a few people’s minds to the possibility. I know Emergent has not as a result of only my efforts, but we’ve recently created a employee resource group that is gaining momentum in this building as we speak. I think we’ve come this far. So there’s there’s already some awareness that’s being built. You know, the articles on Bio Buzz have hopefully showed some people the possibility. And then I guess we’ll see in the future.

Melissa

Yeah. I think you’re being a little bit modest, Nick, because you have the work you’re doing with Emergent, right. But then on top of that, you have these efforts that you’re making outside of your work with Emergent, whether it be writing for Bio Buzz or mentoring others like you do the speaking that you do. So I think your reach and the impact you’re having is probably greater than you think. It’s more than a few hallway conversations.

Nick

Right in the end, if it helps one person, that’s enough impact for me. So I try not to think about reaching it too serious. Yeah.

Melissa

I think you’re definitely going to help more than one person that listens to those podcasts, at least see things differently, if not change the way that they’re recruiting talent or making even some dedicated efforts around how they’re bringing or even have me having exposure to the veteran population for their open positions. And I love that you mentioned the employee resource group because I think a lot of companies have employee resource groups, but a lot of them don’t have one for veterans. So you might be a great resource for people listening that are thinking, hey, we should have one of those at our company.

Nick

Absolutely.

Melissa

So how can people support this cause? Is there any tangible ideas that you can provide whether they’re an individual employee that just wants to support it or if they’re a leader in an organization or even an HR, what would be some next steps they could take?

Nick

Let’s see. Let’s break that down. So individual employees can help by getting involved. If your organization has an employee resource group, sign up if they don’t send a memo to your entire one. Yeah. I know a guy who might have done that in the second month, send a memo to his entire senior leadership team saying, let’s do this is that you no comment for HR. There is the veterans to work training. It’s a certificate program that kind of shows you the value and gives you some background on a lot of perspectives that you may not be aware of, and it’s free.

Nick

It’s a great tool. I’ve actually gone through it and they do a lot to kind of combat the biases and stereotypes we might have with the veteran population and also kind of give you some perspective on why you should hire the benefits that come with it.

Melissa

Yeah. So we’ll put a link to that in the show notes for anyone that wants to check that out so you can easily access it.

Nick

There was one more group leadership leadership. Get involved again, read the memos, the forthcoming memos, and then leverage your leadership to make change to implement change. If you are a hiring manager, then look at your job description and see if I was someone on the outside. Kind of build up the skill sets that you really need, the soft skills that aren’t universal and try to tailor your job description to fit that. Find a community, a nonprofit volunteer group, volunteer with them and then share with your coworkers and fellow leaders what it means to you and help them find something on their own.

Nick

Give back Mentor Sign up to be ACP Mentor Sign up to do a Veterati is another great tool for kind of shortterm mentorship. Find the tools and use them to build up your soon to be incoming workforce.

Melissa

Right? Yes. I’m going to have to get all of those links, all of those so we can link them up and make them easy to find. I think it’s something that managers can also do is ask if there are qualified candidates that are veterans when they’re recruiting for a position similar to when we are trying to get more diverse candidates for positions, whether it be women or any other group. Like really asking, did you tap into the veteran population? Did you do any specific outreach to try to get more candidates?

Melissa

Because often it’s those groups that are less represented that have less visibility in those hiring processes. So I think you have to do a little bit more targeted outreach to do your due diligence to make your candidate pool more diverse.

Nick

Yeah. And then also after you do that, keep an eye on the metrics of getting try enforce or try to motivate your hiring teams, your HR teams to get to the 10% veteran friendly benchmark and then keep going.

Melissa

Yeah. Or what do you think about even tapping into your current veteran employees and asking them for referrals?

Nick

Yeah. I like to kind of jokingly refer to myself as a veteran mascot. Find a veteran who wants who’s motivated to share your message and amplify them, build them up and help them spread your mission, and that will lead to those referrals, I think.

Melissa

Okay, this has all been so much great information. I think that you really opened the eyes to so many different issues that exist and how we can just do more to support the veterans in our community.

Melissa

Is there anything else that you want to say that we didn’t talk about so that it’s not just all about the industry and building up the industry is a lot of causes for veterans is helping them find passions and hobbies outside of their line of work that can really help them replace the void that’s left behind the family aspect of military service. Everyone has a thing that they can find that will help build them up and build their confidence. And there’s a lot of nonprofits out there that are tailored to doing that for transitioning veterans.

Nick

For me, it’s a Brazilian jiujitsu and grappling. It’s been a passion that I’ve found and able to do with my daughter that has really helped my transition a lot. There’s fishing, there’s biking, there’s service animals, there’s horse riding for every type of possible passion. There’s a group out there trying to help veterans find it. So it doesn’t just have to be about getting veterans into the industry, find something that resonates with you, and then help that population.

Melissa

Great. So as we wrap up, I know some people hearing this are going to be like, oh, my gosh. I need to talk to Nick. I want to pick his brain on this. I want to know how I can get more involved. So can you share how people can get in contact with you?

Nick

Sure. Probably the easiest way is LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me and message me, and we’ll build that network.

Melissa

All right. We’ll put a link to your profile in the show notes as well. Lots of links, lots of action for people to take after this episode. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate all of your insight and all the work that you’re doing.

Nick

Thank you, Melissa. It’s been a pleasure.

Melissa

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