Shijin Pulikkotil
Vice President – Head of Operations
MedTrix Healthcare LLC
The Art of Talent Recruitment
Shijin Pulikkotil has over 15 years’ experience in operational management. Since 2016, Shijin worked to improve talent acquisition at MedTrix Healthcare, a medical communication agency that provides digital solutions to the top 25 pharma and biotech companies around the world. He was promoted to VP, Head of Operations in 2021.
Since 2016, MedTrix has grown from a 15-member to a 65-member team, with the addition of a state-of-the-art design studio capable of high-end 3D interactive production.
The heart of MedTrix is the highly talented content team, which consists of experts in visualization and storytelling of the scientific content. The creative and technology talent pool of MedTrix includes UX/UI specialists, graphic designers, medical illustrators, 3D animators, instructional designers, and full-stack developers.
The recruitment of such a highly specific creative pool could easily prove a daunting task.
Shijin’s job was to identify and recruit the right talent. Advertisements through popular recruitment platforms rarely elicited responses. To procure talent, Shijin and team sifted through hundreds of profiles and sent personal messages to the suitable candidates—most from other industries.
To simplify the process, his team developed a digital interactive recruitment brochure which highlighted MedTrix’s achievements, background information, and employee benefits. Shijin then created role-specific assignments for the hiring process, dividing roles into content, creative, business development, project management, client servicing, and technology functions. Each contained multiple levels of assessment.
Shijin’s team also developed structured training programs for new hires—many of whom were unfamiliar with medical communications. Over the past five years, Shijin’s efforts have paid off. MedTrix now enjoys a steady pipeline of budding talent that supports all organizational goals—all while delivering world-class output. In 2021, MedTrix’s employee growth rate soared 36%. The attrition rate remains less than 10%.
His process was so successful, it was adopted by similar agencies as best practice. Thanks to a talented workforce, MedTrix secured 12 global awards in 2021. In addition, revenues have grown 42% over the past three years. Shijin’s contributions are an integral part of MedTrix’s success.
