After my last post made a splash talking about how the lab director position is misused, I thought I'd balance things out and talk about the position a bit from the business side.
If you're a founder or business owner, what should you look for in a candidate for a lab director position?
In my opinion the biggest thing for someone in a lab director position is trust. This is especially important in a compliance or production laboratory. When I've hired lab directors in the past, I needed to trust that when I was offsite for whatever reason, I knew that all of the tests would be performed ethically and correctly no matter what. Your laboratory's COA is your product, and you (and all of your clients) need to trust that it and your results are accurate, especially if it means sacrificing turn around time. It's always better to be accurate and defensible than to hit turnaround times.
This ties in with my second criteria. Hire someone who has the guts to tell you no. Not only will "yes men" be the death of you and your company, but you need someone who will argue for the lab and the lab employees interests against the business's interests especially if you as a founder don't have a scientific background.
Third, find a candidate that can manage people. Ultimately they will not be doing much (if any) day to day bench work. They'll be responsible for hiring all of the techs and scientists while overseeing all operations so this is a mandatory skill.
Finally, (notice I put this towards the bottom of the list) this person should at least be scientifically familiar with your current industry focus. They don't necessarily need to be an expert, but they do need to have enough of a scientific background that they can quickly get up to speed with your business's specific product or process. They will also be your bullshit detector for any new hires, industry sales reps or complaining clients, to filter out what you should and shouldn't escalate.
Essentially, hire the best person you can afford, then get out of their way and let them do their job.
What should you pay someone for this position? That really depends on a lot of things like what industry, how many locations will they oversee, their background and qualifications, benefits packages, etc. But you should reasonably expect that range to be $90k-$150k+ for anyone worth your time and trust.
To close out here's a short list of some other "nice to haves", but are not necessary:
QA/QC experience
GMP/ISO 9001/ISO 17025:2017 experience
Budgetary ownership and cash flow planning
Basic understanding of equipment maintenance and method troubleshooting
basic understanding of HR policies
Method and SOP creation
LIMS implementation
Basic understanding of scientific sales
Environmental control experience
Industry colleagues, what do you think? What else do you think should be on this list?
Next time I'll post about how to spot a bad candidate for lab director and what you can do to screen them out.