Talent Spotlight: Chloe’s Journey at Meet Life Sciences

Chloe Fitzsimons is a Senior Recruitment Manager who’s pretty renowned at Meet for being good at what she does. Her competitive personality has always made a great match for recruitment – and Chloe’s excelled at the company ever since she joined in 2018.  

Chloe spent the first five years of her career in the Medical Communications world, working with PR and advertising agencies, as well as medical educators. But last year, she decided to make the move to Pharmaceuticals, which essentially meant starting her customer and community base from scratch.  

Let’s dive into Chloe’s career journey, her love of recruitment and how a risky switch in market specialism paid off in the long run.  

How Chloe got into the world of recruitment 

Chloe Fitzsimmons from Surrey (south of London) grew up in a competitive environment as one of five girls. She noticed her naturally competitive personality from an early age, having loved and been so involved with sports during her school years.  

After finishing sixth form (12th grade), Chloe went on to study Geography at Nottingham University. While she did thoroughly enjoy her course, she noticed that with only several hours of lectures per week, she was feeling bored, unproductive, and lacking a routine. As a result, she wanted to get straight into work as soon as she graduated.  

Once Chloe heard about recruitment in the process of applying for jobs, she was drawn to it – not only because of the commission aspect which would suit her competitive personality, but because no one in her family or friendship circle had done it before. It intrigued her.  

After her interview for a position at Meet, Chloe was particularly drawn to the people-focused culture of the company. The business being led by our CEO Hannah Haigh was an additional inspiring factor for her. As a result, her first job out of university was an entry-level recruiter role. Seven years on, Chloe has majorly progressed and is very much still thriving here at Meet. 

How her role has evolved since starting at Meet Life Sciences 

For the first five years of her recruitment career Chloe worked in Med Comms, an area she absolutely loved. “I really loved it. I thought I was going to do it forever”. 

Med Comms refers to advertising, PR and medical education.  A mix of academia and creativity is what led to her fascination for the sector. In Chloe’s words, “People working in Marketing and PR are really friendly and great to speak with. It was really cool working with people with strong academic backgrounds in science who also had a very creative and social side to them”.  

Five years in, Chloe made the decision to leave the world of Med Comms – not because she stopped loving it, but because she knew it was time for her to step outside of her comfort zone. She “gave up managing her team and everything, which was a hard decision”, but looking back it’s one that she’s happy with. 

She shifted her focus to Pharma – a huge challenge she wanted to prove she was capable of. This meant navigating a much larger sector and starting her customer and community base from scratch, all for the opportunity of making much bigger deals and placing professionals globally, rather than mostly within the UK.  

There were definitely times when she questioned her decision to move, and at times things were really challenging. But now that she’s settled in her new sector, she’s extremely happy with the way things have changed. “I’m really enjoying what I’m doing now”. Unsurprisingly, her risk paid off in the long run.  

Her biggest achievement 

The move from Med Comms to Pharma is also something she’s really proud of. “My biggest achievement is doing well in what I'm doing now, because of the move I made. Like I say, there were points last year where I genuinely wasn’t sure if I’d made the right decision. But the fact that it paid off, makes it feel like it’s been my greatest achievement”.  

Her decision required a ton of resilience, going from daily deals to having to build from the ground up. And while it was certainly risky, her superiors at Meet always backed her – never adding any pressure even when things were initially slow to move. They could see she was working hard to grow in a sector that was entirely new to her, and were always there for support even when she had doubts herself.  

This support from Meet is one of the reasons she’s stayed so long at the company. Feeling valued has helped Chloe go a long way in her career.  

Thoughts on working in a male-dominated environment 

In the UK, recruitment is certainly a male dominated field. While we are starting to see more women in this industry, the gender gap persists, especially in higher managerial and leadership positions.   

We asked Chloe about her experience working in such an environment. In her words: “I’ve never, ever felt held back at Meet for being a woman. I’ve always felt really valued. In leadership meetings, I’ve always felt heard, even if I’m in a room with 10 men”.  

She went on to emphasize how the people at Meet are both genuine and down to earth, no matter their position, and that this factor is one of the main reasons she’s stayed at the company for so long. Another factor is that, at Meet Life Sciences in particular, “we’ve got loads of women in leadership positions, like Claire our SVP of Talent, Charlotte our VP of Ops and our CEO Hannah ... to name a few”.  

Why Meet is worth applying to  

We asked Chloe what she would say to someone applying for a role at Meet.  

She responded: “I’ve been here for nearly seven years. There are a lot of people at Meet who have amazing longevity – we're talking ten years plus. We’ve had Brits cross over to the states, providing them with a fantastic opportunity. It’s absolutely a company worth applying to.  

“The reason I’m here is that I love the job. It suits me and my personality perfectly. I actually love it. And even though it’s really cliche, it really does come down to the people who work here. I really feel like everyone here leaves their ego at the door. We’re all down to earth with similar mindsets. The managers I’ve had during my time here have made me feel really valued and appreciated. They didn’t add pressure and were always there to support me.”  

As well as loving her job, the support system here at Meet has been a crucial factor behind her long tenure.   

Stay tuned for the next installment of our Talent Spotlight series. We’ll be interviewing people from all across the company and we're looking forward to sharing their exciting stories and journeys! 

And if you’re interested in joining the Meet team, please do reach out if you’d like to apply for any job vacancies or upcoming academies.