Dave Malenfant still keeps the résumé that once frustrated him. It was just a single page and nearly blank. Most recruiters would have ignored it, but he still brought the candidate in after a colleague recommended him. In the interview, they skipped over work history and instead talked about the candidate’s energy, how well he connected with people, and his conversation skills. Hiring him became one of the best choices Malenfant ever made.
In a recent conversation, Malenfant, a supply chain executive now at MDM Consulting, and Scotty Kinn from Hueman focused on talent in the healthcare and life sciences supply chain. Their insights, shared in People First: Building the Future of Supply Chain, are relevant to any talent acquisition team dealing with staff shortages, higher expectations, and a workforce that clearly states its needs.
Malenfant believes the main issue is structural, not tactical. Hospitals, distributors, manufacturers, and suppliers all work separately, each trying to improve their own part of the chain without thinking about the patient at the end. This disconnect is about people, not technology, and can be fixed by developing employees who can work across different areas and build relationships throughout the organization. For TA leaders, this means looking for candidates who can build the right relationships, not just those who have done the exact job before.
Malenfant’s screening method is simple: hire people with the right attitude and strong people skills, since those are hard to teach. Some technical knowledge in areas like procurement, logistics, or planning is needed. However, what really makes someone stand out is their ability to build relationships and work well with others, along with what he calls "digital dexterity", being comfortable with data, automation, and new tools, not just formal technical training.
At this stage, hiring for skills and transferable abilities is a real strategy. Malenfant’s advice to hiring managers is clear: stop focusing on resumes that only list work history and start interviewing candidates about how they think, adapt, and influence others. For TA leaders struggling to fill tough supply chain and clinical roles, this means updating interview guides and training hiring managers, not just changing where you look for candidates.
The conversation turns to automation. Malenfant is frustrated that AI often gets blamed for job losses, when the real issue is companies finally using automation and sometimes buying technology to cover up broken processes or poor staffing strategies. He actually sees AI in a positive light. It should handle routine tasks like preparing purchase orders, running standard screens, and doing initial analysis. This frees people to move into more valuable roles, such as category management, predictive planning, and making decisions with limited data.
For TA leaders already using AI for screening and sourcing, this shifts the conversation. The case for automation is not about cutting jobs. Instead, it’s about letting recruiters and operators focus on building relationships and using their judgment—things AI and strict processes can’t do. It also gives employees a clear path from repetitive work to more strategic and better-paid roles.
One key statistic stands out: in some organizations, 70 to 75 percent of new hires leave within their first year if they don’t get development opportunities, challenges, or a clear path forward. To address this, Malenfant recommends that TA leaders hire with two roles in mind, not just the next one. Instead of relying on rigid, paper-based career plans that are filled out once and forgotten, leaders should have ongoing, informal conversations about employees’ goals.
The same idea goes for mentorship. Malenfant points out that formal, one-way mentoring programs usually don’t work. Instead, informal, two-way mentoring is better, where senior leaders learn from early-career employees and vice versa. So, for TA leaders building a retention strategy, it’s better to invest in manager coaching and informal mentoring rather than more onboarding paperwork.
Whenever Malenfant and Kinn discuss these issues, they return to the same root cause: organizations, under cost pressure, have cut things like talent development, mentorship, and career planning, steps that could have prevented the current crisis. Here are a few changes you can try in your own team: Add attitude, adaptability, and relationship-building to your interview scorecards, along with skills, especially when experienced candidates are hard to find.
Show your team that AI and automation are there to improve the quality of their work, not just to cut costs. Make sure hiring managers and candidates understand this, too.
Treat career pathing as an ongoing conversation between the employee and the organization, not just a form filled out during onboarding.
Give your most promising employees more of your attention. Malenfant notes that most organizations spend more time managing underperformers than developing top talent. Test this idea by looking at how your own team spends its time. This challenge isn’t unique to supply chain. Every TA leader in healthcare, life sciences, and industry faces the same issues: not enough experienced people, employees asking tougher questions about growth, and technology only working well when there’s a strong people strategy. Hueman RPO works with TA teams every day to build these strategies and the partnerships that make them work.
You can find the full conversation, "People First: Building the Future of Supply Chain," with Dave Malenfant and Scotty Kinn on Hueman's YouTube channel.