RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – BioCryst Pharmaceuticals is on a hiring spree.

But in this tight labor market with unemployment at record lows, it continues to rely on an increasingly popular recruiting offer: inducement grants. And the biotech firm is looking to fill 13 positions according to its LinkedIn site as well as jobs site Glassdoor.

A lesser-used distribution vehicle, it allows companies to grant awards without dipping into equity plan pools approved by shareholders.

Biocryst

This week, the company announced that it had granted 11 newly hired employees this sweetener to get them to sign on the dotted line. BioCryst says it has some 100 employees at its LinkedIn site.

Six of the hires got the option to purchase an aggregate of 42,000 shares of BioCryst common stock on July 31, approximately $3.17 per share. Another five got the option to purchase an aggregate of 112,500 shares of BioCryst common stock on August 30, approximately $2.99 per share.

BioCryst shares closed at $2.94 on Wednesday.

The firm gets a “4” out of  “5” at jobs review site Glassdoor.

The names of the employees were not disclosed.

“You can look at BioCryst, and many other NASDAQ companies, and find these types of aggregated inducement option press releases, which Nasdaq requires,” John Bluth, the company’s senior vice president of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, told WRAL TechWire.

It’s not the first time that the company has used this recruiting offer to entice talent.

Back in July, the company hired a new chief business officer, Megan Sniecinski, with a similar option to purchase an aggregate of 500,000 shares on July 1, at around $3.71 per share.

As for the wave of new hires, Bluth said it’s boon time for the company.

“The company is growing in multiple areas to support the progress of its clinical programs and the potential approval and launch next year of BCX7353, the company’s once daily oral medicine for the prevention hereditary angioedema attacks, which completed a successful Phase 3 trial earlier this year.”

Biocryst joins growing trend in tight labor market, offering ‘inducement grants’