Globally Connected < Locally Committed

Vice President – Health Care Company

IRC Global Executive Search Partner

Bondi Executive Search, IRC Global Executive Search Partner - Sweden

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Vice President

Client/industry

Health Care Company

Situation

The Vice President of a Health Care Company hired Bondi to help them in finding a Vice President for a start-up subsidiary. They wanted the candidate to be a medical doctor and specialist in a specific medical area. In addition to this , they wanted the candidate to possess, among other things, excellent leadership skills, entreprenurial skills and experience in leading an organisation.

Challenge

With Bondi’s experience of searching for medical doctors for different positions in the Pharma Industry, as well as the Health Care Industry, we knew that an assignment like this takes a lot of effort and time. Furthermore, from analysing the company and the candidate profile, it was not clear that a medical doctor would be the most successfull background for the position as Vice President. We discussed this issue with our client and suggested that a candidate with a more commercial background could be a better option for this position.
Our client still wanted to look for a medical doctor but were open to also look for alternatives if we would not find the right candidate in this profession.

Methodology/Solution

We went through a long list of medical doctors and only a small number of them were interested in the position. A very thorough research was conducted. After telephone interviews and direct interviews we presented those candidates who matched the profile and who were motivated to explore the position. However, some of the candidates declined after having met the client - because they were not ready to take the step to a commercial organisation or a leadership position. We ended up with two medical doctors, but they were still not the perfect candidates.
After another meeting with the client we decided to look broader and include candidates without a medical background. We already had a few candidates in our network from the Pharma Industry who had an interesting profile for this position. We searched for new candidates with the revised profile, performed telephone interviews and direct interviews and ended up with three excellent candidates with experience from similar roles in another industry and with high motivation for the position.

Candidate

The winning candidate had a Master Degree in Biochemistry and substantial pharma experience as Business Unit Manager and from other similar roles. Leadership experience together with an exceptional positive personality proved to be the winning recipe for this assignment.

Post-mortem

The candidate has been fully accepted by the organization, and within a short time restructued the focus and is now recruiting a new management team. The outcome has surprised the board as well as clients, leading to rapid expansion and increased sales and profit.