Discover International

Life sciences doesn't stop at borders. Neither do we. A biotech in Boston needs a CMO with EMA experience. A pharmaceutical company in Zurich is building its first U.S. commercial team. A digital health company in London needs an ML engineer who understands both FDA requirements and NHS data standards. These aren't hypothetical scenarios. They're the kinds of searches we navigate every week across the U.S., the UK, Germany, Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands. Each market has its own regulatory environment, talent dynamics, and cultural nuances. Our teams are embedded in these markets, not parachuted in when a search starts. What that means practically: when you need talent with a specific combination of therapeutic expertise and cross-border experience, we're already having those conversations. The network is already built. The relationships are already there. Eight years of life sciences focus, across eight countries. That's not breadth for its own sake. It's the foundation that makes every search faster and every placement more precise. https://lnkd.in/dikT-wAg #LifeSciences #GlobalTalent #HealthcareRecruitment

For eight years we've stayed in life sciences exclusively. No pivots into fintech, no expansion into consumer health, no "we cover all industries" positioning. Every relationship we've built, every network we've cultivated, every search we've run has been in healthcare and life sciences. When a company needs a Regulatory Affairs Director with deep EMA experience, we're not starting from scratch. We know who holds that expertise, what their next move looks like, and whether they're genuinely open to the right opportunity. When a biotech needs a VP of Clinical Development before their next funding round, we're not posting and waiting. We're making calls to people who trust our judgment because we've earned it, year after year, placement after placement. Our years of exclusive focus didn't just build expertise. It built the kind of trust that makes people answer the phone. https://lnkd.in/erfYjSwg #LifeSciences #ExecutiveSearch #LifeSciencesLeadership

You're not looking for any available VP of Regulatory Affairs. You're looking for the one who's navigated your specific regulatory pathway, understands your therapeutic area, and has successfully guided companies through your exact stage. That person exists. They're just not searching on job boards. The most effective fractional leaders in life sciences operate almost entirely through referral. They're not responding to postings; they're receiving calls from people who already know their work. If you don't have those relationships, you won't reach those people and you may end up with a fractional hire who's figured it out in theory but hasn't been there before. Structure matters, too. Offer a three-month contract when a six-to-twelve month engagement is what the best talent actually commits to, and you've already narrowed your options before the search begins. This is the work that can't be shortcut. It's the work we do. The full post is worth the read: https://lnkd.in/eV4BUqZH #LifeSciences #ExecutiveSearch #Biotechnology

The call we make before a role opens is the one that matters most. Not the call to ask if someone's looking. The call to understand where their career is heading, what kind of challenge they're ready for, and what kind of organization would actually earn their best work. Those conversations don't happen on job boards. They happen over years of staying genuinely connected. When a client comes to us with a critical hire — a VP of Clinical Operations, a Head of Regulatory Affairs, a CMO for a Series B biotech — we're not starting a search. We're making a call to someone we already know. Someone we've stayed in touch with through their last two roles. Someone who trusts that if we're reaching out, the opportunity is worth their time. That's not a process. It's a relationship. And in life sciences, it's the difference between a search that takes weeks and one that takes months. https://lnkd.in/eMXphkCF #LifeSciences #LifeSciencesLeadership #HealthcareRecruitment

A digital health company spent eight months trying to fill one role. Their team ran more than 60 interviews. They pulled from internal networks. They worked with their generalist recruiters. After eight months: no hire. They engaged a recruiter with dual expertise in life sciences and technology. Within six weeks, 10 profiles were on the table. One was hired. That's not a story about luck or timing. It's a story about what it actually takes to assess digital health candidates and why the standard search process is almost guaranteed to miss. The difference comes down to two things: network depth and knowing what to look for. And in digital health, what to look for is not obvious. A strong GitHub profile isn't enough. An impressive publication record isn't enough. The questions that separate a qualified candidate from a credible-looking one are questions most generalist recruiters don't know to ask. The full post breaks down exactly what those questions are. https://lnkd.in/eHqTmygy #DigitalHealth #LifeSciencesLeadership #Biotechnology

Most companies think of fractional talent as the solution to a budget problem. The professionals choosing fractional work would tell you that framing misses the point entirely. LinkedIn profiles mentioning fractional roles grew from 2,000 in 2022 to over 110,000 by early 2024. In biopharma, specifically, more than half of professionals surveyed are actively considering it. The fractional model is shifting on both sides of the equation. Life sciences companies that understand both sides will have a meaningful advantage when they go looking for this kind of expertise. We mapped out what's actually driving this shift and what it means for how you structure your next fractional engagement. https://lnkd.in/ermWnD_W #LifeSciences #TalentStrategy #BiotechInnovation

Tech recruiters know tech. Healthcare recruiters know healthcare. Neither one knows digital health. It sounds like a simple distinction, right? In practice, it's why many digital health companies spend months interviewing candidates who look right on paper but end up with no hire. The professionals driving this space forward aren't generalists who are "open to healthcare" or technologists who are "interested in medtech." They've built products inside HIPAA-compliant data environments. They understand HL7 and FHIR not as acronyms but as constraints that shape every product decision they make. They've shipped software that clinicians actually use. Finding them requires a recruiter who can recognize them and that's a very different skill set than what most search firms are built around. We wrote about where the search breaks down, and what it actually takes to fix it. https://lnkd.in/ewrDU4Wh #DigitalHealth #LifeSciences #LifeSciencesTalent

Most digital health hiring searches fail before the first resume arrives. They fail because the recruiter doesn't know what they're looking for. In a field that sits at the intersection of AI, clinical workflows, HIPAA compliance, and healthcare data standards, that knowledge gap is expensive. Nine out of 10 biotech executives say their organizations face significant skill gaps in R&D and data analytics. The candidates who close those gaps aren't hiding. They're just invisible to recruiters who don't have the expertise to find them. There are three specific reasons standard searches break down in digital health. We mapped them out here: https://lnkd.in/gphXTWWJ #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #LifeSciencesTalent

The fractional CMO you need probably isn't active on LinkedIn. Not because they don't exist. They do. But the most effective fractional leaders in life sciences operate through referral. They're not updating their profiles or responding to InMails. They're in active engagements, or finishing one and deciding carefully what comes next. The people who know them are the people they've worked with directly. That's the access problem most companies hit when they try to build a fractional leadership bench. The open market shows you who's available. It rarely shows you who's the right fit. Our contract consulting and interim advisory practice is built around knowing who's actually available for these engagements, like the fractional CMOs with therapeutic-area depth and CSOs who've led R&D through critical development phases. We know what they've done, how they approach these engagements, and whether their experience maps to your specific stage and science. Fractional talent works when the fit is precise. Finding that precision is what we do. https://lnkd.in/eDBPWxhK #LifeSciences #Biotechnology #TalentStrategy

Digital health hiring has a dual expertise problem. Tech recruiters can find you an ML engineer. Healthcare recruiters can find you a clinical informaticist. Neither one can reliably tell you whether a candidate can work within HIPAA-compliant data environments, understand HL7 and FHIR interoperability standards, and ship software that clinicians actually use. The professionals who bridge the tech and healthcare worlds are out there. They're just invisible to search firms built around a single focus. These candidates don't surface in generalist talent pools. They move through specialized networks in digital health, bioinformatics, and healthcare AI. They're already in conversations with people who know their work. In our AI & Digital Health practice, we don't apply a generalist approach to digital health searches. Instead, we've built relationships specifically within this space with engineers who've built from zero to one inside regulated healthcare environments, with data scientists who understand both the algorithm and the clinical workflow it's meant to support. If your Digital Health search has stalled, it may not be a talent shortage. It may be where you're looking. https://lnkd.in/exSMh3Fi #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #LifeSciencesTalent