Chief Scientific Officer for a Growing Ophthalmic, Inhalation and ENT Pharmaceutical Company

Overview
Our client is a niche pharmaceutical company with state-of-the art sterile manufacturing facilities. Heavy investments were made in their manufacturing plants and R&D center along with a team of coveted chemists and scientists. They were looking to a Chief Scientific Officer. This individual was expected to drive several critical processes including formulation development, clinical trials and technology transfer.

Challenge
The target pool of candidates was small given the academic qualifications and career track record required to be a Chief Scientific Officer. These executives were in high demand. Moreover, our client was small relative and did not enjoy employer brand awareness like its peers. It developed products in niche therapeutic areas and also suffered from poor market perception of its Managing Director and the organization. The board decided to seek the assistance of PSS to help them fill this critical role which was vacant for close to one year.

Strategy
Our team decided to do some fact finding to understand market perceptions of the company and its Managing Director. We toured its greenfield manufacturing plant to get a sense of the quality of our client’s manufacturing facilities, that we believed would be an important factor in attracting the right candidate. We were able to conclude that market perceptions about the company were unfounded. On the contrary, we were able to collect sufficient evidence to build an appealing story to scientists who are most attracted by a company’s research capabilities. With this information, we reached out to them.

Outcome
After a comprehensive mapping and search process, we presented three candidates to the client. One candidate was selected and made an offer. Following a brief negotiation process, the candidate accepted the offer and joined the company three months later. In the year since, the candidate has been successful in his role and recently launched a new R&D facility for the company that is expected to contribute to the company’s future growth.