Case Study - Commercial Skills in Diagnostics

Sourcing Commercial Talent for Eastern Europe

Our client is based in Switzerland, Zürich, and produces laboratory equipment for diagnostics and automated machinery

As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, product demand had grown exponentially with a volume number of clients from multiple countries beginning to dramatically increase their orders. In particular, the client identified that one of the areas they were failing to capitalise within was the Russian speaking Eastern European market.

To combat this problem, the client sought a “Junior Sales Manager for Distributors” for their Commercial department with very specific experience. The client sought a candidate who not only possessed Russian language skills and a good understanding of Eastern European culture, but also who was adept within sales and who had a PhD and laboratory experience – the client insisted that a successful applicant must understand the science of why products are used, and that a strong sales background alone would not suffice.

The client had placed several adverts online to advertise the vacancy. After an initial lack-lustre response spanning several weeks, they opened the position out to several agencies and ultimately chose NESF to fulfil the scope due to our prowess within the Life Science market and our large European office footprint.

Our recruitment solution

NESF put forward a specialist discipline-specific recruiter with a wealth of expertise across the European Life Science Commercial market. After gaining an in-depth brief from the client, our consultant leveraged the broad network reach of our online LinkedIn presence to actively headhunt and advertise for the role. A suitable candidate was found incredibly quickly, and the client immediately began the interview process.

  • Such was the candidate’s appeal to the client, upon securing a first interview, the client was unwilling to continue the search for further applicants.
  • The candidate in question made it through a second interview, and was officially offered the role. However, after being counter-offered by their existing employer, the candidate decided they would remain at their current role, which effectively put our client back to square one.
  • The high suitably of the candidate had meant that the client had invested all their hopes into just one candidate, and in the process had closed their minds to interviewing anyone else.
  • Following this, we provided constructive consultancy to help the client learn from this process and advised what a more efficient recruitment process should look like, encouraging them to interview multiple candidates at the first stage.
  • Through once again leveraging our broad LinkedIn reach and through extensive networking, several referrals were created, including opening access to a passive candidate pool, which enabled us to present the client with further candidate choices.
  • As the role was for a permanent position, our consultant took great care in ensuring that prospective candidates matched the working culture of the client and only provided the topmost of professionals for interview consideration.

The Results

In total, we were able to secure a perfect candidate fit within just 2 months of taking ownership of the interview process.

The breadth and specialist nature of our talent network was evidenced in our capacity to secure multiple candidates, and the speed at which we were able to secure such a specific hire. The success of our support has led to conversations regarding our eligibility to join the client’s Swiss PSL, with the view to widening the arrangement across the whole of Europe.

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