With quickly-changing marketplaces, retained search firms are more often collaborating with high-growth companies to discover fresh, consumer-centric talent.
Historically, precision medicine was referred to as personalized medicine – taking highly-tailored, personal approaches from diagnostics to treatments. But the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Research Council (NRC) have now better defined precision medicine as approaching individual patient health from genetic, environmental and lifestyle points of view. Where does that leave personalized medicine companies? In short, the terminology now means patient-first, technology driven, and individual-empowered. Executive search firms strategically retained by the most ambitious personalized medicine companies have become valuable allies to uncover and onboard the brightest new talent.
1. Executive search firms maintain real-time insights into venture capital and private equity deals occurring behind the scenes, keeping track of the funding and M&A activity which, in healthcare, particularly at personalized medicine-focused companies, is broadly accelerating. By monitoring the flows of capital and strategic activity, retained executive search firms are invested to help anticipate which companies, and which executives, may be open to or are seeking change.
2. As healthcare companies develop mobile technologies to deliver novel patient-centric products, executives will require different skill sets. Retained executive search firms have unique relationships with new generations of commercial, technical and customer experience talent from consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms, pure-breed tech firms, and social media firms who understand that healthcare is the next great challenge in personalized retail.
3. Personalized medicine is moving so rapidly, the opportunity costs of not quickly finding the right talent, or choosing the wrong candidate, poses great risk. Competition will likely pull ahead faster with more experienced teams. Retained search firms invest the time, people and resources to help clients not only more efficiently, but strategically.
4. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally transforming personalized medicine through mobile health records, real-time physical monitoring via wearables, and more active consumer input. By anticipating health problems before they arise, triggering warnings, dispensing advice, and ultimately saving lives, personalized medicine companies hiring – now – AI specialists represent the future. Chief Artificial Intelligence Officers (CAIO’s) may soon sit aside traditional CTO’s. Executive Search firms have already developed relationships with this small, important pool of global talent and are actively helping healthcare firms onboard them.
5. Personalized medicine means philosophically personalized top-to-bottom. The retained executive search process is quite personalized between firm and client, firm and candidates, and candidates and clients. These shoulder-to-shoulder processes to discover fresh new talent foster culture, team building and communication, which in turn helps existing leadership and board members reunite with greater common purpose.
Slone Partners is North America’s leading healthcare executive search firm for the most innovative life sciences and diagnostics companies. To learn more, visit www.slonepartners.com.