The Situation
A mid-sized biosimilar business had spent three years building the science. The regulatory work was done. FDA approval had arrived. But the company lacked a US commercial team capable of translating that approval into market share.
The business had been built around development and manufacturing. Its leadership had deep biologics expertise and a strong track record of moving programmes through the regulatory process. However, the commercial model needed for US market entry required a different skill set and experience.
Biosimilar commercialisation in the US runs on thin margins, competitive formulary windows, and payer relationships that take years to build. Success depends on people who have already broken through originator rebate deals and negotiated formulary access with the major pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). These were skills and experience the client simply did not have in-house.
The internal talent acquisition team had extensive experience filling standard commercial roles. This was not a standard commercial hire. The roles required executives who had navigated US biosimilar formulary access before, with existing credibility at the major payers. Those people were rarely on job boards. They were in senior positions at the same companies the client would be directly competing against from day one.
There was also a confidentiality problem. Approaching a VP of Market Access at a direct competitor through internal channels was not viable. Word travels fast in biosimilars. An approach that became known in the market would mean our candidate inadvertently showing their hand, damaging relationships and making the target candidate significantly harder to move.
The FDA approval had set a commercial go-live date. Every week without a functioning US market access function was a week competitors could consolidate their formulary position.
The Challenge
The Talent Pool Was Narrow
Executives with direct experience navigating US biosimilar formulary access, including established relationships inside the major PBMs, represent a small, concentrated talent pool. Most were employed at a handful of the same competitors. Identifying who was genuinely open to a move required deep market intelligence, not active sourcing.
Our Client’s Employer Brand Needed Polish
The company was relatively unknown in the US commercial market. Candidates from biologics and specialty pharma backgrounds perceived the opportunity as a step down. Changing that perception required reframing the commercial opportunity entirely, not just the role itself.
The Window Would Not Move
The FDA approval had set a commercial go-live date. Downstream launch activities, including payer outreach, formulary submissions, and key account planning, all depended on having the right people in place. There was no flexibility to push the date, and no option to launch with interim cover in roles that required established PBM relationships.
Our Approach
Fraser Dove’s Commercial and General Management practice led the engagement, working alongside the biosimilars specialist team. The mandate covered five senior commercial roles across US Market Access, Key Account Management, and Commercial Strategy. Given the concentration of suitable candidates across a small number of organisations, the team ran this as a single intelligence programme from the outset rather than five parallel searches.
Running five independent searches would have meant approaching the same small pool of candidates multiple times. That would have alerted the market, damaged the client’s negotiating position and made our client and us look incompetent. A unified programme meant one coordinated approach to each candidate, a consistent narrative about the opportunity, and intelligence gathered centrally that applied across all five roles.
Market Mapping
The team undertook a market mapping exercise encompassing 190 candidates across 32 organisations, focusing on the US commercial functions of established biosimilar businesses, speciality pharma companies, and relevant originator divisions with active biosimilar programmes. Each candidate was assessed for PBM relationship depth, biosimilar launch history, and commercial track record before any approach was made. The longlist was built entirely from passive candidates.
Candidate Assessment
The team assessed 68 professionals in depth. Beyond commercial credentials, the assessment framework focused on two qualities the roles specifically demanded: the ability to operate with constrained resources, and the pace required in a market where formulary windows open and close quickly. Candidates were asked to walk through situations in which they had delivered against hard commercial deadlines with limited budgets. Those who defaulted to brand-led, high-resource approaches were filtered out.
Shortlisted candidates were then assessed using Teamscope, Fraser Dove’s AI-powered talent assessment tool, which maps candidates against the specific profile the client required: commercially driven, adaptable individuals capable of building in an environment without the infrastructure of a large originator business.
Fraser Dove also used the payer landscape data gathered during mapping to match the shortlist to individual roles, directing candidates with the strongest existing PBM relationships to the positions where those relationships would have the most immediate impact.
Intelligence Gathered
The search identified a significant gap between the client’s proposed compensation bands and the market rate for US biosimilar market-access leadership. It also found a consistent perception issue: candidates were discounting the opportunity based on assumptions about company scale and budget that did not reflect the reality on the ground. Both findings were shared with the client before the first candidate conversation.
The Results
Commercial Team in Place Before Go-Live
All five roles were filled within nine weeks of the mandate, leaving enough time for onboarding, payer briefing, and the first round of formulary submission meetings. The market access team was not built in response to the launch. It was built in anticipation of it.
Talent Acquired From the Competition
Three of the five placements came directly from competitor biosimilar businesses. Two came from senior commercial roles within originator companies that had their own biosimilar programmes. This was not the outcome the client had expected at the start of the engagement. The employer brand perception problem identified early in the search had prompted the team to develop a structured candidate narrative around the commercial opportunity, specifically the scope for an experienced market access leader to build something from a strong regulatory foundation rather than manage an established book. That framing proved decisive in moving candidates who would otherwise not have engaged.
Confidentiality Maintained Throughout
The entire engagement ran without a single approach becoming known to the market. The candidates who joined confirmed this during onboarding. In a market where relationships between competing commercial teams are close, and word travels fast, this mattered. The client’s payer relationships and competitive positioning were not compromised at any point during the search.
Search Stats At A Glance
Intelligence delivered alongside placements
US Market Access Salary Benchmarking
Compensation benchmarking revealed the client’s initial salary bands were 14-19% below market for senior market access roles. Adjusting bands before approaching candidates avoided offer-stage failures and reduced time-to-hire across all five roles.
Employer Brand Perception Analysis
Structured conversations with 68 candidates produced a clear picture of how the company’s employer brand was perceived in the US commercial market. That intelligence was used to sharpen the candidate narrative throughout the search and shared with HR leadership to inform EVP positioning for future hiring cycles.
Competitor Talent Movement Data
The mapping process identified six senior commercial leaders at competitor businesses who were actively considering a move but had not publicly signalled it. Two are now in post. The remaining four are held as pipeline for future hiring cycles.
The Impact
With the commercial team in place before go-live, the company began formulary submission conversations with the major PBMs from the first week of launch. The market access leads who joined brought existing relationships with the payer contacts the business needed to reach. In a market where formulary access decisions can take months, being present early made a concrete commercial difference.
The employer brand work had a longer tail. The perception data gathered during the search showed that a significant portion of the available talent pool was underestimating the commercial opportunity on offer. The findings gave the client a clear picture of how its employer brand was perceived in the US commercial market. That intelligence was used to sharpen the candidate narrative throughout the search and shared with HR leadership to inform EVP positioning for future hiring cycles.
The salary benchmarking data resolved what could have been a recurring problem. The client had set compensation bands based on internal benchmarks that did not reflect US biosimilar commercial market rates. Left uncorrected, those bands would have caused offer failures on future hires. The adjustment was made before a single offer was extended in this engagement.
The pipeline of assessed but unplaced candidates (four senior commercial leaders not immediately needed) gave the client something most biosimilar businesses do not have at launch: a roster of known, assessed talent ready to approach if a role opens during the critical post-launch period. Acting before the launch, rather than in response to a gap, was the decision that made all of this possible.
Why this matters
Most biosimilar companies reach the hiring decision too late. The sequence is familiar: regulatory approval arrives, commercial planning accelerates, and someone realises the market access team exists only on paper. The search begins under pressure, with a fixed go-live date already in the calendar. A single failed VP hire at this stage costs upwards of $500,000 when factoring in lost formulary time, re-run fees, and the commercial ground given up while the role is vacant.
In biosimilars, that cost has an extra dimension. Formulary access windows do not wait. Profitability depends on reaching the market quickly and cost-effectively. If a competitor secures preferred status with a major PBM before your market access lead is in post, the commercial consequence runs for the length of that formulary contract, often 12 to 24 months. A hire that is three months late can mean a full formulary cycle lost.
This client decided to build its commercial team before approval, not after. It identified the talent gap, acknowledged that its internal team could not solve it quietly, and engaged an external partner with the specific market knowledge needed to reach candidates who were not looking. The result was a team in place before the launch date, with relationships already active at the payers that mattered most. If your business has a biosimilar launch on the horizon, how confident are you that the right commercial leaders have already identified?
How to apply this to your own hiring situation
You do not need to be facing the exact same scenario to benefit from this approach. If any of the following apply, proactive talent mapping is worth considering.
Launch timelines do not flex to accommodate slow hiring. The roles that determine whether a product gets formulary access, including Market Access leadership, Key Account Directors for integrated delivery networks, and VP Commercial Strategy, all require candidates with specific experience that cannot be found at short notice. Building the pipeline before the date is locked is the only way to guarantee the team is ready when it needs to be.
In biosimilars, the commercial leadership team is small and visible. Replacing a VP of Market Access through standard channels risks alerting that person, alerting competitors, and damaging payer relationships that depend on continuity. Confidential pipeline building, where external candidates are assessed before any internal announcement, is the only approach that keeps options open.
Biosimilar businesses regularly lose candidates to originator companies with stronger brand recognition, not because the role or opportunity is weaker, but because the narrative around it has not been built. Constructing that narrative and bolstering the employer brand, based on real candidate perception data rather than assumptions, is work that needs to happen before the search begins, not during it.
Pay benchmarks set during a previous phase of the business, or benchmarked against the wrong peer group, will cause offer failures at the worst possible moment. Identifying the gap before making approaches is the difference between a smooth hire and wasting three months.
Most biosimilar businesses can name an internal candidate for their top commercial roles. Few have tested whether those candidates are genuinely stronger than the external market. An external succession planning exercise answers that question without triggering a search, and the answer is often more complicated than the succession plan assumed.
Timing is the variable every one of these situations has in common. The biosimilar market does not forgive a slow start.
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