The Situation
A global pharmaceutical company was eighteen months away from a major operating model change. The business had performed well through a period of significant transformation. Its biosimilar portfolio was gaining ground and product launches were on track.
The talent picture told a different story.
The leadership team that had driven that growth was under pressure. Several executives central to the transformation were showing signs of restlessness. Market demand for their profiles was high. Without visibility of what the external market looked like, the board had no way to know how quickly they could find a replacement if a key leader exited the business.
Succession plans existed on paper. They had never been tested against the market. The HR team had no way to know whether their internal candidates were genuinely strong or just the best of a limited pool.
Several functions were stretched thin, and the company was expanding in a competitive US market. Approaching candidates at competitors would risk giving away their hand. And the internal talent acquisition team was better suited to high-volume, low-complexity hiring, not confidential headhunting for senior roles.
They needed outside help. Quickly. Discreetly.
The board commissioned an external succession planning mandate with Fraser Dove across six critical roles.
The Challenge
The Employer Brand Needed Polish
As a mid-sized player in a market dominated by larger brands, the company was not an obvious destination for top talent. Candidates at more established pharma companies did not see it as a viable career move. The search team had to make the case for why the opportunity was worth the move, with data to back it.
The Positions And Impact Were Cross Functional
The roles spanned two distinct disciplines: commercial leaders with market access expertise and senior TechOps and Quality leaders with transatlantic supply chain experience. Finding candidates across such different functions within one programme required a team that could credibly speak to both worlds.
The Timeframe Was Fixed
The operating model transition created a hard deadline. If key executives left during the change programme and there was no external pipeline in place, the company would be on the back foot. Without the right leaders in position, product launches slip, regulatory submissions stall, and competitors take ground that is hard to recover.
Our approach
We assembled a cross-disciplinary team comprising expert consultants from our Commercial & General Management and TechOps & Quality practices. The engagement covered six critical roles across both functions, in North America and Europe. The commercial roles required market access and payer expertise. The TechOps and Quality roles required deep knowledge of sterile manufacturing and transatlantic supply chains. A generalist team could not have covered both credibly.
Rather than running six separate searches, we treated them as one talent intelligence programme. This let us identify candidates whose experience crossed boundaries, a quality leader with commercial awareness, or a supply chain director who understood regulatory complexity, and give the client a clearer picture of who was out there.
Market Mapping & External Succession Planning
We identified over 240 candidates across 30 competitor organisations. We approached passive talent confidentially and checked their interest and availability. We then assessed each internal successor against the same criteria we used for external candidates, experience, track record, market value, and readiness to step up, and shared a direct comparison with the client’s HR team. Several of the strongest candidates had already met informally with client stakeholders before any vacancy arose.
Commercial Roles
We focused on leaders with direct experience in market access strategy, payer negotiations, and building specialist sales teams for complex product launches. We mapped candidates from across the biosimilar and speciality pharma landscape, leaders and specialists who had taken products from clinical approval through to formulary coverage.
TechOps and Quality Roles
We targeted leaders with experience in sterile manufacturing, combination products, and cross-border supply chains. Many of the strongest candidates came from larger pharma companies. They needed convincing that a move into generics and biosimilars was a smart career move, not a step down. Several of our consultants had placed candidates into the target companies previously and could speak first-hand about the culture, the growth trajectory, and what the day-to-day role would look like. That made conversations with sceptical candidates far more credible than a cold approach from an unfamiliar agency.
Talent Intelligence
Throughout the process, we shared data that shaped the client’s thinking: salary benchmarking that showed their compensation assumptions were below market for several roles, a gap that, left uncorrected, would deter prospective candidates or worse, resulted in rejected offers. We also shared competitor analysis that flagged organisations with high attrition (creating sourcing windows), and employer brand insights that helped them sharpen their pitch to prospective candidates.
The Results
Pipeline Depth
We built external pipelines for all six roles, with 10 to 15 qualified, assessed candidates per position. Two internal succession candidates were confirmed as genuinely competitive against the external market. Three others were below par, prompting the client to fast-track their development plans.
Speed When It Counted
When the company’s CFO resigned three months before the operating model go-live, the client already had a shortlist ready. They approached candidates within 48 hours. The replacement was hired in just 38 days. For comparison, a typical reactive leadership search takes 90 days from start to candidate signature.
Confidential Replacement
The pipeline also meant the client could move on the underperforming incumbent discreetly, without posting the role publicly or signalling instability to the market. That replacement was made quietly, with no disruption to the wider team.
Search Stats At A Glance
Intelligence delivered alongside placements
Salary Benchmarking Across All Six Role Types
Revealed where compensation fell short of market rates, so the client could adjust before losing candidates.
Employer Brand Perception Analysis
Showed how target candidates viewed the company, and where the pitch needed sharpening.
Talent Pool Mapping By Geography
Identified where the best candidates were concentrated, helping the client focus its search effort.
The Impact
While the numbers tell part of the story, here is the lasting impact this had for our client.
The company entered its operating model transition with external pipelines in place for every critical role. When the CFO left, they did not scramble. They had candidates ready and a hire signed within six weeks. That one move alone saved an estimated three to four months of vacancy cost at C-suite level.
The three internal succession candidates who fell below the external benchmark were put on accelerated development plans. Rather than finding out they were not ready at the point of crisis, the client had months to close the gap or plan around it.
Compensation was corrected before it became a problem. The salary benchmarking data meant the client adjusted offers upward for two roles before going to market, avoiding the rejected offers that would have set the process back weeks and damaged the client’s reputation in the eyes of prospective candidates.
And the employer brand work had a longer tail. The insights we shared on how candidates perceived the company fed into a broader repositioning of their employee value proposition, which the HR team, together with the marketing department, used for hiring well beyond the scope of this programme.
None of this would have happened if the client had waited until someone resigned.
Why this matters
Most companies call an executive search firm only after a key leader has resigned. And only then if their internal talent acquisition team are struggling. By that point, they are months behind. They need to brief an agency, wait for a longlist, and run interviews while the role sits empty. Product launches get delayed, regulatory filings miss their windows, and the competition moves into gaps that are hard to close.
A single failed VP hire costs upwards of $500,000 when you factor in fees, lost productivity, and the time to re-run the search. An extended vacancy during a product launch can cost multiples of that in missed revenue. This client’s talent mapping programme cost less than a single retained search fee.
This client did it differently. They built external pipelines before they needed them, and turned a potential crisis into a managed transition.
If your company is approaching a period of organisational change, a leadership team under market pressure, or a transformation programme that cannot afford a gap at the top, can you afford not to know what the external market looks like?
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.
Operating model changes, post-merger integrations, new market entries, and product launch windows all create predictable periods when leadership continuity matters most. If you know when the pressure is coming, you can build pipelines before it does.
LTIP (long-term incentive plan) vesting dates, earn-out deadlines, and post-merger lock-in periods concentrate departures. People who have been thinking about their next move stop thinking and start acting once the money lands. The organisations that weather those windows best are the ones that saw them coming and built external cover in advance.
Internal succession candidates may be strong. They may also be the best of a small group. Benchmarking them against the external market tells you which is which, and buys you peace of mind or time to act.
Whether you are replacing an underperformer, preparing for a departure you cannot yet announce, or exploring a new market without alerting competitors, a retained search partner can engage candidates on your behalf without revealing who is hiring or why.
Running separate searches through separate agencies creates duplication and blind spots. A single programme across functions gives you a joined-up view of the talent landscape and catches candidates who sit between disciplines.
If your company is not the obvious destination for top candidates, you need a search partner who can sell the opportunity credibly. That means understanding your employer value proposition, knowing where it falls short, and having the relationships to get sceptical candidates into a conversation.
The common thread is timing. Every one of these situations rewards action taken early and punishes delay.
We Know Your Next Leader
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