Your science is hard. The hire who translates it into a business is harder.
Pharma, biotech, medical device, and diagnostics. Commercial leadership, R&D leadership, regulatory, and clinical operations.
Life sciences hiring sits at the collision of scientific depth, regulatory complexity, and commercial discipline. Most candidates have one of the three. The right hire has all three - or a clear path to the missing one.
The cost of the wrong hire isn’t just turnover. It’s a delayed launch, a missed regulatory window, a clinical trial that doesn’t enroll. Time isn’t recoverable.
We install the screen for what actually matters: judgment under regulatory pressure, scientific credibility with internal teams, commercial discipline with external markets.
“A delayed launch doesn’t show up as a hiring metric. It started as one.”
THE KIND OF QUESTION THE INTERVIEW ASKS
“Take me through a launch that slipped. What did you see first, who did you have to move, and what did the revised timeline prove?”
You have seen brilliant science stall behind the wrong commercial leader.
In executive search since 1999
85% retention on placed candidates at 24 months, firm-wide
Retained and project engagement models
Aledria Howard
Practice Leader
Aledria Howard leads the practice after years inside the recruiting teams at Pfizer, Pacira BioSciences, and Olympus - pharma, biopharma, and medical device. She has run the searches where quality, regulatory, and clinical execution decide outcomes, and designs the screens that test for it.
Talk to AledriaBetween discovery and commercialization sits a handful of hires who translate the science. The engine defines the translation outcome, screens for operators who’ve carried products across that gap, and disqualifies on the red flags that surface at month nine - after the launch window closed.
Your in-house recruiters can be certified on the same discipline through REI, the education arm of Guide, Don’t Drive™.
- 01
Run the Diagnostic
The diagnostic surfaces whether your hiring can carry science to market - or whether the gap will surface at month nine, after the launch window closed.
- 02
Strategy Call with a Practice Leader
Aledria maps the gap to a solution on the translation seats open now - commercial, regulatory, and clinical operations leadership.
- 03
The Install on Live Searches
The 6-Step Performance Engine™ runs on the searches where the launch window is at stake. Red flags disqualify before the offer, not after.
INTELLIGENCE BEFORE THE SEARCH
Know the market before you open the search.
Qualigence began as a research firm. In life sciences, that heritage is a product: decision intelligence that runs the engine’s first three steps - defining winning, mapping the market, testing the evidence - before a search ever opens. You buy answers, not activity.
Market Intelligence Snapshot
A map. Visibility into one critical role in one market: availability, competitors, compensation, risk. 1-2 weeks. $5,000-$7,500.
Learn more →Talent Market Intelligence™
A map and a guide. Everything in the Snapshot plus target mapping, candidate identification, and recommendations you can act on. 2-4 weeks. $10,000-$15,000.
Learn more →Executive Intelligence
Succession readiness for your leadership bench - who is ready now, who is ready in three years, and where the risk sits. Scoped per engagement.
Learn more →Every engagement ends in a findings review with the practice team - and you can judge a sample report before you spend a dollar. Download a sample report.
The market map is built by hand, one qualified name at a time.
THE STAKES
The translation hire that fails at month nine fails after the launch window - the delay never shows up as a hiring metric, but it started as one.
INSTALLED HERE
The handful of hires who carry science to market, screened for evidence they have crossed that gap before.
- VP / SVP Commercial
- VP / Head of R&D
- Chief Medical / Scientific Officer
- VP Regulatory Affairs
- VP Clinical Operations
- VP Quality Assurance
- VP Manufacturing / CMC
- Therapeutic Area Leadership
- Medical Affairs Leadership
- Health Economics & Outcomes Research
How do you screen for judgment at the translation gap between science and commercial?
We build the screen around what the role actually demands: has this person carried a product across the science-to-market gap before, under regulatory pressure, with internal scientific credibility intact? The behavioral prompt names the gap specifically - and disqualifies on the red flags that surface at month nine, after the launch window closed.
Can you run searches for commercial leadership, not just scientific roles?
Yes - VP of Commercial, Chief Revenue Officer, Business Development Director, and Market Access leads are high-frequency searches. The screen asks the same question in a different register: how does this person translate between scientific certainty and commercial speed when neither side fully trusts the other?
Do you work across therapeutic areas?
Oncology, rare disease, medical device, diagnostics, and CRO environments are the most common. The screen is always calibrated to the actual operating environment - the demands of an oncology launch are not the same as a diagnostics scale-up, and the behavioral standard reflects that.
Stop hoping. Install the discipline that makes the next life sciences hire produce.
34 questions. About fifteen minutes. A scored read of where your hiring breaks.
