Working With Us

A search built around how you actually hire.

Every engagement starts the same way — a conversation about the role, the team, and what success looks like. From there, you choose the level of partnership that fits your stage and your stakes.

What to expect
  • A candid, honest and collaborative approach
  • When hiring is done right, teams align, motivation increases and performance compounds
Executive Search Services

Three ways to work together

Our fee structure is simple and easy to understand, on purpose. No hidden line items, no surprise add-ons — just three clear ways to engage us, so you can choose the one that fits where your organization is right now and how much risk you're ready to take on.

Contingent
Basic
Placement fee
20%
of base salary per placement
Engagement fee
None
Pay only on placement
Placement guarantee
90 days
  • Candidate sourcing & screening
  • No upfront commitment
  • When you already have agencies engaged but you need a better candidate pool
Premium
Full Partnership
Placement fee
27%
of base salary per placement
Engagement fee
~20% upfront
Applied to total placement fee
Placement guarantee
12 months
  • Everything in Partnered
  • Hiring methods & process transfer
  • Real-time dashboards & candidate pipelines
  • Ideal for growth-stage organizations
All fees are calculated on base salary only. Engagement fees are applied toward the total placement fee, not charged in addition to it. Guarantees cover a replacement search at no additional fee.
What Sets Us Apart

How we are different

An executive leads your search

Every step of the way, your search is overseen personally by John — a unique expert in evaluating, sourcing, and recruiting technical leadership for mission-critical hires.

We sharpen the role before market

We help you define what success looks like in the first year and build an interview process that produces the evidence to hire with confidence.

Specialization plus judgment

We've specialized in medtech, diagnostics, and life science for over 20 years — but the edge is our judgment: reading industry experience, spotting high potential, and evaluating leadership in a way that translates to the best matches for your requirements, culture, and trajectory.

Built for growth-stage stakes and speed

200+ successful assignments at PE, VC-backed, and founder-led companies — where one hire can be transformational, and speed matters.

How We Work

The method behind the match

A human-centered, data-driven approach — here's what that looks like across a search.

We believe in a human-centered, data-driven approach to talent search, so we begin every search by co-creating an executive hiring scorecard aligned with your specifications and expectations.

Our 'top of funnel' for the search is much broader than other search firms, so you don't miss the candidate who could have offered more to your organization but wasn't easily recognizable.

When engaging with the market, we ask open-ended questions to uncover leadership style, openness to other ideas, decisiveness, flexibility, tolerance for risk, and performance under pressure.

Our interview style is specifically tailored to comfort level and probability for success in dynamic, growth-stage environments.

Common Questions

Fee structure, plainly explained

Base salary only. We don't calculate our fee against bonus, equity, or sign-on amounts — what you see in the placement fee percentage is what gets applied, with no ambiguity about total comp definitions to sort out later.
For the Partnered and Full Partnership tiers, between 10% - 20% is collected upfront to begin the search. That amount isn't an extra charge — it's applied directly toward the total placement fee, so you're never paying the engagement fee on top of the full percentage.
Every tier includes a placement guarantee — 90 days for Basic, 6 months for Partnered, and 12 months for Full Partnership. If the placed candidate leaves within that window, we run a prioritized replacement search at no additional fee.
Yes. If your priorities shift — say, the role becomes more urgent or more senior than expected — we can move you into a different tier and credit anything already paid toward the new fee structure.
Basic suits a single, well-scoped role when you've already invested time internally and need fresh candidates. Partnered is the right fit for planned team growth where you want a dedicated pipeline and regular visibility. Full Partnership works best for growth-stage organizations building out leadership across multiple roles, where process and dashboard access matter as much as any single placement.
Let's talk

Ready to start the right way?

Let's have a conversation to see which engagement model fits.

20+
Years in life sciences recruiting
3
Engagement models to fit your stage
12mo
Longest placement guarantee offered
6
Dimensions of candidate evaluation