Strategic Talent Acquisition for a Cardiovascular Medical Device Company

A cardiovascular medical device company (a publicly traded company generating around $300 million in revenue, employing approximately 2,500 people), faced significant challenges in rebuilding and expanding its commercial business following an acquisition and subsequent attrition. To support this effort, they required assistance in hiring key roles, including territory managers, regional sales directors, product management, marketing, a VP of sales, and multiple clinical specialists.

We first connected with the client at a conference, where they expressed difficulties in securing high-caliber candidates. Despite having a small talent acquisition team and leveraging agencies, they struggled to find professionals with the necessary expertise. Given their focus on the medical device sector and a recent acquisition in structural heart, they required candidates with specialized structural heart experience.

Given our specialization in this space, we understood the difference between electrophysiology and structural heart, allowing us to provide candidates with the required structural heart expertise, either directly from the Cath lab or with relevant industry experience.

Our approach:

We engaged not only with the talent acquisition team, who had approval for the positions, but also with the hiring managers for each region and role. This enabled us to work on filling roles including a product manager position, a VP of sales, a regional sales director, about seven technical specialists, and approximately 12 territory managers.

Results and Outcomes:

•    70% of positions have been successfully filled, with some searches still ongoing.

•    10% of roles were filled through direct referrals within the company.

•    Biweekly meetings were conducted with the talent acquisition team to provide updates on searches and receive additional openings.

•    The talent acquisition team managed multiple hiring managers and relied on our support to streamline the process.

Overall feedback:

The feedback has been very positive, particularly from the talent acquisition team, as we went beyond just submitting candidates. We also provided salary benchmarking insights based on live data from our industry conversations. This was particularly useful in addressing challenges in the Pacific Northwest, where salaries were significantly higher, especially in metro areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

We continue to work with this client on other hiring needs and have expanded beyond the initial areas we supported. Given the service we have provided, we are very confident that they will approach us first for any future roles.