Send me the vacancy
The quickest way to find out whether I am the right person for a role is to send me the role. You get a reply within two working days saying whether I can take it on, and if I can, we spend twenty minutes scoping it. Fees are quoted after that call.
Hiring for a statutory role? The chart of the fifteen statutory roles in German pharma and medtech sets out which appointments the law requires, what each holder is liable for and which qualifications count, which is usually where a job description for one of these positions goes wrong.
What does a freelance pharma recruiter do?
A freelance recruiter is hired directly by the employer, works on a defined mandate or embedded inside the talent acquisition team, and is paid for the work rather than on contingency across a vacancy list. I do that for pharmaceutical, biotech, CRO and medical device employers across Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with a focus on statutory roles under German pharmaceutical law and other positions agencies keep returning empty on. I also do the second half of the job that agencies never touch: rebuilding the hiring process itself. 17 years in recruitment, 14 of them inside pharma talent acquisition at Bayer AG, ICON and Syneos Health.
When does a freelance recruiter beat an agency, a retained search or an RPO?
Most hiring teams reach for whatever they used last time. The models are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one is the most common reason a role stays open for seven months.
| Model | How it is paid | Best for | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contingency agency | Percentage of salary, only on placement | Volume roles with a deep candidate pool | No incentive to work a hard role. Your vacancy sits at the bottom of a long list. |
| Retained executive search | Staged fee, usually thirds | Board and C-level, confidential replacements | Expensive and slow for anything below director level. |
| RPO | Monthly fee for a whole function | Sustained high volume across many roles | Overhead you cannot justify for a handful of specialist hires. |
| Freelance or embedded recruiter | Retained per mandate, or day rate | Hard-to-fill specialist roles, hiring peaks, a gap in your own TA team | One person, so it does not scale to fifty simultaneous roles. |
The short version: if the role is genuinely hard, contingency is the worst instrument available, because the recruiter is rewarded for abandoning it.
What is TA strategy consulting, and when do you need it?
Sometimes the problem is not the search. It is the machine around it. You know you have this problem when good candidates enter the funnel and disappear, when the same role keeps reopening, or when your team cannot tell you why the last three finalists said no.
A talent acquisition strategy engagement looks at what is actually causing that:
- Job architecture and adverts that repel the people you want
- Screening criteria that reject strong applicants at the first pass because they measure the wrong signals
- ATS configuration and screening criteria that filter candidates out on the wrong signals at the first screening stage. I work in Eightfold and Workday daily and know what they do to a good application
- Interview loops that lose candidates to faster competitors
- Salary positioning measured against what the market is actually paying right now
- Offer structure and the closing conversation
It usually starts with one live vacancy that has been open too long, because the causes show up faster in a real funnel than in a workshop.
Who fills a Qualified Person or Stufenplanbeauftragter vacancy?
These are the searches I am asked for most, and the reason is arithmetic. The roles are legally mandatory, the qualified population in Germany is small, and almost none of them are looking.
Sachkundige Person nach §14 AMG. QPPV and Stufenplanbeauftragter nach §63a AMG. Verantwortliche Person nach §52a AMG. Leiter der Herstellung and Leiter der Qualitätskontrolle. BTM-Verantwortlicher. Medizinprodukteberater and PRRC under the MDR.
A database search will not find these people because they are not in databases. I wrote the reference guides on most of these roles, which is why the people who hold them read this site and take the call.
Why does it help you that I also coach pharma professionals?
Most recruiters see a candidate for the twenty minutes it takes to qualify them against a vacancy. I spend paid hours with pharma professionals every week, working on their positioning, their salary expectations and their decision about whether to move at all. That gives me three things an agency does not have.
I know why people say no. Not the polite reason given at the offer stage. The real one, discussed weeks earlier in a coaching session. Counter-offers, relocation, a line manager they did not warm to, a package structured the wrong way. I bring that back into your process before it costs you a hire.
I know what the market is actually paid. Not survey medians. Real numbers from real negotiations in CRA, Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance, QA, Medical Affairs and Market Access across DACH.
I know the candidate market from the inside. Senior professionals who come to me for career work show me how track records, motivation and notice periods actually look at each level, which tells me where your candidates are and what it takes to move them. Coaching clients are not presented to you: if one of them fits a role I hold, I tell them the role exists and they apply through your normal process like any other candidate, with no placement fee charged for that hire.
How do you keep both sides honest?
Working both sides only holds up if the rules are visible. Candidates see the same four.
- Coaching clients are not presented to employers. If a role I recruit for fits one of them, I tell them it exists and they apply through the employer’s normal process themselves.
- Candidates are told when a role in play is one I recruit for, before they decide anything.
- Candidates never pay a placement fee. Coaching is paid by the candidate, recruitment by the employer, and neither is contingent on the other. When a coaching client is hired into a role I recruit for, no placement fee is charged for that hire.
- Nothing a candidate tells me in a coaching session reaches a client, and nothing a client tells me about their internal situation reaches a candidate.
If either side finds those rules inconvenient, that is a sign the engagement is wrong, and I will say so.
Which functions and countries do you cover?
Clinical Operations and CRA, Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance and Drug Safety, Quality Assurance and GMP, Medical Affairs and MSL, Market Access and HEOR, Manufacturing and Engineering, Commercial and Key Account. Germany, Austria and Switzerland as the core market, pan-European searches across the rest of Europe, and mandates in the United States on request. Working languages German, English and Polish. Based in Berlin.
How are engagements structured and priced?
| Model | When it fits | Commercial basis |
|---|---|---|
| Mandate search | One role, or a small group of related roles, run end to end. | Upon request |
| Embedded recruiter | Days per week inside your team during a hiring peak or a vacancy in the TA function. | Upon request |
| Process audit | A fixed-scope review of one hiring funnel, with findings and a rebuild plan. | Upon request |
| Advisory retainer | Ongoing access for a TA lead or founder who wants a second opinion on live decisions. | Upon request |
Fees are quoted after a short call, because a Sachkundige Person search and a CRA pipeline are not the same problem. I do not work on contingency across a whole vacancy list, and I do not place candidates as temporary employees under Arbeitnehmerüberlassung.
Examples from my record
Production and medical device engineering, Germany
Nine years recruiting for the Bayer AG site in Berlin: medical device engineers, mechatronics engineers, pharmaceutical production engineers and production line technicians, together with plant, quality and technical leadership for Product Supply. Part of that was a six-month talent attraction campaign for Product Supply Berlin that delivered 120 specialist hires, designed with marketing and communications and run on a weekly operating rhythm with a KPI dashboard.
Executive search up to SVP, pharmaceuticals division
Searches at Vice President and Senior Vice President level across Clinical Development, Medical Affairs, Research and Development, Data Science, Regulatory Affairs and Commercial at Bayer AG, run personally from intake to offer where domain knowledge and confidentiality decided the outcome.
Clinical research delivery across DACH and Central Europe, CRO side
Five years at ICON and Syneos Health building pipelines for Clinical Research Associates, Clinical Trial Assistants, Project Managers, Clinical Scientists, Biostatisticians and Medical Writers, including co-management of an FSP partnership for clinical monitoring and clinical project management at a major pharmaceutical client over four years. Swiss and Austrian searches were run from Berlin.
Frequently asked questions
Is it a conflict of interest that you coach candidates and recruit for employers?
It would be if it were hidden. It is on the front page of this site, it is in every coaching contract, and the four rules above are the mechanism. The alternative model, where a recruiter privately hopes you take one of the three roles on their list, is the one with the undisclosed conflict.
Will you present your coaching clients to us?
No. If a coaching client fits a role I hold, I tell them it exists and they apply through your normal process like any other candidate. I do not act as go-between, and no placement fee is charged for that hire.
Do you work retained or contingency?
Mandate searches are retained or milestone-based. Contingency across an open vacancy list produces the behaviour I spend my coaching hours warning candidates about, so I do not offer it.
How is this different from a boutique search firm?
One person, who worked inside Bayer AG and two Global Top 3 CROs, doing the work himself. No researcher handing you a longlist someone else assembled. And a live read on the candidate market that comes from being paid by candidates rather than from a database.
Can you cover a parental leave or a gap in our TA team?
Yes. That is the embedded model. Days per week inside your team, working your ATS and your hiring managers, for a defined period.
What does the first conversation cost?
Nothing. A short call to establish whether the problem is a search problem, a process problem or a positioning problem, and whether I am the right person for it.