Can a pharma career coach based in Berlin help me if I work elsewhere in Europe?
Yes. Sessions run by video call in English, German or Polish, and your documents are written for the market you are applying into. Seventeen years in recruitment, fourteen of them inside Bayer AG, ICON and Syneos Health, and searches run in most European markets. The parts of a pharma hiring process that decide the outcome, how applicant tracking systems are configured, how a shortlist is assembled, how an offer is put together, work the same way across European pharma employers, because the same handful of systems and the same company structures are in use. What changes is convention, and convention is quick to adapt to once you know which conventions you are dealing with.
What actually changes when you cross a border in pharma hiring
Less than people fear, but not nothing. The things that genuinely differ are worth naming, because they are where good applications get thrown away for reasons that have nothing to do with the candidate.
- Document convention. A photograph and a date of birth are normal on a CV in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and unusual in Ireland, the Netherlands and the Nordics. The German Arbeitszeugnis has no equivalent anywhere else, and it is graded in a code most people outside the German-speaking market have never seen.
- Length and structure. Two pages is a strong default in most of Europe. Three or four is normal at director level and above, and in some countries a detailed publication list is expected where elsewhere it reads as padding.
- Notice periods. Three months is standard in Germany and can run to six at senior level. A month is common in Ireland and Spain. That single number changes how a hiring manager reads your availability, and it changes how you should negotiate a start date.
- Pay structure. A thirteenth or fourteenth month, a variable component tied to company performance, a company car, a pension contribution that is worth more than it looks. Comparing gross headline numbers between countries without unpacking the structure is how people accept an offer that is worse than the one they left.
- Work authorisation. For non-EU nationals this drives the timeline more than anything else, and some employers screen it before they screen the profile.
What does not change
The mechanics. Large pharmaceutical and CRO employers across Europe run their hiring on a small number of systems, mostly Workday, SuccessFactors and Eightfold, configured in similar ways. A recruiter builds a shortlist by looking for a small set of signals in a very short time. A hiring manager wants evidence of what you delivered, in what setting, with what constraint. An offer is assembled from components that have different amounts of room in them.
All of that transfers. It is the reason a coaching engagement built on the DACH market is useful to somebody applying in Leiden, Dublin or Barcelona: the object of the work is the hiring machine, and the machine is broadly the same one.
How the work runs
By video call, in German, English or Polish, from Berlin in Central European Time. That covers the working day from Ireland to Poland without either of us taking a call at an awkward hour. Documents come back as editable files, with the changes explained rather than just applied, so you can defend every line of your own CV in an interview.
Where the target market has a convention I want to check rather than assume, I say so and we check it, instead of applying a German template to a Dutch application and hoping.
Where the DACH depth pays off, even outside DACH
Most of the large pharmaceutical employers in Europe run hiring out of a small number of hubs, and Germany and Switzerland hold a large share of them. A Basel or Berlin headquarters writes the job architecture, sets the screening criteria and configures the applicant tracking system that a country organisation then works inside. Knowing how those hubs screen and decide is useful a long way from the countries they sit in.
The same goes for the CRO side. Five of those fourteen insider years were at ICON and Syneos Health, two Global Top 3 CROs, where delivery is organised by study and by client rather than by country, and where a Clinical Research Associate in Warsaw and one in Milan are hired against the same specification.
Which service fits which stage
The same three services apply wherever you are working. Which one fits, and what it costs, depends on where you are in your career.
- Students, doctoral researchers and career changers
- Professionals and managers with two or more years in the industry
- Directors, VPs and C-level
If you would rather have somebody run the search for you, reverse recruitment covers the market scan, the shortlist with my read on each role, and the application submitted in your name once you green-light it.
Frequently asked questions
Do you work with candidates who are not native English speakers?
Constantly. Working in a second or third language is the norm in European pharma, and the CV has to read as though the language is not the point. Where the target role is German-speaking, we work in German.
Can you help me move from one European country to another?
Yes, and that is a large part of the work. The two questions worth answering early are what your notice period does to the timeline and what the package is actually worth once the structure is unpacked.
Do you recruit in Europe as well as coach?
Yes. I take mandates from pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device employers as a freelance recruiter. Coaching clients are told when a role in play is one I hold, and nothing goes anywhere without a written go-ahead.
What is the first step?
A free 20-minute getting-to-know call. We look at where you are and I tell you which service makes sense, or that none does.
Book a free getting-to-know call
Do you work with clients outside the DACH region, elsewhere in the EU or in the US?
Yes. Sessions run by video call in English, German or Polish, and clients elsewhere in the EU or in the US work with Andreas in English. Berlin afternoons overlap with US East Coast mornings, which keeps scheduling workable. His deepest market knowledge is DACH pharma; the mechanics that decide outcomes, ATS screening in Workday and Eightfold, document structure, interview and negotiation preparation, transfer across pharma markets, and 5 of his 14 insider years were at ICON and Syneos Health, two Global Top 3 CROs.