The quiet exit
Nice CV, nice chat, nice feeling. Twelve months later you're hiring again. The CV got them into the room. It didn't get them through the next stage. Nobody did anything wrong. The role just stopped feeding what drives them.
01 · What it looks like over time
This is what a hire on CV alone looks like over time. Right on paper, great in the room. Then the role stops feeding what drives them, and nobody says it out loud. The energy dips, decisions slow, and a year later you are writing a farewell post on LinkedIn.
Miss stage fit or need fit, and nothing happens. At first. That's what makes it expensive.
02 · Three cases
Not bad hires on paper. Every one had the CV, the references and the right title. What they didn't have was a stage that needed what they bring, and a role that fed what drives them.
A big name and a bigger network. A few months in, every board meeting turns into a vote on whether he was right. When the company doesn't do exactly what he says, he walks. The CEO starts second-guessing every decision to avoid the next fight, and investors notice when a big name leaves early.
A first in human company hires a CMO who ran huge late-stage programs. Impressive. But there's no team to delegate to. The CMO writes protocols, chases CROs and answers investor questions every week. If what drives them is predictability, this role starves them. A trial that needed speed gets meetings instead.
A company wants a CFO with Nasdaq experience. Sounds great. But the real work for the next two years is accounting processes, an ERP rollout and harmonizing entities. The CFO is excellent, and bored stiff. He either builds structures the company can't afford yet, or he's gone in 18 months. And the company paid a public-company salary for work a strong financial manager would have done better, and stayed for.
03 · The bill
Six months of a leader fading while everyone pretends not to see it. Three to six months to run the search again. Six months until the next person is up to speed. And the next round negotiated with a hole in the team.
04 · What the CV can't tell you
Stage fit asks what your company needs from the executive. Need fit asks what the executive needs from your company. Skill gets a candidate into the room. These two decide whether they still deliver at the next round.
What will the stage ahead demand from this role, and which needs will it feed?The company side. A Series A company and a Phase 2 company do not need the same CFO.
Are those the needs that drive this person, year after year?The person side. Everyone has two top needs, and they barely change.
How well a job fits a person predicts satisfaction, commitment and whether they plan to leave.Amy Kristof-Brown and colleagues, Personnel Psychology, 2005.
05 · What you can control
The science has to be right and the mechanism of your molecule has to work, and no hire changes that. Everything else you can control: performance, retention, culture, adaptability and the big calls. All five depend on whether the person fits the stage and the role feeds what drives them.
Skills can be taught. Strategy can change. What drives a person, and whether the stage feeds it, is set before day one.
Let's talk
Sixty minutes on a call, no brief and no pitch. We walk the role through the stage you're entering, and then through the person you have in mind.
Christian Rados, Rados Recruiting, Munich. Biotech executive search in Europe and the US, headhunter since 2011.