Spain, November 28, 2017
PMFarma interviews Arnaud Weill 
, Managing Director, Southern Europe at STRAMMER.
STRAMMER, founded by David Mercier in 2008, is an international leading player in talent recruitment, talent management, and outplacement in life sciences. In 2016, a new era began with the development of a Full Talent Solution®, which offers organizations multi-dimensional solutions for value-based human capital.
Read Article in Spanish
For those who do not know STRAMMER, can you tell us more about it?
We are a young consulting company in Talent Strategy created in 2008 in Paris with the purpose of exclusively offering our expertise and services to the Life Sciences industry.
We started as ‘Headhunters’ in Middle & Top Management at the creation of the company, to becoming a consultant firm in Talent Management and Development. We guide our clients in the search and the selection of executives and experts, additionally, we advise them in the development of their teams, from Top Management to sales positions. We offer Onboarding programs, Coaching, Assessment Centers and Leadership.
Currently, we are a team of approximately 50 consultants and coaches that share the same DNA, the same clients, and the same projects applying our services to a European scale.
We believe in specialization and in the exchange of expertise and cooperation between our teams and our customers. Our knowledge of the market and its actors is very much appreciated by our clients that sometimes the Hiring Manager has the feeling that we are part of his company.
Our success is also due to our values and beliefs: sharing and creating synergies, courage and innovation, guidance to service and results. This way, we can create long term relationships with our clients and our involvement in projects could be defined as entrepreneurship.
Why did you choose to implant yourself in the Iberian region?
Two years ago, when the economic crisis was decreasing little by little, I had the great opportunity to open the Iberian market from scratch. After 20 years in Paris, I arrived with my wife and my 3 children to Barcelona and then I formed a team of experts in Life Sciences. I quickly opened a second office in Madrid, with the aim of covering the entire territory. The office in Madrid is composed of several Search & Selection Consultants, including our ICF- certified Executive Coach, which allows us today to offer a wide solution in Talent Acquisition and Talent Management to our Spanish clients.
We are currently a team of 8 people spread out throughout Barcelona and Madrid. All of them are experts in Life Sciences and in Consulting, which facilitates agility when complying with the needs of our clients, both local and international. In just 2 years, we have demonstrated to our international clients the reasons why they should trust STRAMMER Iberia. But above all we have managed to expand trust, which enabled us to attract new local clients. Currently, we work for leading Spanish companies in a variety of fields such as Oncology, Biosimilars, OTC and Generics.
The keys to our success: innovation, originality and a new vision of the Talent Strategy consultancy in Spain. Our strong specialization consists of a broad global and innovative offer, The Full Talent Solution®.
It is an international approach that allows our local clients to work very agilely with STRAMMER’s offices throughout Europe and helps us guide Talent Acquisition and Talent Management.
« Our success is also due to our values and beliefs: sharing and creating synergies, courage and innovation, guidance to service and results ».
What evolutions have you observed in the Life Sciences industry?
The changes with the greatest impact in the health industry are those that are linked to business trends and the arrival of new actors in new technologies.
Apart from spending on R&D, the health industry invests increasingly in Business Development to acquire products, technologies or start-ups with promising portfolios.
The pharmaceutical industry is a good example; the acquisitions of biotechnology companies in Oncology or rare diseases are often faced with overbid situations. The pressure on the prices of drugs, as well as the increasing drastic regulations, orient the market towards the most cutting-edge innovations (subject to greater reimbursements). To cope with these changes, companies must be more agile and recruit leaders open to and ready to take its teams towards new and innovative models.
« Currently, we work for leading Spanish companies in very varied areas such as Oncology, Biosimilars, OTC and Generics ».
Nowadays we have to think in the form of an « ecosystem », which implies privileging a focus more linked to Leadership than to the Technological, and be able to discover nonexistent methodologies in our sector, for example looking at candidates from other industries.
In Pharmaceuticals, leaders must strengthen their multidisciplinary competencies (for example: market access, business development, or digital), its entrepreneurial spirit and its ability to collaborate in an international way.
In MedTech, we no longer talk about products, but about solutions, results of the business trends of this industry.
These candidates must know how to handle these new offers, more complex and ambitious. In order to anticipate these changes and propose more innovation to our customers each time, STRAMMER launched in 2016 the ‘Full Talent Solution®‘. The first integrated offer of solutions in Talent Strategy dedicated to the Life Sciences industry, which guides companies to impact their business, reinforcing and optimizing their human capital. This way, we create relationships with our clients throughout the course of their careers. We have been able to demonstrate to our clients that investing in people ends up being cheaper than not doing it at all. At STRAMMER we call this the ‘Value-Based human Capital® ‘.