Building a high-performing medtech commercial team is hard. We make it easier
Whether you’re making a critical commercial hire, building a new team or strengthening your leadership capability, we help MedTech, HealthTech and Healthcare businesses find the people who will make the difference
Why hiring medtech commercial talent can be challenging
Commercial roles in medtech and healthtech require an unusually rare blend of clinical credibility, commercial capability and personal resilience. Depending on the role, candidates may need to combine:
- Strong sales ability with genuine clinical credibility
- A detailed understanding of NHS structures, priorities and purchasing pathways
- The ability to navigate complex stakeholder groups, from clinicians and clinical champions to procurement, finance and senior leadership
- Consultative and value-based selling skills, including the ability to build a compelling clinical and commercial case for change
- The ability to interpret clinical evidence and translate it into meaningful benefits for patients, clinicians and healthcare organisations
- Territory ownership, disciplined account planning and the ability to perform with limited day-to-day supervision
- Resilience and persistence across long, complex and sometimes unpredictable sales cycles
- The judgement to operate effectively within a highly regulated and clinically sensitive environment
- Commercial drive combined with a genuine understanding of patient outcomes and clinical impact
That combination can be difficult to find. The strongest candidates aren't always the ones actively applying to jobs. Our role is to give you a view of the market that goes wider than the applications from actively looking candidates, and deeper than a CV can show, so you can compare the right people and hire with confidence.
Built for three kinds of medtech leader.
1. Founders & CEOs scaling commercial teams
You’re building or scaling a commercial function, often after investment, and every hire matters. Get it wrong and the impact can show up in delayed product launches, missed pipeline targets and lost commercial momentum.
By working with us you get an honest picture of the market, a package shaped to compete for the people you want, and access to talent nobody else is speaking to. If your name is not yet well known in medtech, that is where we work hardest: your opportunity goes to market with a reason for candidates to engage with the business, not just the role.
2. Commercial Leaders
You’re accountable for commercial performance, and recruitment shouldn’t be eating your time. You need to stay focused on customers, pipeline and your team, not spend hours screening CVs, chasing feedback or trying to work out who is actually worth meeting.
We take the recruitment workload off your plate, bring you a smaller, better-qualified shortlist, and give you access to candidates beyond the active market. You spend your time meeting people who could genuinely strengthen the team.
3. TA, HR and People leads
You’re managing multiple hires alongside everything else, balancing speed, quality, candidate experience and the expectations of hiring managers. You need a specialist partner who complements your internal team, brings structure to difficult searches and gives you clear market insight when decisions need to be made.
We provide reliable delivery, clear communication and full process visibility, backed by salary and market intelligence you can use to keep stakeholders aligned and hiring decisions moving.
How we can support your hiring
Committed Search
For individual sales, marketing, clinical and specialist commercial vacancies.
Executive Search
For senior, confidential and strategically important leadership appointments.
Team Build
For businesses making several connected hires as part of a growth, launch or expansion programme.
Recruitment Subscription
For businesses with an ongoing programme of commercial hiring over the next 12 months.
What you can expect from Advance
A better-supported way to recruit commercial talent
Working with Advance gives you more than a selection of CVs. You gain a specialist recruitment partner who helps you understand the market, reach stronger candidates and make a well-informed hiring decision.
Access to talent beyond the active market
Since 1997, we have built relationships across the medtech and healthtech sectors. This helps us engage experienced candidates who may not respond to advertising or generic recruiter approaches.
A shortlist worth interviewing
You receive a focused shortlist of three to five candidates who have been interviewed and assessed against your specific brief. This can psychometirc profiling and competency based assessments. Your interview time is spent on people worth meeting.
Sector expertise from the outset
Every Advance consultant has at least 12 years’ experience in medtech recruitment. We understand the different roles within medical sales and the nuances of selling different products, from capital equipment and complex technology to consumables and procedure-based solutions. You don’t have to spend the intake briefing explaining it.
A candidate experience that protects your reputation
In medtech, the candidate you don’t hire today is someone you may need in twelve months. Every person who goes through a process managed by Advance leaves with a positive impression of your business. Your employer brand in a sector where everyone knows everyone is protected which matters even more when you’re an emerging brand still building reputation in the candidate market.
Data to support your hiring decisions
Salary benchmarking, candidate feedback and market intelligence help you align stakeholders, challenge assumptions and make informed decisions about the brief, package and candidate pool.
Honest market intelligence throughout
You learn what comparable candidates are earning, how your opportunity is being received and how it compares with competing roles. If the package, territory or brief is restricting the search, you hear about it early enough to respond.
A partnership that becomes even more effective over time
As the partnership develops we continue to learn about your business. We understand your culture, team structure and the profiles that succeed in your business, future searches require less briefing and become easier to calibrate. Each hire continues to strengthen our understanding of what good looks like for your organisation.
Greater confidence in every hire
A poor hire can affect revenue, team morale, customer relationships and months of commercial momentum. Through a carefully defined brief, proactive market search, structured assessment and evidence-based shortlisting, we help you make a better-informed decision and reduce the risk of an expensive hiring mistake.
Our process
A structured search from brief to successful appointment
Every search follows a clear and transparent process. From defining what success looks like to securing and supporting your chosen candidate, you know what is happening, what comes next and how the market is responding.
Define the brief and engage the market
We begin with a detailed intake meeting involving the relevant stakeholders. Together, we define what success in the role looks like, agree the search strategy and establish a realistic project timeline.
We then create the job description and candidate information pack, map the relevant market and launch targeted outreach across our network, CRM and passive candidate community. You receive regular updates throughout the search.
You can. And you’ll reach the active 30% of the market which are the candidates already looking. The other 70% are employed, performing well and not actively applying for jobs. They may be open to the right opportunity, but they’re unlikely to be reached through advertising alone. They respond to relevant, well-timed conversations with people they know and trust. We’ve been building those relationships since 1997
Planning your next hire or facing a recruitment challenge?
Tell us what’s happening and we’ll give you a specialist view on the best way forward.