PHARMA Precision. HEADHUNTING

ANDRIS Consulting is a pharma executive search boutique from Munich, founded in 2018 by Christoph Andris. We fill senior management and key expert roles across the market segments Specialty Pharma, Consumer Healthcare, Generics and Biosimilars as well as CDMO and GMP manufacturing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Christoph Andris is the founder and managing director of ANDRIS Consulting GmbH. Before founding the firm in 2018, he spent several years building the life sciences business of an international recruiting company.

He is a member of Pharma Deutschland e.V., DECHEMA and the German Federal Association of Management Consultants (BDU), and holds the CERC certification.

ANDRIS Consulting focuses on four core markets: Rx Specialty Pharma (launch, AMNOG, market access), OTC and Consumer Health (pharmacy sales, DTC, drugstore and grocery retail), Generics and Biosimilars (tender management, portfolio strategy) as well as CDMO and GMP manufacturing (tech transfer, site management, Annex 1).

More detail on each segment in our markets overview.

The process follows five steps:

01 Business impact and cultural fit · 02 Targeted identification through multichannel sourcing · 03 Holistic validation including life-stage alignment · 04 Market intelligence and industry feedback · 05 Guidance through to the signed contract with optional follow-up interviews after onboarding.

A detailed description in our method overview.

That's a commercially fair question. At first glance, the contingency model seems lower-risk: no hire, no cost. But analyse the economic incentives and a classic principal-agent problem emerges.

In the contingency model, the consultant bears the full cost risk. Their economic pressure is speed over thoroughness. They focus on readily available candidates. If the search becomes complex, their model forces them to pull resources. Your interests and theirs are asymmetric: you want the best, the agent needs the fastest.

With committed capital in the retained model, you align these interests. ANDRIS Consulting is paid to penetrate the entire market and to activate candidates who are not actively looking. Surfacing latent willingness to move and cultural fit takes resources, sensitivity and seniority — in a pure placement business this effort would simply be uneconomical.

The retainer is not an extra fee but an investment in process certainty. The cost-per-hire stays the same.

In executive search for the consumer health and pharma market, two models essentially compete: large international consultancies and specialised boutiques. Both have their place. But for decision-makers it pays to look closely at how the search is actually carried out.

At big consultancy brands such as Egon Zehnder, Spencer Stuart or Kienbaum, the mandate is often won by an experienced partner who convinces in the first meeting with deep industry knowledge. The operational search is then in many cases handled by junior researchers or associates who derive the requirement profile from a briefing document, not from their own market experience. But the decisive asset of a search firm in the regulated pharma environment is the personal network at decision-maker level. That network is always tied to a person. It cannot be delegated, transferred into a database or activated by a career starter. If the partner who sells the mandate is not the same one who approaches and assesses the candidates, exactly this advantage is lost. What remains is a strong brand on the invoice. For the hiring manager that is a safe choice. Whether it is the best choice for the placement is another matter.

Our model is built differently. Every mandate stays in one pair of hands. The seniority that wins the assignment is the same that conducts the search and assesses the candidates. The search draws on three access routes that only in combination open up the hidden candidate market: a personal network at management level grown over years, so-called multipliers — well-connected industry insiders who open doors that stay closed to a cold first approach — and a technology-supported direct search. Personal networks alone do not scale. That is why we complement them with data-based sourcing methods and digital market analysis, to capture the relevant candidate pool in full, not just the part you know personally.

On top of that comes regulatory depth. Whether AMNOG nuances in the Rx business, health claims under the HCVO in consumer health, fixed-price groups and rebate contracts in the generics market or GMP qualification profiles in the CDMO environment: we understand these connections not from a briefing, but from years of work in these markets. That puts us in a position to assess candidates not just on their CV, but to judge whether they truly master the specific complexity of their segment.

According to the Center for Executive Succession at the University of South Carolina, around 40 percent of all external executive appointments fail within the first 18 months. The cost of such a mis-hire ranges from two to five times the annual salary for management positions, and up to ten times for C-level roles. In a regulated market like consumer health, regulatory follow-on costs are added: wrong decisions in advertising, labelling or product strategy can trigger cease-and-desist warnings, sales stops or product recalls.

A rhetorically strong performance in the interview is not enough to control this risk. Managers from a pure consumer-goods background in particular can sell themselves excellently. Whether they hold up in the strictly regulated pharma environment often is not revealed by a conversation alone.

That is why we optionally offer two validated diagnostic methods in the selection process, addressing different dimensions of the risk. The first is a personality profiling based on the Big Five model. It is the most empirically validated personality model in work and organisational psychology. Large-scale meta-analyses show that the conscientiousness factor in particular is the strongest non-cognitive predictor of job performance. For the interface between consumer goods and pharma, this factor is especially revealing: it shows whether a candidate acts impulsively and purely sales-driven, or whether there is a structured way of working that sees regulatory guardrails not as a brake but as a framework for action.

The second method is a core-values analysis. While the Big Five model measures personality structure, that is how someone behaves, the values analysis captures the deeper drivers, that is why someone acts that way. The scientific research on value systems, in particular the work of Shalom Schwartz, shows that the alignment between a candidate's personal values and the company culture is a strong predictor of job satisfaction, engagement and long-term retention. A candidate can be excellent professionally and personally and still fail if their value system does not fit the company's culture.

Which of the two methods is right for a specific mandate we discuss with you individually. In some cases the question of individual performance capability is paramount, and then Big Five profiling is the suitable instrument. In others, for example when filling a key role in a company with a strongly defined values culture, the core-values analysis delivers the more relevant insights. In both cases, we make the risk of an expensive mis-hire measurably smaller.

Press coverage including Handelsblatt, Deutsches Ärzteblatt, Business Insider, Bionity and Health Relations.

A complete overview of the original articles with links in the dossier.

Christoph Andris is CERC-certified (Certified Executive Research Consultant) by the German Federal Association of Management Consultants (BDU).

The certification stands for proven methodological competence in executive research and can be viewed in the official BDU list of certified consultants.

A search inquiry is made directly via the funnel form. We get back to you within 24 hours for an initial conversation.

Every successful placement begins with a conversation.