Executive Search Consultant Thomas Heeger for Zurich
Thomas Heeger
Executive Search Consultant for pharmaceutical industry, medical technology and diagnostics
+41 43 844 04 28
heeger@deltacon-exs.com
Thomas Heeger is a founding partner of DELTACON and Managing Partner of DELTACON at our location in Switzerland in Zurich. His Competence Center covers the Life Science sector with the pharmaceutical industry, medical technology and diagnostics. As an "industry insider" with more than 20 years of management and leadership experience in leading companies, he knows the business in international corporations, their subsidiaries, but also the needs and issues in innovative life science start-ups.
Thomas Heeger is Managing Director of DELTACON Executive Search in Switzerland and heads the Zurich office. His professional career after studying economics started at a US company in the consumer goods industry, led to the automotive industry and finally 15+ years in the pharmaceutical industry. Here he has built up an extensive network in more than 10 years as a headhunter in Executive Search and leads our Competence Center Pharma, Medical Technology and Diagnostics with heart and soul. Due to his many years of expertise both in international, group-managed companies as well as in typical medium-sized companies, he knows the decisive factors that make his DELTACON clients successful: "People" - whether managers or specialists - "team" and "corporate culture" must fit together. Executive Search makes a decisive contribution here not only to the corporate success of our clients, but also to our health and medical progress in our society.
Awards
Thomas Heeger was awarded with DELTACON as the best Executive Search Consultancy in Germany!
2022 Awarded by Focus Business magazine as Top Executive Search Consultant 2022
2021 Awarded by Focus Business magazine as Top Executive Search Consultant 2022
Why was DELTACON selected and awarded by Focus Business as one of the best Executive Search Consultancies? The consultants work quickly, thoroughly, absolutely discreetly and with extremely high quality standards. And with its PURE concept, DELTACON provides its clients with candidates who have been intensively screened with diagnostic tools. Their candidates fit the client and make their clients more successful. DELTACON creates values.
2020 Award for top consultant in the field of medium-sized businesses. The decisive factor for the award was a customer-oriented and SME-oriented consulting performance.
2019 Headhunter of the Year" award as the best executive search consultancy. The top-class jury was impressed by the clear client and candidate focus as well as the sound methodological competence and deep industry knowledge.
2018 Headhunter of the Year" award for best executive search firm in the Client Experience sector
Important stations
until today
DELTACON Executive Search
Managing Director
Founding partner of DELTACON Executive Search and head of the Competence Center Pharmaceutical Industry, Medical Technology, Diagnostics Development of DELTACON into a Executive Search Consultancy with eleven partners at eleven locations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and over 25 industries.
until 2008
Novo Nordisk
Vice President Strategic Operations / Finance Europe
36 Filialen in Europa - Finance Business Partnering - IT/CRM - Procurement/Sourcing - Legal/Compliance, Vorstandsmitglied nnit, Vice President Finance D-A-CH.
until 1991
ATS Leichtmetallräder
Controller of ATS Group
ATS Leichtmetallräder GmbH, Stahlschmidt & Maiworm GmbH & Co. KG, Finance Controlling, IT, Human Resources, Sourcing / Procurement, Supply Chain Management.
until 1989
Honeywell / Allied Signal
Director Finance & IT / Organization
Controlling, Reporting, Planning, Supply Chain Management, Just-in-time, Total Quality Management.
until 1984
Procter & Gamble
Management Trainee
Management Systems Department, Brand Trade Advertising Rebates Payments, Program Development Tool.
1977 until 1981
Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg
Degree: Diplom-Volkswirt
Alfred Weber Institute for Economic Sciences (AWI), Diploma Thesis "Software Engineering" at the Chair of General Business Administration and Applied Computer Science Prof. Dr. Rainer Thome.
Industry focus of Thomas Heeger
Executive Search Consulting Pharmaceutical Industry
DELTACON Executive Search in Switzerland serves international and local clients in filling their challenging executive and professional vacancies in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The main reasons why almost every pharmaceutical company has a headquarters in Switzerland include Switzerland's favorable geographical location within Europe, low taxes and a highly attractive, international, employer-friendly labor market. Research and development in the pharmaceutical industry generates a permanently high demand for proven specialists in a wide variety of highly complex therapeutic areas and the associated life science disciplines. Manufacturing and supply chain management are reinventing themselves - away from centralization with 1 production site and towards geographically independent and optimized infrastructures. Superimposed on this is a dramatic change in our working world through digitalization and hybrid forms of organization with flexible workplace design. The "New Work" in the pharmaceutical industry defines new, flexible requirements for candidates and companies. Our DELTACON Competence Center and the team of Thomas Heeger are particularly familiar with this "change" and these topics.
Executive Search Consulting Medical Technology
In medical technology, too, digitization is accelerating technological progress and increasing the complexity of products and specialization of companies. Digitization has established itself at all levels: Artificial Intelligent and Big Data, sensor technology, robotics, networked operating rooms, personalized medicine and e-health are representative of this. In addition to established "big players", we find numerous start-ups and SMEs that are gradually establishing and expanding their business in their niches and developing from local providers to international companies. For these expansion steps, the companies need TOP-qualified employees with the corresponding technical expertise and commercial management and leadership experience. DELTACON has an excellent network of international contacts, which has grown through the successful realization of executive search mandates and is constantly developing due to innovation in medical technology.
Executive Search consulting diagnostics
Progress in medical diagnostics is tantamount to quantum leaps. Not only can we diagnose diseases ever more reliably and earlier, and treat their symptoms accordingly. By means of molecular diagnostics, we are now even able to localize the cause of hereditary diseases in our genes, for example, and even cure them. Gene therapy is the fantastic discipline that gives many chronically ill people hope of being cured, of being able to lead a normal life again. At the same time, diagnostics shows us how technology, digitalization and artificial intelligence are intertwined and how smartphones, their apps, and special "smart devices" monitor our health status and continuously collect data. The terms "digital health" and "health technology" describe a very innovative and rapidly growing segment in the healthcare market. Here we find a lot of start-ups with private equity and venture capital companies as investors. Wherever innovation and progress make special demands on the quality of candidates, DELTACON is the right executive search partner.
Frequently asked questions to Thomas Heeger
What are the special challenges for executive search and recruiting in the pharmaceutical industry?
The pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical companies face special challenges in the search and selection of candidates for their organization that are not present in this form in any other industry:
- Research-based pharmaceutical companies - in contrast to generic companies - are highly specialized organizations. They are focused on specific, few therapeutic areas, for example cardiovascular, diabetes, oncology, dermatology, in which they have built up their expertise over many years. There is no pharmaceutical company that can cover all therapeutic areas.
- The life cycle of a drug is very long. Research and development alone take 10-15 years, sometimes longer. From the original product idea in the laboratory to the product launch, 15-20 years pass before all regulatory, safety and quality requirements are met and the product is launched on the market.
- That is why pharmaceutical research is extremely expensive. It is estimated that 600-800 million euros are needed to develop a new drug to market maturity.
- The price a pharmaceutical company wants for its new product is not freely definable. Although there is a European health authority, EMA European Medical Agency, for the regulatory process in Europe, the price has to be negotiated with each country individually. The same is true outside of Europe.
This is exactly where the challenge for Executive Search & Recruiting lies:
- Scientific experts who want to follow a drug - their baby - from discovery to commercialization need to be long-term oriented and stay with the pharmaceutical company for 15-20 years.
- On the commercial side, after the long development phase, a successful product launch is crucial for the long-term financial success of the entire pharmaceutical company. Price negotiations with health authorities are becoming increasingly important. Compared with competitors, the new product must be able to demonstrate a real therapeutic benefit documented in clinical trials. For example, "works better, faster, has fewer or no side effects".
- In recent years, the "Market Access" department has established itself at pharmaceutical companies as a new discipline and function with enormous strategic importance. Successful candidates not only have a profound scientific, medical-pharmaceutical education complemented by health economics, but also have a convincing track record of their work.
Based on the above examples from scientific research and "market access", it becomes clear what special challenges executive search and recruiting must meet in order to be able to identify, address and attract the best and right candidates in the market for pharmaceutical companies. It is not only the professional training and experience of the candidate, his scientific background, but above all his personality, his fit, his personal characteristics such as communication and teamwork skills and his future personal ambitions that must fit the environment of the pharmaceutical company.