Michael Woodhead and Kaiser Karamdad recently got together to share their perspectives on the life sciences market - one from the recruitment side, one from the candidate and commercial leadership side. In this second piece from that conversation, they dig into one of the most frustrating dynamics playing out right now: why companies with strong candidate pipelines still aren't making hiring decisions.
Something strange is happening in life sciences hiring right now. Companies have more strong candidates to choose from than at almost any point in recent memory. And yet roles are sitting open for three, four, six months. Hiring decisions are being delayed, deferred, or abandoned altogether.
This isn't a talent shortage problem. It's a decision-making problem, and it's having real consequences for the companies caught in it.
The paradox of choice
Kaiser Karamdad, who recently concluded a year as BD Director at Quell Therapeutics and is currently navigating the job market himself, describes the experience from the candidate side clearly: companies are not struggling to find qualified people. They're struggling to commit. As he puts it:
"Companies are hesitant to commit to permanent hires."
The pattern is consistent. I am increasingly getting requests from hiring managers for candidates with every conceivable skill set combined into one person - the strategic thinker who's also an operational executor, the BD specialist who also knows clinical development, the commercial leader who can also do the science. When multiple strong candidates emerge, rather than making a decision, many companies are simply waiting.
The result is roles that remain open indefinitely, not because the right person doesn't exist, but because no one is willing to pull the accountability trigger.
So what's driving this recruitment paralysis?
The root cause isn't laziness or indifference, but fear. After years of over-hiring followed by painful restructuring, many biotech leadership teams are genuinely anxious about growing too quickly again. The memory of companies that scaled up rapidly on the back of cheap capital, only to face rounds of redundancies when the market turned, is still fresh.
Geopolitical uncertainty isn't helping. US tariffs, changing trade dynamics, and broader macroeconomic unpredictability are making it harder for companies to forecast with confidence. When you can't be sure what your commercial environment will look like in twelve months, committing to a permanent hire feels like a significant risk.
The hidden cost of not deciding
What often gets missed in this calculus is that inaction has costs too. As Kaiser and I’s conversation reflected:
"Companies are being overly cautious about hiring decisions, only moving forward if every box is ticked and this caution is creating incomplete work and stalled processes across organisations."
Processes stall. Products move more slowly through development. The rest of the organisation has to absorb responsibilities that were meant to sit with someone new. When a company is hesitating over a strategic hire, the work doesn't just disappear - it gets distributed across people who are already stretched, or it simply doesn't get done. Work essentially slows or falls through the cracks and productivity - and development - ultimately suffers.
What this means if you're hiring
If you're a hiring manager sitting on a decision right now, it's worth asking honestly whether your hesitation is driven by a genuine gap in the candidate pool or by a broader anxiety about commitment. In many cases, the latter is dressed up as the former.
Pursuing the single ‘perfect’ candidate who ticks every box is a convenient reason to delay. But the cost of delay is real, even when it's invisible on a spreadsheet.
And for candidates navigating this environment: the frustration is legitimate, but the delays are rarely personal. Staying active, staying visible, and being clear about what you bring, rather than waiting for a process to conclude on someone else's timeline, is the most useful thing you can control right now.
If hiring paralysis is something your organisation is experiencing, sometimes an outside perspective is all it takes to move things forward. We work with life sciences companies every day to cut through indecision and build hiring processes that actually deliver. I’d love to talk further about how I can support.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Michael Woodhead Associate Director, Consult Search
Michael has been recruiting in the life sciences sector for seven years, specialising in building teams across biometrics, clinical development, research, and medical affairs. His focus spans senior individual contributors through to leadership level, with particular depth in biostatistics, statistical programming, and data management. Prior to life sciences, Michael spent five years recruiting across technical industries. He works with biotech, biopharma, and CRO clients across the United States and Europe.
Kaiser Karamdad Life Sciences Commercial Strategy Specialist
Kaiser holds a PhD from Imperial College London in synthetic biology and chemical biology, and has spent his career at the intersection of science and commercial strategy. He began at Cambridge Healthcare Research, supporting pharma and biotech clients on commercial planning and business development, before moving into industry as Chief of Staff to the CEO at Achilles Therapeutics - a cell therapy company that IPO'd on NASDAQ in 2021. Most recently, Kaiser served as BD Director at Quell Therapeutics, a CAR-Treg focused cell therapy company, where he led partnering strategy and commercial value proposition. He is currently exploring his next opportunity in business development and commercial leadership within the life sciences sector.