Oliver Esman, Executive Recruitment and Organizational Development

Oliver Esman, Managing Partner at Strawn Arnold & Associates, leaders in executive recruitment and organizational development. Oliver's background also includes senior HR leadership roles at major companies in the pharmaceutical industry and the life sciences including Sandoz & Schein.

Oliver has spent more than a decade recruiting senior executives, building management teams, and cultivating lasting relationships. As a former HR executive in the Life Sciences industry, Oliver has been intimately involved in corporate strategy and growth—not to mention fixing an array of business problems that crop up.

Among the things we talk about:

Which kinds of executives make the best leaders in responding to the wave of change in the workplace?

What are the unique strategy challenges for life science companies?

Why do some C-Suites and Boards "get it" about DEI more than others?

What do transparency and authenticity actually mean and look like when practiced?

Oliver says, "In the world now companies are trying to figure that out loyalty and how people stay in touch and stay valued, and it's not about money and compensation and benefit. It's about how you feel about the company."

He describes, "For HR leaders, understanding that remote is okay, but you can go anywhere now and be remote, but valuing the work you do, and the products you create, and the environment that you create are very important now, and companies are trying to figure that out."

Oliver shares, "While many  C-Suite in the life science industry people have had to learn to communicate in a different way, it's not because their industry is dying or people can't come to work, or everybody has COVID it's because we still have a mission. So that the industry, pharmaceutical has a mission to create life-changing or life-saving products for the public or for the patient."

Oliver says that communication leaders have focused on sharing the message, sharing the mission, staying on target while also protecting your health and protecting your family, and trying to balance everything. So the actual communication statements have been different.

In Oliver's HR practice, "About 40% of our practices are with private equity, hedge funds, and those kinds of investor people. It turns out that whether it's a byproduct or whether it's just why we do this for a living, but there is still really, really interesting cutting edge kind of work being done, whether it's in cell therapy or certain kinds of rare diseases or biologics that investors at various levels are funding. Their mission hasn't changed but they're very focused on their return. So they do what they need to do to keep people engaged. And, there is a great deal of money still flowing into life sciences, whether it's diagnostics because of COVID and other kinds of vaccine issues."

In summary, Oliver thinks that it's a generational thing as more women and minorities move up. Some of that will become a little easier, but I think that it's a hard slog for the next 10 years in lots of different industries.

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LinkedIn: Oliver Esman