Managing Director at Kaye/Bassman, Michael Pietrack, Authored “The 4 biggest hiring mistakes biopharma executives keep making,” Featured in BioSpace
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Managing Director at Kaye/Bassman, Michael Pietrack, Authored “The 4 biggest hiring mistakes biopharma executives keep making,” Featured in BioSpace
Plano, TX | 4/28/2026
Michael Pietrack is a Managing Director at Kaye/Bassman International, an executive search and recruitment firm. Michael is a practice lead for Kaye/Bassman’s pharma and biotech recruiting team and host of “The Pharmaverse Podcast.” The following is an article published in BioSpace:
In this column, Kaye/Bassman’s Michael Pietrack discusses four pitfalls executives face during the hiring process, starting with confusing scientific brilliance with leadership ability.
There is no shortage of intelligent and impressively credentialed leaders who are making hiring decisions. Yet key openings continue to be vacant, and mishires remain common. In this column, we’ll discuss the four biggest mistakes that executives are making during the hiring process and how to avoid them.
1. Confusing scientific brilliance with leadership ability
Biopharma places a premium on intellectual achievement, and rightly so. Scientific rigor underpins everything from discovery to regulatory approval. However, an executive’s assumption that exceptional scientists or physicians will naturally make effective biopharma leaders is flawed. The capabilities required to align teams, make strategic business decisions and drive execution across functions are not taught at medical schools or in the lab. They come from on-the-job training and instincts developed over years of being in the biopharma industry.
Though a brilliant scientist or medical doctor can add expertise and credibility to the company, thrusting them into a departmental leadership role is typically not the best for them or the business. They are most suited for an advisory-type role, where the departmental leader can leverage their expertise.
To illustrate, imagine a shoe company that brings in a basketball player to promote and add credibility to its brand. Because this athlete has end-user experience, he may be used as a key adviser as to how the shoe is designed. But that company is not going to put the player in charge of running the marketing department.
When biopharma executives are making hiring decisions for critical leadership roles, it’s best to prioritize functional leaders with proven experience building and leading teams. Scientific and medical experts can then be layered in to deepen the organization’s overall subject-matter expertise.
