Natasha Robbins

From Door-to-Door to the Boardroom

Before any of it, there was sales. Robbins came up through the unglamorous end of the trade, door-to-door and telesales, the kind of work that teaches a person how to open a conversation with a stranger and keep them on the line. Friends already in recruitment kept telling her the same thing: you would be great at this, it is very people driven. When she left a call center role, she decided they were right. Nearly twenty years later, the instinct has been vindicated.

For the last ten years she has run her own executive search business specializing in biotech, working with everything from startups to global organizations and building leadership teams across the scientific, clinical and commercial functions. The mandates she takes on now sit at director, VP, C-suite and board level, and she is candid that the appeal is not the transaction. It is the puzzle underneath it.

The Hire That Changes the Company

Robbins frames biotech executive search as a question of timing rather than a question of resumes. "Every company reaches a point where the next hire in a growth phase ultimately changes the business," she says. Sometimes that means a CEO whose specific job is to bring in funding. Sometimes it means a leader hired for the end game, for the buyout. The brief is rarely just a role description; it is a diagnosis of where the company sits on its own arc.

That is also why she resists the shorthand of simply filling seats. Biotech at this level frequently demands what the industry calls a unicorn, a candidate whose combination of scientific depth, commercial judgment and stage-appropriate experience genuinely does not exist in large numbers. Her work is as much about understanding growth problems as it is about sourcing. "It's about really looking at what do they need for that moment in time."

The Mentor Who Made Her Relationship-Led

When Robbins talks about who shaped her, one name comes first. Paul Bradley Law, known around the office as PBL, was one of two partners at the first firm she joined, and he taught her that recruitment could be built on relationships rather than volume. That was not the prevailing wisdom at the time. "Back in the day, there wasn't a big focus on relationship-led recruitment. It was very much transactional," she recalls: complete the placement, move on, repeat. It did not suit her. She wanted to understand companies and partner with them over years, not quarters.

Paul recognized that in her and developed it deliberately, pushing her toward face-to-face meetings and genuine client-facing work instead of conversations conducted entirely over the phone. It is a lesson that outlasted the job. When Robbins eventually built her own firm, she built it in that image, and she credits him directly with shaping both what she knows and how she chose to run a company of her own.

A later move to a second agency proved to be a mismatch, and she is philosophical about it now. It clarified something important. If she could build a desk from scratch inside a difficult environment, she could certainly do it for herself. That realization was the last push she needed to go independent.

AI, and the Case for Staying Human

Robbins is an enthusiast, with conditions. AI, she argues, is a great tool that everybody should be looking to use, but the industry has skipped a step. "There's not enough training. I think people just start using it on their own." What is missing is not access but awareness of the right way to use it.

She is clear-eyed about the strain it has placed on her peers. Drop a job spec and a CV into a model and the CV comes back looking like a perfect match, which means that on paper nearly everyone now looks like a good fit. That makes it genuinely harder for talent professionals to work out who is who they say they are, and it pushes the burden of judgment back onto the human in the process.

For her own business, the technology has been a multiplier. Running her own company, previously supported by virtual assistants, she has used automation tools to build her brand and scale her operation. Automated workflows handle outreach and send emails on cue. Transcription replaces pen and paper across her meetings, so that when she picks up a follow-up conversation she can review a summary and know exactly where to resume. The efficiency is real. So is the boundary she draws around it. Her verdict is characteristically direct: people need to be more human in amongst all the AI.

Advice: Spend Six Months Not Selling

Asked what she would tell someone entering the industry, Robbins does not hesitate. Ask questions. Always be asking questions. "You can't become a good recruiter until you really understand your niche, your industry, the people that you work for, the problems that they need solving." Everything else, she believes, falls into place after that.

Her more provocative counsel is about restraint. Do not focus on selling. Do not sell anything for your first six months. Spend that time learning what problems the companies in your market actually have, because that information, once you own it, is gold. It applies as readily to tech or IT as it does to biotech. Coming from someone who started in door-to-door sales and now advises boards on the hire that will define their next chapter, the advice carries the weight of someone who has tested it.