Precision, Insight and Clarity in Leadership Selection
For nearly four decades, P. Stephen Webster, PhD, has served as a trusted advisor to leading life science companies across eight countries. His deep expertise in senior executive assessment has guided thousands of critical hiring decisions—helping clients reduce risk, gain strategic clarity, and align leadership with long-term business goals. While he continues to lead all assessment work within the firm’s executive search practice, he also provides leadership assessments as a standalone service—ideal for companies seeking clarity in promotions, succession, or senior hiring decisions without engaging in a full search.
At S. Webster Executive Search, we specialize in high-stakes executive leadership assessments tailored to the life sciences industry. These assessments are a foundational component of our CFO and senior finance executive search process—ensuring every candidate we recommend is not only qualified, but positioned to succeed in your company’s unique environment.
|
What Executive Assessment Really Is
Executive assessment is not a checklist—it’s a discipline. Grounded in psychological science and refined through decades of real-world application, it is designed to evaluate an executive’s ability to thrive within a specific corporate culture, organizational structure, and strategic mandate. Our proprietary methodology integrates:
The result is a clear, multidimensional profile of each candidate—providing data-driven insight into their cognitive capabilities, professional judgment, leadership style, personality dynamics, and cultural fit. |
|
Our proprietary methodology integrates structured interviews, professional observation, performance analysis, and advanced psychometric tools. These tools are developed in-house and continually validated against a private database of thousands of life science finance executives we’ve assessed over the past 35 years.
The result is a clear, multidimensional profile of each candidate—providing data-driven insight into their cognitive capabilities, professional judgment, leadership style, personality dynamics, and cultural fit.
The result is a clear, multidimensional profile of each candidate—providing data-driven insight into their cognitive capabilities, professional judgment, leadership style, personality dynamics, and cultural fit.
|
Beyond the Resume: What We Assess
We assess far more than technical skills or prior experience. Our executive assessments evaluate:
This process is especially crucial when hiring for CFO and senior finance roles—positions that require not only technical command but also strategic foresight, trustworthiness, and alignment with the CEO’s vision. |
A Note on Psychometrics
When carefully developed, validated through follow-up studies, and interpreted by qualified professionals, psychometric assessments can be a valuable tool. However, results should be viewed as indicators—not definitive predictors—of executive performance, and should never be used in isolation.
Our psychometric tools are designed to measure critical thinking and judgment, including complex problem-solving, pattern recognition, strategic agility, situational judgment, and abstract, verbal, numerical, and logical reasoning.
We remain cautious about psychometric tools that claim to assess emotional intelligence and personality. When properly developed and administered by trained professionals, psychometric tools are useful—but they are not a substitute for expert judgment. Many off-the-shelf assessments claim to measure emotional intelligence and interpersonal aptitude, but in the hands of high-performing executives, they can be easily manipulated.
That’s why we rely on a hybrid model: proprietary psychometrics combined with deep behavioral interviewing and informed observation—delivered by a psychologist with nearly four decades of experience. This layered approach yields far more accurate and actionable insights than any one method alone.
Our psychometric tools are designed to measure critical thinking and judgment, including complex problem-solving, pattern recognition, strategic agility, situational judgment, and abstract, verbal, numerical, and logical reasoning.
We remain cautious about psychometric tools that claim to assess emotional intelligence and personality. When properly developed and administered by trained professionals, psychometric tools are useful—but they are not a substitute for expert judgment. Many off-the-shelf assessments claim to measure emotional intelligence and interpersonal aptitude, but in the hands of high-performing executives, they can be easily manipulated.
That’s why we rely on a hybrid model: proprietary psychometrics combined with deep behavioral interviewing and informed observation—delivered by a psychologist with nearly four decades of experience. This layered approach yields far more accurate and actionable insights than any one method alone.
Why It Matters
Hiring the wrong executive can cost far more than time and money—it can set back your strategy, disrupt your culture, and weaken investor confidence. Our assessments provide a clearer, more complete understanding of who a candidate is, how they lead, and whether they will thrive in your organization.
Whether you’re building a leadership team from the ground up or replacing a pivotal executive, we provide the clarity and confidence to move forward with certainty.
Hiring the wrong executive can cost far more than time and money—it can set back your strategy, disrupt your culture, and weaken investor confidence. Our assessments provide a clearer, more complete understanding of who a candidate is, how they lead, and whether they will thrive in your organization.
Whether you’re building a leadership team from the ground up or replacing a pivotal executive, we provide the clarity and confidence to move forward with certainty.