From Sales Leader to Search Maverick: How Tracy Nickell Built a 100% Success Rate by Choosing the Hard Road
Most recruiters play it safe. When a search gets difficult, they move on to easier placements with higher odds of a quick commission. Tracy Nickell built her reputation doing the exact opposite.
After earning a Computer Science degree from Florida International University and working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tracy spent years as an award-winning sales leader in pharmatech and medtech startups, selling disruptive technologies across various U.S. locations. In 2012, when she relocated to the remote Rocky Mountain region, she founded Summit Search Consultants with a bold premise: tackle the "headache hires" that internal teams can't fill and other recruiters won't touch.
Over the past decade, Tracy has built Summit Search into the go-to boutique executive search firm for MedTech and emerging tech startups, assisting over 50 companies ranging from VC-backed startups to Fortune 300 corporations. Under her leadership, the firm has achieved a remarkable 100% success rate for all retained searches and over 90% year-one retention for placements. Her recent placements include a Managing Director for a global medical equipment corporation, a VP of Engineering for a hyper-growth biotech SaaS disruptor, a VP of R&D for a disruptive medtech startup, and a VP of Sales & Marketing for a PE-backed medical device/software provider.
Tracy's philosophy is simple but rare: "How we do one thing is how we do everything." While the industry average failure rate hovers around 30%, she refuses to accept that any client deserves to be in that statistic. Her secret? A hands-on approach that prioritizes human connection over AI automation, treating each search as if it were the firm's sole focus, and understanding that in the world of executive search, failure is simply not an option.
In this conversation, Tracy shares why she transitioned from sales to recruitment, how her "been in their shoes" experience shapes her vetting process, and why leaning into difficult searches became her competitive advantage.
Question 1: From Award-Winning Sales Leader to Executive Search Founder
Your career journey spans IT, pharmatech, and startup medtech ventures before founding Summit Search Consultants. You were an award-winning sales leader working with disruptive technologies before transitioning to executive recruitment. What prompted you to make that shift, and how has your experience selling cutting-edge products shaped the way you identify and place leadership talent today? What unique challenges did you face establishing credibility as a boutique firm competing against established national executive search firms?
After years in the pharmatech and medtech industries, living in various US locations, I founded Summit Search Consultants when we relocated to the remote Rocky Mountain region in 2012. My entrepreneurial background, combined with a natural ability to connect people, led me to focus on talent acquisition. I've always been a successful connector of people, whether making employee referrals at various companies I worked with in the past or introducing friends who later married.
My hands-on experience in the Pharmatech/Medtech industry deeply influences our approach to talent evaluation. Unlike many search firms, we truly understand our clients' needs because we've "been in their shoes." This unique perspective shapes our vetting process, which prioritizes a candidate's real-world performance over a simple comparison of a CV to a job description. We focus on how candidates will genuinely succeed in a role, ensuring a better fit for our clients.
As a boutique firm, our client partnerships are paramount, prioritizing quality over quantity in every search. In our early years, without decades of search success, gaining prospective clients' trust was a challenge. However, our proven track record in Pharmatech and Medtech provided credibility, and we understood that failure was not an option when given an opportunity. We treated each search as if it were our sole focus, ensuring our clients felt like our top priority. This approach fostered recurring business and has led to over a decade of consistent organic growth since our inception.
Question 2: Building a 100% Success Rate in Executive Search
Under your leadership, Summit Search Consultants has achieved a remarkable 100% success rate for all retained searches and over 90% year-1 retention for placements across VC-backed startups to Fortune 300 corporations. In an industry where failed placements are common, what specific strategies or principles have enabled you to consistently deliver these exceptional results? How do you balance the rapid scaling needs of emerging tech startups with the rigorous vetting required to ensure long-term placement success?
We believe every search is fillable provided there is a dedicated hiring team involved. You’re hearing about AI in every aspect of our day to day functions. It’s no different in the world of search. However, here at SSC, we have not fully turned our process over to technology. The automations, the InMails, the AI sourcing, I’m sure there’s some value to that. But in our firm, the human contribution is essential. Our finger is on the pulse of every stage of the process. When the talent pool is not as robust as we would like it to be, our team understands specifically where to go to achieve the results needed.
We have a saying here, “how we do one thing is how we do everything”. We don’t cut corners; we don’t settle for mediocrity. The industry average failure rate is ~30%. We don’t believe any clients deserve to be in that 30%. For every search project, our goal is to deliver to our clients multiple finalists to make their selection. When the client has options, they are in a position of power to make the best possible choice.
Question 3: Choosing the Hard Road in Recruitment
You've publicly shared that when search projects get tough, most recruiters look for "easy street" and get distracted by other projects. Yet you've built your reputation on tackling those "headache hires" that internal teams can't fill. What drives you to lean into the difficult searches rather than the easy wins? Can you share an example of a particularly challenging placement where your commitment to solving hard problems made the difference? What advice would you give to female founders in MedTech and emerging tech about partnering with recruiters who will truly commit to finding the right leadership talent?
To give you a peek behind the curtain of the recruitment industry, there are two types of partnerships a company can engage with a recruitment firm.
There’s the contingent partnership: there is no obligation from the search firm nor the client. CVs are sent to the client and if there’s a match and they make a hire, a placement fee is due.
This is where the “easy street” strategy comes into play. The contingent recruiting firm will accept many job orders and stack rank them from easy to difficult and focus on the easy searches that have the highest potential to yield a placement fee. This leaves clients with the difficult searches in a tough spot with minimal to no talent from their agencies. This also makes the clients with the difficult searches feel like they need to engage additional firms for support, but the results really don’t change.
Then there’s the retained partnership: this is not an “if” a placement is made, but “when” the placement is made. There is commitment in the partnership from both parties and the recruiting firm will work with the client until the position is filled.
What made us lean into those difficult searches? We knew we could fill them, and it would differentiate us from our competitors. We continued to emerge as the firm that can deliver no matter the challenges in the search. We eventually transitioned to a retained search model with a customized process to deliver repeatable results, every time.
My advice to female founders is Medtech and emerging tech who are seeking partnerships with recruiters is to review our guide when selecting a search partner:
Nina Baker
We have several examples of challenging placements we’ve made due to our commitment to solving clients’ unique challenges:
Nina Baker
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