85% candidate satisfaction: how Axeme integrated AI without losing the human touch
Christine Horvais spent 13 years inside the healthcare industry before founding Axeme in 2004. She now leads one of the very few recruitment firms in France specialised in Life Sciences, Medical Devices and Biotechnologies. Her conviction has not changed once: you recruit well what you understand.
TLDR
85% of candidates who went through Axeme's AI voice pre-qualification reported a positive experience. Some outlined there was no judgement, no analysis made in advance.
Christine Horvais built Axeme on one idea: deep sector specialisation is not a positioning choice, it is an operational prerequisite.
Alongside MD101, she co-founded the Alliance EMT, a seven-firm ecosystem that accompanies health innovators from financing to market.
Some candidates came back with unexpected feedback after being pre-qualified by an AI voice tool. The result, according to Christine: satisfaction stands at 85%.
Christine has led Axeme since 2004, operating in a sector where a poorly drafted job description can jeopardise a product launch, where a rare regulatory profile can stall a project for six months, and where the gap between a generalist firm and a specialist one is felt almost every single day.
“A client who returns several times over several years,” she says, “it means that the trust is established. That he understood that you were able to understand his environment.” That, in a sentence, is the Axeme proposition.
MedTech: a sector that recruits differently
Between 2004 and 2026, the MedTech talent market has been remade from within. New IT roles arrived with the rise of software inside medical devices. Artificial intelligence, four years ago, created a wave of demand for developer profiles. Regulation tightened, and with it, entirely new categories of expertise came into existence.
Candidate expectations have shifted just as deeply. Remote working, unheard of when she started, is now a baseline requirement. The idea of a linear career has all but disappeared. “A biology master's student today? We say they are destined to research only. I do not think so. Tomorrow they will have maybe three or four different jobs in their professional life. And that is great.”
What these shifts share: they all place a premium on soft skills. Technical competence appears on a CV. What does not write itself on paper reveals itself in an interview, through situational exercises, and through the kind of reading that only years of sustained practice allow you to do properly.
“Beyond all the technology I just mentioned, the difference is essentially made on soft skills. There is a real awareness of this from clients.”
AI in recruitment: test, measure, validate
Christine's approach to AI is deliberate. “Today we are very solicited by many tools,” “You have to test, measure and validate.”
In practice, Axeme's new ATS incorporates AI for recording and synthesising interviews. AI assists with drafting job descriptions. And more recently, a voice pre-qualification tool has been deployed for initial candidate contact, the stage of the process that clients press hardest to compress.
The feedback, in her words, was “rather positive.” Some candidates said they were happy to speak with the tool because there was no judgement, no analysis made in advance. She keeps both options open: candidates who want a human contact always get one. “We always ask for authorisation. We always keep the two solutions.”
On sourcing tools, she is more cautious. “We already tested a tool a few months ago and it already has new updates,” she continues. “So we must not rush.”
“The AI is indispensable in our profession today. But you have to test, measure and validate.”
Axeme and the Alliance EMT: beyond recruitment
A client calls. They need a rare regulatory profile. Three to four months, minimum, to find the right person. But they have a regulatory issue to resolve within the month.
Axeme sets up a bridge consulting mission whilst the recruitment runs its course. The client, Christine says, “was delighted.” What made that response possible was built eleven years earlier.
That is when Christine approached MD101, a medical device consultancy. Together, they created the Alliance EMT, Experts Medtech, with the ambition of accompanying health project leaders across every stage of development: financing, regulatory affairs, intellectual property, clinical, commercial and human resources. The alliance now brings together seven specialist firms.
Each year it organises the TALKS! by EMT, which Christine describes as bringing in “interlocutors from the ecosystem to address a theme”: practitioners, investment funds, start-ups, international players. Up to 280 decision-makers participate every year.
Passing it on, at CY Tech and beyond
Christine has been working with master's students at CY Tech in Cergy for several years: quality control, biomaterials, biological engineering. She goes in to explain the health industry and to help them prepare for interviews. “I think it is important to stay in contact with future talents,” she notes.
Her advice to them is consistent. Stay curious. Do not close yourself off to opportunities. “When I started, I did not imagine at all that I would be in the world of recruitment one day. And yet I am passionate about what I do today. There is a guiding thread.”
At the close of the interview, she comes back to the idea of sharing. In a sector facing this much change, she adds, “sharing information, small advice, it must be done. There is no reason not to.”
“We recruit well what we know, what we understand. That is the basis of what I have put in place at Axeme.”
What cannot be delegated
Christine's argument is simple. In MedTech, a client who brings you a mandate needs to know that you understand what the profile will actually do. Not what is written on the brief. What the person will do, inside the environment they are joining.
AI compresses timescales, improves interview synthesis, pre-qualifies at scale. It does not replace the conversation where a recruiter can tell a client: “this profile, you will not have it before three or four months” and then propose something real in the meantime.
That is what two decades inside a sector buys you. Not a larger database. A more accurate reading of what is actually possible, and what to do when it is not.
Christine Horvais is founder and CEO of Axeme, a recruitment firm specialised in Life Sciences, Medical Devices, Diagnostic In Vitro and Biotechnologies. She was interviewed by Francine Nyamba, Chief of Staff at Talent Business Partners. Axeme is listed on Talent Business Partners, the reference platform where specialist agencies prove their expertise with client-verified results.