Navigating Fintech Careers Executive Recruitment Strategies with Toby Donovan

Episode Overview

Toby Donovan is a seasoned executive recruiter at Spencer Stuart, where he specializes in senior-level placements within the payments and fintech sectors. With a background that spans both finance and event production, Toby brings a unique blend of industry insight and strategic acumen to his role. He earned his degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford, a foundation that shaped his analytical skills and deepened his understanding of complex systems. Toby began his career as a conference producer, where he organized large-scale events for financial services and equity trading, long before fintech was a recognized term. This experience exposed him to the emerging technology trends that would later become pivotal in his recruitment career.

At Spencer Stuart, Toby leads executive searches within consumer financial services, placing top talent in key roles for payment networks, banks, and fintech companies alike. His clients range from major payment networks like Visa and Mastercard to innovative fintech startups, and he is known for identifying candidates who thrive in environments undergoing significant transformation. He often works with companies at critical inflection points, helping them navigate new business lines or launch innovative products. Toby’s global reach, supported by Spencer Stuart’s expansive network, allows him to draw on a vast pool of candidates, ensuring his clients find the leadership they need to achieve their strategic goals.

A frequent advisor to senior executives, Toby emphasizes the importance of diverse experience within the payments ecosystem. He believes that professionals who have worked across different segments, such as banks, fintech firms, and payment processors, are best positioned for leadership roles. Toby’s approach to recruitment goes beyond simply filling positions; he seeks to understand the cultural and strategic needs of his clients, ensuring that his placements not only meet the required skill set but also align with the company’s long-term vision. With his in-depth knowledge of fintech and commitment to fostering client relationships, Toby has become a trusted figure in executive recruitment for the ever-evolving payments industry

Episode Transcript

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey there, welcome to Pay Pod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist and thanks for listening. Today I’m chatting with Toby Donovan, an executive recruiter with Spencer Stuart. He leads searches for high level positions within companies who are looking to fill positions with top notch candidates, oftentimes because they are expanding their business and need specific skill sets. He spends a lot of time in the payments space and has great insights about how the process works and what those looking to advance their careers should focus on to achieve their goals. If you’re looking for quality candidates for your business, or if you’re someone who desires to climb that corporate ladder. You’ll want to hear this one. So please welcome Toby Donovan. When I was creeping on your LinkedIn, I saw you got a degree from the University of Oxford in modern history.

Toby Donovan: That’s right. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: I’ve never I never I’ve never seen modern history as a major, like specifically modern history. What does that entail? Like what periods does that focus on?

Toby Donovan: Wow. So,  at Oxford, uh, modern history is everything from about 280 A.D., so it’s not that modern. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: I was going to say that’s not what I would call modern.

Toby Donovan: Yeah. Like, so you could do ancient history, which is a lot of sort of BC stuff, but modern history in its kind of Roman Empire, like, you know, birth of Christianity to the end of the Roman Empire, essentially, and then all the way through to the, to the modern day. So it’s kind of like a, it’s a big chunk of time.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.What did you want to be when you grew up, when you, when you were doing.

Toby Donovan: So I always wanted to be a writer, you know, and I do. I do write a lot of short stories. So that’s still kind of, uh, a passion of mine.  I think as it kind of relates, relates to career. I didn’t really have a, you know, a firm idea when I was, uh, you know, when I was kind of graduating and kind of getting ready for, for work life. And I kind of fell into my first role somewhat by accident. You know, I think it was an advert for a researcher, which actually turned out to be a job in conference production. So that was kind of my first, uh, kind of my first career stint was as a conference producer. Okay. That’s it. Yeah, sort.

Kevin Rosenquist: Of sort of event planning a little bit, sort of that kind of thing.

Toby Donovan: You know, it’s a little different from event planning. So event planning is kind of like we’re going to book, we’re going to book the venue, we’re going to take care of the catering. We’re going to make sure that there’s like, you know, enough chairs in the room and the kind of audio visual is sort of set up. Conference production is more like it’s kind of industry research. So you’re kind of phoning senior executives, you’re finding out what’s on their minds, and then you’re crafting a kind of a conference agenda, which kind of deals with all of those issues. You’re inviting the speakers. So you’re kind of you’re putting together the intellectual content of the conference as a conference producer.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Toby Donovan: So I did that for 5 or 6 years, kind of mainly within the financial services space. I did a lot of stuff in equity trading. So the company I worked for produced a portfolio of, of, of events that were focused on kind of equity trading technology.  so, you know, I organized some of those events in Europe, some in the US. There was a, a big one out in Macau that, that, that I organized, which was, which was quite a lot of fun, and it kind of gave me an insight into and this was before the word fintech I think was even really in circulation, but just an insight into the huge oceans of money that were just kind of gushing into the world of financial technology. You know, before that was even really a thing. Five, six years as a conference, a conference producer. And then I made a pivot in 2011 into executive search. You know, I spent a couple of years for a different company and ended up joining Spencer Stuart in 2013.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay. So you’re in Philly now, right?

Toby Donovan: Yeah, yeah. Been in Philly since, uh, since I joined Spencer Stuart about, uh, about 11 years ago.

Kevin Rosenquist: I saw you’ve worked in Australia and Singapore and London. And do you have a favorite place? Like where? What’s been your favorite place to live?

Toby Donovan: You know, I really love America. I’ve had a lot of fun living in other parts of the world. I had a blast. Living in Singapore and Australia is really fantastic as well. But I think the first time I visited the US, probably around 2002 or something like that, I just kind of knew that it was for me. And it’s just kind of hard to explain why. I guess it’s it’s pretty personal. It’s just there’s something about the kind of openness of America, the kind of optimism, the kind of the loudness, the vibrancy. And it was just all very, well, kind of refreshingly different from the culture in the UK. So I sort of knew that when I had the opportunity, I would try to make it over here. And, you know, luckily for me, the conference production company I was working for had an office in New York. So in 2008, they,  you know, they essentially offered to transfer me because it was one of the things I was interested in. So I came over to the States originally in 2008.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow. Cool. I think there’s a lot of American listeners going. He thinks it’s optimistic here. Huh? We’ll take it. Yeah. So tell me what Toby Donovan’s day looks like. You grab a cup of coffee, maybe some tea, you sit in front of your computer. And what type of clients are in your inbox?

Toby Donovan: Yeah. So I sit within what we call our consumer financial services practice. And it’s kind of a broad spectrum of different types of clients. We do a lot of work with, with banks, with various kinds of consumer lending organizations. We do some stuff in insurance. I’d say over the last few years I’ve really started to specialize in payments and,  you know, so we work with the big payment networks, you know, companies like Visa and Mastercard and American Express and Discover. We work with, uh, you know, the payment arms to the big banks. You work with credit card issuers. We work with various kinds of fintechs and payment processors, mainly payments these days, not exclusively, but probably probably about 80%. And,  in terms of the work we do here at Spencer Stuart, it’s kind of completely across the board. So, you know, every function,  every business area we operate within, it’s normally quite senior work. So I’d say kind of, you know, CEO and a couple of levels below. And where I personally spend most of my time is, you know, I do some CEO stuff. I also do chief product officer searches. I do divisional presidents. Normally at the intersection of kind of product and general management work is kind of where I spend most of my time.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay. So, you’re like a fintech professional matchmaker.

Toby Donovan: Yeah, I would say so. I would say fintech is definitely a bit of what I do. It’s a bit broader than that because we do payment work for, you know, the big banks that wouldn’t really call themselves fintechs or, you know, the payment networks wouldn’t really call themselves fintechs, but it’s kind of overlapping circles. You’ve got sort of, you know, payments and fintech. And there’s definitely a kind of a blending of, of that stuff in what I do.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay, okay. So are there general characteristics that you look for or is each search kind of completely different depending on the role and the client?

Toby Donovan: Each search is different in the sense that, you know, there’s often some very specific piece of experience that a client will be looking for. You know, so if you’re doing a kind of head of real time payment search, just to kind of choose a sort of relatively recent example of mine, you know, you kind of will need that sort of deep, real time payments expertise. And you know, if you’re looking for a chief product officer, you know, for a payments business, they’re going to need really deep product expertise. So you’re kind of looking for specific things. But but having said that I mean that there are there are things that people that we kind of value regardless of the of the opportunity, you know, so being able to tell a good story about your, your, your background, you know, being able to sort of pick good examples, being a kind of good communicator, you know, coming across as a sort of decent person, you know, presenting well, showing up well to the interview, looking nice. Uh, that’s kind of their sort of basic stuff that will earn you dividends regardless of the opportunity. But to answer your question, we look, we’re often looking for quite specific experiences.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah I that makes sense. And do you do you do the first initial interviews when you’re when you’re finding fighting people, do you do you kind of weed stuff out and then kind of pass it off to them or.

Toby Donovan: Yeah, yeah, I’d say normally we’ll speak to people on the phone, maybe for 30 minutes. Then if we like them, we’ll do a deeper dive interview. And, you know, depending on the search and the kind of level of complexity, it might be 45 minutes, it might be 90 minutes. And, you know, so we’ll be kind of developing a pool of people that we have spoken with. And then we will typically present a kind of smaller subset of those to our, to our clients, you know, maybe kind of 3 or 4 initially. And then, you know, they’ll interview them. And that’s kind of how the, how the sort of the search, the search progresses, you know, they can there can be situations that are a little different. You know, when you’re kind of doing a board search, it’s sort of it’s a slightly different process than when you’re doing a CEO search.  That’s often a kind of slightly different and more curated process. But that’s kind of generally, generally how we go about things.

Kevin Rosenquist: When a client comes to you, how much information do you get out of the gate? Like do they often give you like a really detailed list of the kind of things that they’re looking for? Or is it usually just like, hey, you know, we’ve worked together before. Toby, I need a CFO. Help me out. You know, like what? How detailed do they. How much help do they give you ? On the front end?

Toby Donovan: Well, we want them to give us as much help as possible. And we, you know, we’re kind of completely information sponges, right. So, you know, we try to interact with them. We’re trying to draw out as much information as possible. You know, ideally we would, you know, spend time on site within the headquarters or, you know, wherever the role is going to be based, talking to key stakeholders.  okay. We’re doing a CEO search. We’ll have one on ones with every single board director, you know, as well as the entire leadership team to build like a very, very detailed picture about, you know, where the company is.  you know, where they’re where they’re sort of trying to move things, uh, how they’re thinking about the leadership profile of the individual in question. You know, some searches don’t require as much initial input, you know, if it’s a sort of head of corporate development search, uh, you know, those roles may be maybe, like a little simpler or a kind of a CFO search. There will be some specifics, but we’ll kind of know,  we’ll kind of know a relevant universe of CFO candidates for, you know, for a particular search. But generally, we’re kind of trying to absorb as much information as possible. And the more information we have, you know, the more effective we can be when we’re representing the opportunity in the marketplace.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. That’s interesting. I guess I didn’t think about that, that how how helpful it would be to go to the company physically and spend some time there and get to know some people and all that. I guess we always think of so much as being online, but there is like a vibe you kind of get just by being somewhere.

Toby Donovan: Yeah, it’s it’s, you know, so much comes down to culture, right? And the kind of the cultural fit between, you know, between the candidate and the organization that then they’re moving into.  so that’s something we, we really spend a lot of time on. And, you know, we’ve done some research that shows that when a candidate leaves within a year, it’s almost always a kind of cultural issue. It’s not that,  it’s not that they didn’t have the kind of the hard skills for the job. It’s more that, you know, they kind of didn’t get on with the people that they had to work with. You know, they weren’t good at establishing relationships in the right kind of way. Right. So that kind of personal sort of rapport and connection and culture fit. It’s just absolutely critical to the work we do. And the more time we spend with the key leaders, you know, ideally we could do it in person, but, you know, it could be it could be over video like this. You know, it could be through phone calls. But, you know, figuring out what the organization is like, figuring out how people have sort of, you know, when people haven’t worked out why why that is, you know, what? What’s caused them to fail? You know, all of that stuff is just so critical to the work we do.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. And could you get a better sense of that when you’re sitting down in a place, maybe talking to people or just feeling what the office is like and all that? Yeah. And it’s one thing to have an email of why, hey, why did the last three people not work out? And they could tell you in an email, but it’s not the same.

Toby Donovan: Exactly. 100%. 100%.

Kevin Rosenquist: So on the Spencer Stuart website, you your page says he excels with with a client, he excels when a client has reached an inflection point and desires to make a significant change, transforming an existing business, creating a new strategy, or spinning up an entirely new product or business line. So you’re not you’re not just helping recruit you help with strategy as well.

Toby Donovan: Well, often,  when our clients enlist us to do projects as we work at a, at a pretty senior level, it’s not because they’ve, like, they’ve decided they want to do something. You know, it’s not that it’s not necessarily that they want to replace an individual who was there, that we obviously kind of do those kind of searches as well. But often it will be, uh, you know. Hey, Spencer Stuart,  we want to move into, you know, the real time payment space or, you know, we want to build a new function to interact with our, you know, distribution partners in a new way. Often it’s kind of doing something different as an organization,  which requires a kind of specific set of skills on the, on the kind of part of the person who would be leading that effort.  you know, you’ve got to be sort of comfortable with ambiguity. You obviously need sort of deep subject matter expertise regarding the kind of the area in question.  but you’ve kind of got to figure out how to kind of spin something up. There’s a lot of, kind of there’s a lot of general management know-how that’s necessary for those for that, for those types of roles. And yeah, I’d say, you know, over the last few years that’s been a lot of the work that I’ve done and have found most rewarding. Right. You know, where it’s kind of, you know, helping a company spin up a new business or, you know, enter a new product category or, you know, whatever it might be, that’s that’s a lot of fun.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. I’ll bet, I’ll bet that’s cool. It’s like you’re not necessarily trying to replace a person. You’re trying to help grow. They’re growing. So you’re helping staff that growth, so to speak.

Toby Donovan: Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Rosenquist: You must have a pretty impressive global network then, huh?

Toby Donovan: It’s definitely global. I mean, we’re a very global firm, so I would say that my network, my personal network is kind of concentrated in the US, but because of the because of the global reach of Spencer Stuart,  you know, if I need to reach someone in Singapore or kind of get up to speed on what’s happening in Singapore or in Germany or whatever it might be like, I have a kind of global network of Spencer Stuart colleagues that I can sort of leverage to kind of, you know, get information from different parts of the world or like, you know, reach executives from, from different parts of the world. So,  I’d still say most of my kind of day to day contacts are here in the US. But just given the nature of the firm, it kind of gives you a global reach. Sure.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. So. So, like, are there times where, you know, you get a client to come to you and you’re just like you. You know, you’re like, oh, man, I gotta talk to this person because I know they’d be a really good fit. Or is it more of a search from scratch every time?

Toby Donovan: I’d say we’re always kind of generally proactively building our networks and, you know, trying to get in contact with senior executives, you know, from the industries that that we operate within, uh, you know, and that kind of extends to investment banks that cover particular industry sectors. And, you know, private equity firms and venture capital firms that invest in those spaces. So we’re always kind of like proactively cultivating our networks and, you know, getting to know, uh, you know, specific individuals. You know, when we start a search, we kind of do a few things, you know, we commission a lot of like systematic research. So we know that, okay, we’re targeting, you know, these six banks and these five payment processes, and we need to know within each of those, you know, what is the specific person that’s doing this? You know, what is the specific person that’s doing that. And we kind of map that out and we have that kind of specific knowledge that’s ready to go. And then we can kind of systematically reach all of those individuals. So there’s kind of a looser,  sort of longer term proactive network building. And then there’s kind of like the very sort of systematic, disciplined, uh, you know, approach into a particular pool of people. That will be the beginning, you know, the beginning sort of steps of any particular search.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay. How how important is is education when you get to the level that, that you’re recruiting for, is it is it still does it still matter a lot or is it more about experience and knowledge and understanding and all of that stuff because, you know, there’s so much going on in the debates of of the college degree necessary these days and what, you know, for certain things, obviously it is, but how much weight is put on education.

Toby Donovan: That’s a very, very good question. And I think recently, like over the last couple of years, we’re seeing the signs of a bit more flexibility relating to having a college degree. For particular roles, I would say it’s generally been kind of a standard part of the role spec for most jobs in the industry. You know, you’ll kind of get a role spec. It’s you need 15 years of experience doing this and you need to have led a team of, you know, X number of people or whatever it might be.  and then, you know, at the bottom of the list, it’s like, you know, BA or equivalent required and BA preferred, etc. I’d say that’s still the norm, but I’ve noticed it changing and I’ve kind of noticed companies sort of substituting slightly different language, saying, for example, you know, in lieu of, uh, in lieu of a bachelor’s degree, you know, kind of industry experience or, you know, potentially, you know, former military experience could could be considered. And I think that’s the way I’d like to see it trending. You know, I think it is a shame if we, you know, narrow our searches always to people who have degrees, just kind of, you know, speaking personally. So I think if that opens up more, I think that’s probably a positive thing for our industry.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. I mean, I feel like that’s kind of the I don’t know, at least in this country, that’s sort of where things are heading in general. Yeah. But it’s still like, you know, I searched for jobs before and it does seem like there are a decent amount that still want a college degree. Yeah, it depends on the role, of course. Right. Certain things you got to have. It’d be nice to have the education, you know.

Toby Donovan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, if it’s if there’s a kind of legal nature to the role, you know, you probably need a you probably need a law degree if, you know, if your role is, uh, is kind of designing bridges, like, I really want you to have, you know, a kind of engineering. Engineering?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I’d prefer that, too. Yeah, that’d be great. You want your doctor to have gone to school, right? Right.

Toby Donovan: Right. Exactly. But there are definitely roles where, you know, I think it just ends up on the role spec because it’s always been on the role spec, and it isn’t necessarily selecting for something that is core to the role. And I think there’s a newfound recognition that that’s been happening. And I do think there are kind of the first signs of some flexibility around that.

Kevin Rosenquist: When you get that role sheet is are people or are companies generally like you need to hit every, every one of these, or is there like a if you if you’ve got like some really strong candidates in this area, they might be more flexible on the second part of the role sheet or how does that generally work.

Toby Donovan: So we try to write our own specs in such a way that, you know, they’re kind of different sections of the role spec. And we, you know, we put a lot of time into them. There’s a section called Ideal Experience. But we try to write the points,  as kind of the, the sort of the, the bare minimum to be considered for, for the role. So it might be that we’re probably ideally looking for someone who’s got, you know, 20 years of experience, but could we consider someone with 12 years of experience if they’re kind of off the charts in other areas? Maybe. So, you know, probably the number that ends up on the role spec is kind of 12 plus, you know, and then similarly with kind of team size stuff areas, areas of the industry, we kind of we try to write, we try to write the experience bullets as a kind of filter. Right. So it’s kind of like these are the things you really need to meet. And then there’s going to be a lot of other text about sort of ideal attributes and things that we would have liked to have done that are, that are sort of a bit a bit looser and a bit more qualitative. But we do try to make that section quite buttoned up.

Kevin Rosenquist: My, my wife’s a realtor and she always talks about people’s nice to haves. So it’s like that’s kind of like the same thing. There’s the mustache. There’s the nice to haves. Right. Yeah. Yeah exactly. So that’s probably very, very similar. Yeah. Yeah. How long does a search typically take. Is there a general rule of thumb or is it just kind of depend.

Toby Donovan: So they can sometimes be really quick. You know we’ve kind of if you spend like a decent amount of time in the industry, you probably heard of a search that, you know, is solved in a, in a few weeks, maybe a month. I’d say normally they take about three months. That’s kind of industry standard and sometimes they can take a lot longer.  you know, if the role is of enormous Consequence, and there isn’t huge urgency for the client to make a decision. And maybe there’s something ambiguous about what it is the company is looking for.  the search can kind of take on a sort of, uh, almost a kind of iterative form where the client is sort of using the search process to kind of refine and figure out what it actually is they’re looking for versus, you know, having that knowledge and sort of bringing it to us at the at the outset of the process. So those kind of elongated processes can take much longer a year, maybe two years.  two years. Yeah. It’s it’s happened. Uh, it’s happened. That’s very unusual. So if there are prospective clients listening to that, listening to this extremely unusual, you know, I would say, you know, three months is kind of the standard. We want it to be as quick as possible, obviously, so long as we’re getting to the right people and we’re delivering a fantastic result because everything else being equal, the client would like their placement in seat, you know, today versus three, three weeks from now. But most important is getting the right person. And I think most of our clients recognize that. And they’re willing for it to last a bit longer so that they can kind of get their peace of mind that they’re really getting a top class executive seat.

Kevin Rosenquist: So a lot of our listeners obviously are in the financial world, fintech world, all that. And if, if, if somebody you know is, is really wants to to to move up in their career and all that, you know, just in your experience of what companies want, what advice would you give to someone who’s like, hey, I want to really try to to to kind of level up my career.

Toby Donovan: So in payments, I mean, there’s a, there’s there’s a few things. I was kind of thinking about this.

Toby Donovan: Before our conversation. And we kind of explored some of these areas in the white paper we put together recently. So one concept which I think maybe some listeners could, could just kind of reflect on is what we call payments diversity. And, you know, if you’re an executive in the payments space, payments companies really value individuals who have touched different parts of the ecosystem. Right? So you think about payments. It’s a very, very complex ecosystem. It’s so complex that there’s kind of no one in payments that really understands all the payments. You know, it’s, uh, which is one of the things that makes it so much fun. But,  and the other thing about payments is that,  payment companies don’t like to stay in their lanes. You know, they’re always kind of trying to muscle in on each other. You know, they’re trying to own as much of the payments flow as they can. They’re kind of it A muscle in muscling in on each other’s territory. They’re launching new products, they’re moving into new geographies. And in that environment, if you’ve kind of touched different parts of the ecosystem, like maybe you’ve worked for a bank, maybe you’ve worked for a fintech company, maybe you work for a payments network. That kind of experience can be really, really valuable.

Toby Donovan: So I think one piece of advice I would give is don’t be overly focused on or don’t be solely focused on your promotion to the next level. Also also focus on sideways moves and and not not a lateral move. Right? So when people hear the term sideways move, they kind of think is that a lateral move? A lateral move is often what you will hear executives say when you’re kind of talking to them about a particular opportunity. And they’ll say, it doesn’t really sound like a step up. You know, that sounds like a lateral move. It sounds like it’s the same level as the job I have today. A sideways move is different. It’s when you’re kind of moving from your existing domain into a different domain. So let’s say you’re working for a big payments company and you’re working on one particular payment product. So, you know, moving across into a different part of the business to work on a different payment product or moving into a completely different function. Right. Or spending some time overseas. Like everything, anything you can do to kind of broaden your exposure within payments is going to make you much more attractive to employers. Everything else, everything else being equal.

Toby Donovan: So that’s that’s one thing. Having said that and, you know, a little,  you know, slightly, you know, just just another kind of important thing to bear in mind, you should choose your moves carefully. Now, if you’re talking about making kind of sideways moves within your current employer.  You know, I think you can kind of do that relatively freely. You’re going to be developing new experiences,  that all of that will be additive. But when you decide to move from your current company and move to a different company,  be very deliberate about when and how to make make those moves, because you can get into a situation where you’ve made too many moves in your career and recruiters and employers, and this is, you know, this is not just a payments thing. This is just kind of across the board. They will sometimes get quite nervous if they see lots of one and two year moves. And, you know, a couple of those is probably fine. But if it’s a lot, people will start to wonder if, like, there’s something kind of wrong or something that isn’t kind of clicking when the person is starting a particular company. So be selective. Be considerate about the moves you make.

Kevin Rosenquist: It can also probably make it seem like for that new employer potential, the potential employer, they might be like, well, does he just bounce around a lot? Exactly. You know, and so how much of a commitment am I going to get out of this person? How much loyalty am I going to get out of this person? Right. How much effort do I want to put into them, getting them up to speed and training them for this role and all that? If I know they’re great in a couple of years.

Toby Donovan: Exactly. I mean, if you try to recruit someone to lead an initiative that is going to take at least five years and is, you know, kind of a massive priority for the company in question, and you’re talking to someone who has had, you know, five one year moves over the last five years. It’s a difficult sell for that person to make, because you’ve kind of got to say five times why the thing that you know happened that caused you to kind of move like wasn’t your fault or what the situation was. And it’s kind of difficult to kind of keep that person on board.  when, when that’s been your experience. So, I do think just be careful about that now. It may be out of your control. Right? You know, you may be in a situation where you’ve had to make moves the companies have acquired or they’ve been bought or things have radically changed. And none of that is your fault.  just be very buttoned up about what your story is regarding those transitions and those moves and, you know, figure out a way to kind of tell the story of your career in a way that’s easily repeatable by the person to, to other individuals. Right? You kind of want to simplify the story of your career in a sense. If there’s a way to kind of split your career story up into chapters and say, you know, the first half of my career was this and the second half was this, or, you know, I divided it up into thirds.

Toby Donovan: It’s going to create a kind of a structure that the person you’re talking to can kind of latch on to,  and just make it easier to follow and then make it easier to tell your story to someone else. So I think, you know, being able to kind of tell the story of your own career efficiently and effectively is very important as well. So that this is all sort of, you know, advice I would give now. Now, this one’s a little self-serving, but I do think, uh, executives should cultivate relationships with recruiters. Yeah. you know, it doesn’t have to be me. It doesn’t have to be Spencer Stuart. But I would say, you know, find 2 or 3 recruiters whose judgment you really respect and who you can trust and build those relationships for the long term, you know, not just in the context of any specific opportunity, but,  but for the long term, you know, and check in with them, find out what they’re seeing in the marketplace.  uh, you know, find out what they’re seeing with compensation packages. If you’re kind of made an offer, you can sort of bounce those numbers off the individual to sort of get another point of view. I think it’s really beneficial for executives to have a few trusted recruiter relationships that they can kind of rely on as they.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense that that’s helpful. You always have a good network and if you can have people working on your behalf. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. All right. Well hey Toby Donovan with Spencer Stuart. Thanks so much for being here and for giving us your insight and and yeah, really appreciate your time, Evan.

Toby Donovan: It was my pleasure. Anytime. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.