Shawn Santos (StevenDouglas) on Compensation, Recruiter Burnout & Old Soul Operators

Most experienced recruiters will tell you the same thing quietly: when a candidate names compensation as their only reason for moving, it's a red flag, not a green light. Shawn Santos has spent almost 28 years placing CFOs, controllers, and VPs across accounting and finance, and the patterns are hard to argue with.Shawn is VP of Accounting and Finance Search at Stephen Douglas, where he's building out the New York and New Jersey market. He joins this episode of GoToMasters Finance Fireside for a conversation about what really moves senior finance leaders into new roles.He gets into where compensation actually sits in a job search (his framing: it's the ante in a card game), why the loudest, most extroverted recruiters tend to burn out at year three, and what separates the ones who stay 15 and 20 years. He's equally direct on tools — Bullhorn as the system of record, LinkedIn Recruiter and ZoomInfo as the discovery layer, MetaView as the AI note-taker that lets him stop transcribing and start listening — and on why bolting salespeople onto an existing CRM is one of the quietest ways to lose data integrity.He closes on the line that has guided his career: the next phone call you make can be the best phone call you make.If you're hiring senior finance talent, advising candidates through career moves, or trying to build a recruiting practice that survives past year three, this one's worth your time.