About this episode

Shawn Santos discusses the nuances of compensation in recruiting and the factors that influence senior finance leaders' job changes.

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…

People in this episode

Host: GT

Guest: Shawn Santos

Topics covered

• compensation
• recruiter burnout
• finance leadership
• recruiting practices
• career moves

Keywords

• recruitment
• finance
• CFO
• career advice
• job search
• recruiter tools
• burnout

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stephen Douglas

Products: Bullhorn, LinkedIn Recruiter, ZoomInfo, MetaView

More episodes of Go To Masters Show

• The Comp Plan Isn't Done When It Ships: Measuring What's Actually Working Mid-Year · May 31, 2026 · 40 min
• Stop Running Mad Libs: What the Top 10% of Outbound Teams Do Differently · May 30, 2026 · 27 min
• When Incentives Work Too Well: 30 Years of Comp Design in Chemical Distribution · May 29, 2026 · 21 min
• Good Habits vs. Process Augmentation: Why Most RevOps Teams Are Using AI Wrong · May 22, 2026 · 34 min
• If Your Process Only Works Because of Great People, You Don't Have a Process · May 16, 2026 · 52 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Go To Masters Show podcast page.