ANDREW PARKER MANAGING DIRECTOR

What’s your background?

I fell into contingent sales recruiting shortly after graduating as an escape from feeling restricted in the graduate trainee programme I had initially joined Despite being an unplanned move into an industry I knew nothing about, I fell in love with the world of recruitment – a people-orientated business with the opportunity to constantly learn from more experienced and senior clients and candidates I loved the cut and thrust of contingent recruiting too. From this environment, I quickly gravitated to retained Executive Search as the area I could have the most interesting conversations with senior people and work on a far more consultative basis After several years working for leading Tech sector specialists and a short but wonderful stint leading international Talent Acquisition for one of my client software companies, I started Symbiosis Search along with a close colleague

What made you join the tech industry?

I love the Tech sector! BUT, I love the business of Tech far more than the Tech itself I’m an economist by background and I love the creative destruction of capitalism What makes some companies and industries succeed and grow fast? How can an idea morph into the world’s most valuable company in less than a decade? For me as a mid20s economics and business graduate, I looked at the Tech sector and its ability to create, grow, disrupt and destroy value as the industry that had these traits on steroids – i e above all other sectors. I decided I just had to be in the Tech business and particularly in the world of Enterprise Software as, to repeat a well-known industry phrase, software eats the world

When didyou join?

I joined SH in November 2022 as part of the acquisition of Symbiosis Search – the Software sector-focused Executive Search specialist I founded with Nick Povey twenty years ago.

What projects are you looking forward to working in Sheffield Haworth?

I’m excited about this next chapter in my career and most looking forward to collaborating with colleagues on complex international senior talent Searches in Tech where we make game-changing hires – hires which change, pivot, disrupt, accelerate and drive huge value for clients and investors Impactful hires I can look back on with pride. I’m also looking forward to bringing our other service offerings, aside from Executive Search, to our Software clients

Who in your career has been a role model to you?

My boss at Blue Martini Software – the then VP Global Talent Acquisition He was actually a long-term contractor to the CEO at the time and ran his own successful boutique Search firm in Chicago focused on the Enterprise Software sector With a great nose for talent and a wealth of knowledge and expertise working at different growth stages with start-ups and scale-ups, he was a credible advisor and confidante to some of the industry’s most well-known Executives at the time As well as learning a great deal from him, he also gave me some of the inspiration and courage to set-up Symbiosis Search after the Dotcom Bust

Tell us something people might not know about you/do you have any hidden talents?

I like to think I rock karaoke (though I’m firmly in a minority of one on this according to my family) with my go-to being Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer or Wanted Dead or Alive