Stuart Spindler
Stuart has owned and operated Spindler since 1993 and his career in executive resourcing spans a total of twenty-five years. In the field of executive resourcing for B2B services organisations, he is a highly respected, authoritative figure, well known for a very professional yet user-friendly approach to business.
Stuart’s recruiting career has focused on assisting multi-site support services companies with key director and senior executive appointments. He has an excellent understanding of the ingredients of success and a proven ability to attract talent into these types of enterprises. A hallmark of his approach is a rigorous evaluation of the merits of industry experience versus transferable skills. This enables Stuart to hire from specialist markets when necessary, but also identify portable skills that will augment the pool of candidates and stimulate fresh thinking.
His sales background enables Stuart to find creative ways of projecting opportunities to first class candidates, even when the recruiting company may not be in the most immediately appealing or high profile industry. The ability to match candidate with client to mutual advantage has given Stuart a loyal following amongst senior executives, many of whom have used Spindler for both their own job hunting and recruiting for their companies.
Stuart has an Honours Degree in Geography and a postgraduate planning qualification. These led him into an early career in international logistics, primarily with the P & O Group, where he specialised in sales and key account management. Stuart developed his recruitment consultancy skills with Hoggett Bowers and rose rapidly to Regional Director, running a highly successful Thames Valley business unit comprising nine consultants.
He then moved to Whitehead Mann, a prestigious London search practice, where he established and built a strong position for the firm in the outsourced support services market. Keen to establish his own business, Stuart took the best practice from these two excellent companies and added his own values and principles. From its early beginnings Spindler has combined the professional standards of large firms with the personal service and approachability of a small business.
Melanie Curtis
Melanie joined Spindler in 2002 and is now a Director of the practice. She conducts assignments on senior management through to executive director level appointments across a wide portfolio of business-to-business organisations.
Melanie has developed specific expertise across the environmental services and renewable energy sectors, in particular the broad spectrum of established and emerging waste technologies. She has assisted numerous well-known organisations and new entrants, specialising in projects focused on the transfer of talent across sector and function.
Prior to joining Spindler, Melanie worked for several large multi-national service organisations, including Avis and Hyder Business Services. She held a range of managerial roles largely in bid management and corporate development posts.
Latterly she worked for a period of time as an interim and combined this with a spell as an Associate Lecturer teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses at Oxford Brookes University in Marketing subject areas.
Nigel Bates
Nigel is a Spindler associate who has been engaged full-time in senior executive search/selection and assessment for over 20 years, including 10 years with Whitehead Mann, for most of the time as a Director.
He has successfully completed high level search and selection assignments across a broad spectrum of clients in many functions and disciplines. Two areas of particular expertise are chief executives and trustees in the not-for-profit sector (including charities, membership based organisations and Government sponsored bodies), and senior financial management positions.
Nigel trained as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in the London office. After qualifying in 1976, he joined the firm’s Management Consultancy Services practice, where over four years he carried out a diverse range of assignments in both the private and public sectors. This included periods working overseas, notably in the Middle East and US.
Subsequently he spent three years with Sony (UK) Ltd in line management and operational development roles designing and then bringing to reality a new, national, customer-focused division with 82 staff in 12 locations, before specialising in senior executive search, selection and assessment.
Neil Watkins
A Business Studies graduate, Neil has several years experience in executive search - having worked for several years as a Director at search firms Harvey Nash and Oxygen.
He brings over 20 years corporate experience in consumer goods and support services industries, beginning his career with Imperial Group as a graduate trainee, before working for Allied Domecq and Nutricia/Cow & Gate. He then moved into the services sector and spent seven years with Compass Group plc, where he became a Divisional Marketing Director, and later joined Sita UK (part of the Suez Group) as Marketing Director.
Neil is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
During his career in executive search, he has completed a wide variety of assignments in different disciplines and is particularity experienced in General Management, Sales and Marketing, Business Development and Operational roles. Neil is uniquely placed to utilise his extensive professional and executive search experience in a variety of markets, contributing to the strategic development of both boards and businesses operations.
