David FitzGerald did not arrive in recruitment by following a straight line.

Before founding Starboard Recruitment, the Vancouver-born entrepreneur studied music at the University of Victoria, played drums and percussion, considered a life in music, worked in commercial real estate, went back to school for audio engineering and music production, moved to Australia, drove a truck delivering wedding furniture up and down the Australian coast, and eventually returned to Vancouver looking for what he calls “a real job again.”

That winding path is not a footnote to his story. It is central to how he thinks about people, careers, and companies.

“I’ve actually done a number of different things before getting into recruitment, which I think has lent itself well in terms of how I approach it,” FitzGerald said in a recent conversation with Vancouver Tech Journal in the Saas Wealth Insurance podcast studio.

Raised on the North Shore by Irish parents, FitzGerald also spent a year living in Ireland as a child and moved schools frequently growing up. In one year alone, he attended three different schools. Looking back, he sees those experiences as formative.

“I’m very used to being sort of that new kid,” he said, “and having a desire to connect with other people all the time.”

That early familiarity with change now shapes his work at Starboard, where he helps technology and mining companies hire engineering, technical, and leadership talent. Recruitment, in FitzGerald’s view, is not just about matching resumes to job descriptions. It is about understanding transitions: the candidate entering a new phase of their career, the company moving into a new stage of growth, and the hiring manager often being asked to make high-stakes people decisions without much training.

“Hiring is hard,” he said. “If you’re someone who’s an individual contributor and overnight you’ve become a hiring manager and you’ve got to make that decision for the company of, ‘Should we hire this person or not?’ I think it’ll put a lot of pressure on that person.”

Starboard’s model is built around getting closer to that pressure, not standing outside it. FitzGerald previously worked with Vancouver tech companies as well as San Francisco-based firms through recruitment process outsourcing, where he was embedded with companies including 6sense, TikTok, and Discord. At 6sense, he worked directly with founders as the company scaled from roughly 600 to 1,200 people in about six months.

“It felt like when I was working with the companies in the U.S. that everything had steroids sprinkled on it,” he said.

That experience gave him a front-row seat to the 2021 tech hiring boom. It also gave him perspective on the market that followed.

Today, FitzGerald says the hiring environment looks very different. During the boom, strong candidates often had multiple processes underway and recruiters reaching out constantly. Now, many experienced professionals are struggling to get their resumes seen.

“There’s a lot of really good talent that are used to just opportunity flowing,” he said. “There’s a lot of senior leaders who have gone their whole career without having any issues finding opportunity, and now they’re for the first time in their career experiencing this market.”

At the same time, companies are being more selective about where they invest. FitzGerald sees many employers prioritizing senior individual contributors who can create immediate impact, rather than senior leaders whose work is mainly managerial or strategic. Junior candidates, meanwhile, face an especially difficult market.

AI is part of that shift. FitzGerald does not frame it as a simple replacement story, but as a capability gap that is already influencing hiring decisions.

“People who do have those skills on the AI side and are experimenting and figuring out how those tools can be leveraged the best way are very attractive people for companies to hire right now,” he said.

For job seekers, his advice is equally direct: applying online is no longer enough. Networking, showing up in person, and being visible on LinkedIn matter more than ever.

“If people are just simply applying to jobs, it’s probably the worst way to try to find a job right now,” he said. “I’m definitely not telling people to not apply to jobs, but really networking and meeting people in person and putting themselves out there.”

That belief in visibility connects to FitzGerald’s broader philosophy of recruitment. He sees trust, reputation, and relationships as the real currency. Starboard’s four stated values are clear intention, honest effort, trust, and integrity — values FitzGerald says are reflected in the company’s logo, which includes a Celtic symbol connected to his Irish family background.

Those values also guide who Starboard works with. FitzGerald says the firm has turned down clients when there was not enough alignment.

More importantly, he says good recruitment sometimes means advising a company not to hire. He has seen companies come looking for C-suite candidates, only for Starboard to step back and ask whether that hire actually makes sense at that moment.

“Why do you think you need this person right now?” he said. “Does it really make sense?”

That question says a lot about FitzGerald’s approach. He is not trying to build a business around transactions. He is trying to build one around judgment.

Asked what his role might look like in 10 or 15 years, FitzGerald is clear that the mechanics may change. But the core will not.

“What I like to do and what I want to continue doing is just facilitating growth for other people,” he said. “I think that’s where I shine the most personally.”

For someone whose own career has moved through music, real estate, travel, tech, and entrepreneurship, it is a fitting place to land. FitzGerald built Starboard around helping others move through uncertainty with more clarity. And in today’s market, that clarity may be more valuable than ever.