How we handle information at Spectrum.

Spectrum Search Ltd ("Spectrum", "we", "us") is the data controller for personal information collected through spectrum-search.com. Our registered address is B2, Witan Studios, 413 Witan Gate West, MK9 1EJ, United Kingdom.

We are a senior search firm covering digital assets and AI. Craig Oliver is the founder; Peter Wood is Chief Strategy Officer.

The simplest way to reach us about anything in this policy is privacy@spectrum-search.com.

Submitted via forms

Each form collects only what it needs:

• Contact form. Name, organisation, email, phone (optional), brief context, and industry.
• Confidential introduction. Name, email, current role and firm, industry, your free-text introduction, and optionally a CV or bio attachment.
• Mandate introduction (on a specific live search page). Name, email, current role, and a short note tying you to the mandate.
• Partner enquiry. Name, organisation, email, your senior role, and a short note.
• Newsletter. Email address only.

Technical information at submission

When you submit a form we also record your IP address (used for rate-limiting only — see "How long we keep it"), your user-agent string, and the page the form was submitted from.

Analytics, only with consent

If you accept analytics in the cookie banner we record the standard Google Analytics 4 measurement signals — pages viewed, approximate location, device class. No advertising or remarketing pixels are used on this site.

Files

If you choose to attach a CV to a confidential introduction, we store that file alongside your submission. CV uploads are optional.

• To respond to enquiries from clients and senior candidates.
• To send the acknowledgement auto-reply your submission triggers, and to send the Spectrum Insights newsletter if you have subscribed.
• To keep an internal record of conversations with senior candidates and clients — this is the working memory of an executive search firm, and is useful to us when something we are running fits a person we have spoken to before.
• To detect and block automated submissions, using bot signals and an IP rate-limit.
• To understand how the site is used in aggregate, where you have accepted analytics.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share it with advertisers. We do not enrich it from third-party data brokers.

• Responding to your enquiry — legitimate interests. You wrote to us; replying is the obviously expected outcome.
• Internal CRM record of senior candidates and clients — legitimate interests. This is how a search firm works, balanced against your right to ask us to delete or restrict.
• Newsletter — consent, confirmed by double opt-in.
• Analytics — consent, managed by the cookie banner.
• Active mandate work for a client — contract.

The companies that touch your information on our behalf:

• Sanity — content management and storage of form submissions — EU and US.
• Resend — transactional email (auto-replies, notifications) and newsletter delivery — US.
• Cloudflare — bot-challenge ("Turnstile") on form submissions — global edge.
• Vercel — site hosting and serverless function logs — US.
• Google — Analytics 4, consent-gated — US.

No other processors. No advertising or remarketing networks.

Spectrum is based in the United Kingdom. Several of our subprocessors operate in the United States and the European Union, so personal information you submit may be transferred to and processed in those jurisdictions.

For these transfers we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum and the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, alongside the additional safeguards each subprocessor publishes.

Form submissions (contact, confidential introduction, mandate introduction, partner enquiry) are kept for 24 months from last contact, then deleted. Active candidate and client records are kept for the duration of the engagement plus 24 months. Newsletter subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe, plus a 30-day suppression record. Server logs are kept for 30 days (Vercel default). Analytics is kept for 14 months (GA4 default).

UK and EU residents

Under the UK GDPR and EU GDPR you have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict how we use it, ask for a copy in a portable format, object to our use of it on legitimate-interests grounds, and withdraw consent for anything that depends on consent (newsletter, analytics). To exercise any of these, email privacy@spectrum-search.com. We aim to respond within 30 days.

Complaints

UK residents can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). EU residents can complain to their national data protection authority. We would always prefer you write to us first so we can put things right.

We use Google Analytics 4 in Consent Mode v2 — until you accept analytics in the cookie banner, GA4 sends only consent-status pings without identifiers. After you accept, it sets the standard _ga and _ga_* cookies.

Cloudflare Turnstile may set a short-lived cookie during the bot-challenge — this is functional, not analytic, and is required for forms to work.

We do not use marketing or advertising cookies.

A full breakdown of cookies is available in our Cookie policy.

Spectrum's services are aimed at experienced senior operators. The site is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.

If we make a material change we will post a banner at the top of the site for 30 days and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Smaller editorial changes are made silently.