Blog Posts Tag - Buffkin Baker

Your Trusted Partner for Your Senior Leadership Talent Needs

Jessica Carter — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 19:42:13 +0000

by Raj Das, Partner & Head of the Digital Practice

In January 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 6.3% overall in the U.S. according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The real rate in the hyper-growth areas of digital, data, analytics, and insights is probably close to zero in major cosmopolitan areas of the country. Through three industrial revolutions of the last 200 years, the average gap between breakthroughs was 25-40 years. Today we are lucky if the window is more than 25 months. Everything around us is getting disrupted in a record fashion.

From the dramatically changing habits and sentiments of millennials and Gen Z consumers to the fragmentation of media channels across both offline and online ecosystems ==> brands, agencies, and service providers are grappling with monumental transformations in how they operate in this brave new world. We are witnessing massive commoditization of everything around us that we have held so dear for so long: product, technology, brand, medium, and the list goes on.

The only thing that is super hard to commoditize is senior leadership talent: That special breed of visionary and experienced executives can help navigate an enterprise through hyper changes. This is why I left a long career in investment banking, corporate, management consulting, and early-stage entrepreneurial investments to assist today’s organizations to find star senior leaders who can help with the transformation. My partners and I have spent our careers spanning over two decades being on the other side of the table. We understand the critical pain points plaguing the progress of the world’s iconic brands, agencies, and service providers. What we are finding is that senior leadership talent in the high-demand areas of digital, big data, AI, machine learning, analytics, and insights is getting horizontalized. It’s all coming down to a keen understanding of and expertise in functional capabilities required to navigate the world of new consumer audiences, business requirements, and media channels. Companies that are doing “more of the same” by bringing leaders from their peer group in the same vertical are distancing themselves from the innovation and ingenuity required to position themselves from being disrupted by new entrants.

My background is ideally suited to be your trusted partner in the new senior leadership talent journey. Whether you are a public board member, CEO, or Private Equity and Venture Capital Partner, you can benefit from our rigorous pursuit to find you the transformational leaders who can scale and grow your businesses profitably. Our passion is real, our great slates of senior talents across all major practices (Healthcare, Higher Education, Digital, Private Equity, Media/Entertainment, and Non-Profit) are unmatched, and our determination to make you successful is absolute.

Here are the highlights of what I have achieved in my operating career before starting in the retained executive search practice:

Leadership: Advisor to boards and leadership teams, President of Stanford class, Mentor to Stanford Ignite, and Ivy Exec entrepreneur teams
Strategy: Management consulting and merchant banking practice advising and funding over 50 retained companies in Digital Media
Operations: Head of Strategy and Corporate Development at Public Company, responsible for over 3,000 employees globally in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific
Valuation and Transaction: CFO at Large Public Company and over a dozen years of investment banking experience executing over $20 billion of transactions

Talent Consulting: Owner of transformative retained executive search practice

Human capital can make or break your organization in today’s chaotic world. Let’s start a dialogue sooner than later so you don’t lose any market momentum. My old boss frequently reminded me of the pitfalls of “paralysis by analysis.” Lest your organization start faltering through indecisive attitudes, we invite you to start a dialogue. Let’s get you ready for a highly prosperous 2021 as your strategic trusted partner!

The post Your Trusted Partner for Your Senior Leadership Talent Needs appeared first on Buffkin Baker Website.

2020 Trends for Higher Education Institutions

buffkinwp — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 20:48:32 +0000

By any conceivable measure, 2020 was a year of change and disruption nationally, as well as globally, facing enough potentially life-altering events to last a lifetime. Institutions of higher education were not immune to the realities of these events and the enormity of their impact. Many of these institutions were thrust into some level of crisis that created multiple challenges with scenarios where quick decisions were necessary, while information was often limited. Institutions learned to pivot quickly, and many made substantial changes that affected students, parents, faculty, and staff. Learn more about which attitudes, adaptations, and/or changes adopted or employed by educational institutions are likely to, or should, remain for some time to come in our Higher Education whitepaper.

Whitepaper_Higher Education_April 2021_FINAL

About Buffkin / Baker

Buffkin / Baker is a retained, national boutique search and consulting firm composed of industry leaders. Each partner in the firm has been a leader in their respective fields and each has more than a decade of retained search experience. Combined, its partners have more than 175 years of search experience and 210 years of industry experience. The firm has several practice areas including: higher education, digital marketing/advertising, technology, health care, media/entertainment, and nonprofit. The firm serves public, private, venture, and private equity backed companies. Offices are located in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Winston Salem, with an affiliate office in London. The company is also a member of Panorama Search, an international federation of retained firms with 24 firms and more than 50 offices globally.

Buffkin / Baker’s higher education practice is one of the most prominent in the country, having conducted more than 650 searches for universities and colleges and more than 90 searches for universities and colleges within the past three years. The professionals of the firm have recently conducted searches for a number of institutions within Power Five conferences, as well as leading liberal arts colleges, AAU institutions, HBCUs, and regional universities.

The post 2020 Trends for Higher Education Institutions appeared first on Buffkin Baker Website.

Raj Das, Digital Practice Lead comments on Digital Talent trends

buffkinwp — Tue, 26 May 2020 23:49:13 +0000

CONVERGENCE

The world of senior digital talent is rapidly converging across vertical industry segments and geographies. This is especially true in the realm of technology, marketing, and digital. Bacardi as our global client is a great example. We are experiencing real time how the next Global Brand Leader of Grey Goose (Bacardi portfolio company) can have the background in Spirits, Beverage, FMCG, Techno logy, or High End Fashion Lifestyle company. This is not an accident of nature or random occurrence. Skill sets required to be an effective senior leader in the world of marketing, digital, and technology now have great commonalities. Days are numbered for brands or agencies that are recruiting senior talents from solely their immediate circles of influence.

As senior operating executives in our past careers, we take an “out of box” approach to identifying senior talents. We bring our unique experience in running large global organizations to bear upon our talent hunt. Our clients value us for our unique perspectives on their business strategy and market position. We first focus on our client’s long-term business need, then find talents that can enable them to achieve their business objectives.

MILLENNIAL EMPOWERMENT

Millennials have become a very important segment of today’s workforce. They hail from the generation of iPhone’s, Snap Chat and Pinterest Their notion of working is intertwined with their lifestyles. They demand flexible work hours, constant feedback from peers and bosses, and an engaging office environment where they can freely express their views on world topics. Their focus is on a proper balance between work and personal lives around their families and friends. At the same time, they want to build their future financial security while demanding long-term loyally from their employers. Brands and agencies that dismiss the needs and desires of the millennial population are doing so at their own peril. They must embrace flexibility to develop their future generation of star leaders. Competition from the new generation of digital companies (who claim to nurture a work environment where millennials feel comfortable, motivated, and inspired) for these talents is intense.

HUMAN CENTRICITY

The way marketers and consumers interact has been continually evolving over the last century. Brands used to have total control and sway over how and what would be exposed to their customers. Content was the king in that paradigm. Then the world evolved to a socially networked mesh of engagement and interactions. In this world of “demand pull’ vs. “supply push;’ consumers became the center of gravity. They could now pull content and commerce from the search ecosystem of Google or socially networked recommendations and preferences of their spheres of influence from Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. We believe that the world is now evolving to a new paradigm of context and algorithm-based engagement between brands and customers. Proactive and perennial evaluation of data gathered from the behavior of consumers on their smartphones is now essential to engaging in conversation and commerce in our brave new world today. This shift in brand/consumer engagement behavior requires a new breed of transformational leaders who have disruption at the very core of their DNA This is the primary reason I have merged my strategy consulting practice with the retained search business of Buffkin/Baker, to intersect the new realities of the global marketplace today with senior leadership challenges.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Raj Das serves as a Partner and the Head of the Digital Practice at the Buffkin / Baker New York office. Previously, Raj was the Founder & CEO at POM Partners, a global digital media incubation and acceleration firm. He is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program, Harvard’s General Management Program and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with an undergraduate degree in Finance and Multinational Management.

The post Raj Das, Digital Practice Lead comments on Digital Talent trends appeared first on Buffkin Baker Website.