As leaders increasingly perceive culture as a critical component of organizational success, movements to build sustaining cultural change for employee engagement, performance, and growth are now a core tenant of business strategy.
News & Media
Building and Sustaining Cultural Transformations “True, lasting cultural change at an organization has to come from the top,” said Dana Feller, managing partner at Hudson Gate Partners. “There is no other way. It has to be a stated priority of the executive management team, and must also be a topic on every board of directors’ quarterly meeting agenda. Cultural change takes careful thought, honest conversation, and open-mindedness amongst both employees and management, “An important point: there must be a clear business rationale for making cultural change, because not everyone is going to philosophically agree with whatever the change may be,” Ms. Feller said. “However, if management can explain why making certain cultural changes will enhance the organization’s overall performance and profitability, it will be much easier to gain firmwide consensus. Finally, senior managers should be held accountable for acting as “culture carriers”. This can be done via performance appraisals and via discretionary compensation.”
Future Skills in the Workplace “I feel strongly that the claim that “humanities are dead” has been wildly overblown,” said Dana Feller of Hudson Gate Partners. “I am confident that softer skills – especially communication skills and interpersonal skills–- will be paramount for employers over the next decade. Too many students are studying computer science and coding at university right now.” “Of course, society is going to need many technologically sophisticated employees in the future, but not at the 28 expense of employees who have been taught how to think critically, to engage in productive debate, to manage, and to form relationships,” Ms. Feller said. “With AI’s ability to impersonate individuals over video and voice technologies, crucial deals and partnerships will need to be conducted in person – just like in the past – to ensure that one is dealing with the actual party. Employees who can develop and nurture trusted relationships with both internal and external constituents are going to be the most highly valued employees in the future.”
Private Equity Recruiting Report 2024
Jul 15, 2024
As private equity increasingly prioritizes talent for value creation, firms are scaling their talent functions by leaning on operating partners, investing in AI, and turning to information gathered by internal talent teams.
“2023 was a much more tentative year for PE hiring than 2021 and 2022 were,” explained Dana Feller, founder and managing partner of Hudson Gate Partners. “While PE clients were open to backfilling roles that had opened up due to employee attrition, they were much more skittish around adding new talent and expanding teams. PE clients who moved quickly with their hiring were able to secure outstanding talent.”
Global Hiring Outlook and How Hiring Continues to Rely More On AI
Sep 19, 2023
The latest ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey has found that employers will be using a calculated approach for hiring to close out 2023, with North America providing the most positive outlook. Ryan Kellner and Dana Feller of Hudson Gate Partners join Hunt Scanlon Media to weigh in on how AI will continue to impact hiring!
“Candidates with less than 10 years of experience will likely be somewhat receptive to AI solicitations. However, I do not believe that AI will be successful in any form of reach-out to more sophisticated, senior candidates. Those individuals will continue to expect to have a kid-glove, human touch.”
Dana Feller
“There will also be some interesting applications of machine vision during video interviews to further assess aspects of personality, loyalty, truthfulness, creativity and empathy.”
Ryan Kellner
ChatGPT’s Future in Recruitment
May 25, 2023
Overall, artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for recruiters looking to streamline their recruitment process, find the best candidates for their job openings, and increase their efficiency and effectiveness. Yet it still has its shortcomings.
“However, if/when that happens, this could be a very powerful tool that would enhance a lot of manual screening that takes place when taking a large candidate pool and whittling it down to a recruiting campaign. It has a vast knowledge of facts and the ability to match and score those facts. It just can’t tie that knowledge to people, experience, organizations…yet.”
Ryan Kellner
Hudson Gate Partners Recruits Chief Technology Officer for Mogo
Jan 08, 2023
Hudson Gate Partners recently recruited Brad Shapcott as the first chief technology officer of Mogo, a NASDAQ-traded digital payments and financial technology company in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ryan Kellner, Hudson Gate’s head of technology recruiting, was retained to lead the search.
“But it is also our job to politely insist that they interview candidates whose backgrounds may not be perfectly cookie-cutter. As you might imagine, it is often a candidate whose background is slightly different who brings the most to the table in terms of experiences, creativity and perspectives. We have found our clients much more sophisticated about evaluating diverse talent versus even a few years ago.”
“In fact, many funds are specifically looking to hire a Head of D&I. This is usually a newly created role. The head of D&I role tends to be very strategic and sometimes includes campus recruiting as well. In addition, some of our alternative clients are also hiring diversity talent sourcers. These roles are usually filled by experienced lateral recruiters who specifically target diversity candidates and are focused on achieving hiring targets. As a sign of how far many funds have come over the past few years, some of our clients now have over 50 percent of their employee base broadly defined as being diverse (including both women and unrepresented communities).”
Unemployment Rate Falls to 3.5 Percent
Oct 12, 2022
Employment rose by 263,000 in September as the U.S. unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent, according to the most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality and in healthcare. Hurricane Ian had no discernible effect on the employment and unemployment data for September. The number of unemployed persons edged down to 5.8 million in September.
"I believe that hiring will continue to slow down and that 2023 will start off much slower than 2022 did — which was a pace none of us had ever seen before."
Financial Services is Booming; CFO Role Continues to Evolve
Sep 21, 2022
New revenue streams through innovative analytic leaders that
embrace AI/ML. Data leaders who are commercially oriented are in
high demand, because typically banks have had their data people
buried within IT. Overall, the need for executives to enable revenue
growth and business expansion remains strong.
“It has been increasingly difficult to attract junior talent within the accounting, operations and other Infrastructure spaces.”
“Top talent is hard to find, and candidates are still in control. The pace of hiring in the first half 2022 was frenetic. I am seeing the pace moderate a bit, but it is still at a historically strong level.
Amid Global Labor Shortage, Businesses Rethink Talent Strategies
Jul 13, 2022
Amid ongoing labor shortages around the world, The Conference Board has released a new report to help business leaders rethink strategies for finding the right talent. The report, Navigating the Global Talent Tsunami, encourages leaders to fundamentally rethink long-held assumptions about who can do the work; where, when, and how the work gets done; and the talent acquisition function itself.
“In order to attract talent, this is a must. However, we have noticed recently that even the funds that are offering one to two days of remote work per week are losing out on top candidates to funds that allow for entirely (or almost entirely) remote work. Companies are also beginning to understand that salary transparency is on the horizon and will likely sweep across many states and industries in the next few years. Companies are focused on analyzing their current salary levels to ensure that they are market competitive, and if necessary, raising the salaries of some of their current employees to ensure their salaries are in line with the broader market.”
Forbes names Hudson Gate as one of America’s Best Recruiting Firms 2022
May 12, 2022
For the second year in a row, Hudson Gate Partners has been recognized by Forbes magazine for our excellence in recruitment, executive search and staffing. The 2022 rankings were released on May 3, 2022 and Hudson Gate has been named one of America’s Best Professional Recruiting Firms. The Forbes rankings are based on an independent survey of peers and clients. Out of a pool of 22,400 nominations, only 200 firms across the US were chosen. The entire team, here at Hudson Gate, is honored to be recognized in this way.
Hudson Gate Partners Fills Senior Roles for Teza Technologies
Apr 27, 2022
Hudson Gate Partners recently recruited Joel McAndrew as head of business development and Brandon Johnson as general counsel and chief compliance officer for Teza Technologies, a science and technology-driven global quantitative investment firm.
“Having raised a significant amount of capital and other emerging quantitative investment funds, Joel brings the perfect experience to take Teza to the next level.”
“The general counsel and chief compliance officer role at Teza was very attractive to candidates from proprietary trading firms in the Chicago area, because excellent hedge fund roles in Chicago are rare in comparison to the volume found in New York and California.”
Finding HR Leaders and Diversity Chiefs Remains Hot Spot for Executive Recruiters
Feb 01, 2022
More and more, chief executive officers have recognized the strategic role that the human resources function plays in the core strategic issues their companies face, including growth strategy, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, increased board oversight, and evolving governance and reporting. HR can also ensure that clear changes are made to recruitment and capability-building processes by determining the characteristics of a “purpose driven” employee and embedding these attributes within recruitment, development, and succession planning.
“Being a safe pair of hands is no longer enough,” she said. To effectively compete, organizations need to have HR departments that proactively create human capital value. Before the pandemic, hedge funds and PE firms were growing their core infrastructure teams, but with less of a focus on strategic HR. “Now that we are through the pandemic and firms are realizing that their greatest source of differentiation is often their work force,” he said, “there is a huge need now to bolster HR teams.”
Four Key Tech Trends to Watch for in 2022
Jan 07, 2022
As we enter the new year, the practice of finding, attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent in technology has continued to be a challenge, and the trends that we started to see due to the necessity of a widespread virtual workforce has become a Pandora’s Box that will likely stay forever open.
“However, like each year there are some very specific trends that came to light, some challenges that we continue to see”
Top HR Leaders and Diversity Chiefs Cutting New Path Forward
Nov 12, 2021
The shift to remote and hybrid work is affecting HR executives’ jobs, Mr. Berger says, but many roles can be accomplished remotely without skipping a beat. “The challenge comes with organizations where the employees have to be onsite to accomplish their mission as in manufacturing, healthcare or hospitality,” he said. “While it was all very new to us back in March of 2020, most everyone I have spoken with has fallen into a groove and has adapted to the new normal. It’s created a new paradigm, but no one knows what the long-term impacts will be on company culture, loyalty and tenure.”
“To effectively compete, organizations need to have HR departments that proactively create human capital value. Before the pandemic, hedge funds and PE firms were growing their core infrastructure teams, but with less of a focus on strategic HR. Now that we are through the pandemic and firms are realizing that their greatest source of differentiation is often their work force, there is a huge need now to bolster HR teams. The world has changed. The CFOs, GCs, and office managers who were executing HR functions before the pandemic now realize that HR cannot be cobbled together. It is much too important of a role. Post-pandemic, there are now huge legal and safety ramifications for employees, as well as more of a push for diversity.