Ken
Ferguson’s life work has been helping companies build their IT management and
technical teams while advancing candidates’ IT careers. After 30 years in
IT Search he still loves connecting like-minded people at the intersection of
four things both he and they are passionate about – Business, Technology,
Leadership, and Team Building.
Hired by IBM Canada during his post-graduate Business studies at Lakehead
University, he was a large-scale Systems Engineer before being recruited by
U.S.-based Source Services to specialize in Information Technology Search.
Transitioning from techie to people connector, Ken emerged as a Top 5%
producer, maintaining that high level of performance throughout his tenure with
Source in Toronto and later in Atlanta.
During the dot.com boom, Ken partnered
with other senior members of the Source Atlanta office to focus on the
leadership talent needs of local tech startups. When the bubble burst Ken
took a break from IT Search to build out 6 locations of a fitness franchise
before returning to IT search in 2006 with Berkshire Recruiting.
In 2010, he narrowed his practice to retained, exclusive searches for the most
critical IT leaders needed by companies in the $250M to $8B revenue
range. He now laser focuses his time and talents full-time on just one
search at a time, accountable directly to the hiring executive.
Over the years Ken has advised thousands of IT professionals on their
careers. During the Great Recession, he wrote the “Self-Placement
eGuide: Headhunter Secrets for a Successful Job Search in Any Economy” and
has since allocated 10% of his time to coaching IT executives on career and job
search strategy and tactics including personal branding, social media
marketing, resume review, and interview preparation.
In 2017 Ken launched a weekly e-newsletter where IT executives can share their
“lessons learned” with 8000 of their peers across the country.
When not busy serving clients and candidates, Ken spends long hours swimming,
biking and running in a quixotic attempt to keep up with his world-class
Ironman triathlete wife. From their home base in Cumming, GA they take
frequent trips to races and to visit their 5 grown children.
Celebrating his 65th birthday last month with a 100-mile gravel bike ride, Ken
subscribes to the view that: “Retirement is an ancient and irrelevant artifact.
To deliberately stop contributing, creating, and providing value to others is
unthinkable and a slippery slope to irrelevancy and decline.”