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Helping organizations grow through human capital solutions

Terry Williams is the founder and CEO of Cross X Platform (CXP) and its subsidiary, ORS Partners. Drawing on his 30-year career as a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Terry leverages his expertise in talent acquisition and business management to help emerging companies grow. CXP is a human capital shared services platform that allows executives to improve their organizations’ sales, recruitment, leadership, and more. ORS works with its clients to solve complex business issues through strategic outsourcing and hiring solutions. Other companies founded by Terry include TWC Group (formerly T. Williams Consulting), Movitas, and NextStage Capital. Additionally, he currently serves on the board of directors for Net Nanny, and on the board of governors for the Sixers Innovation Lab.

Terry Williams spoke with Jeff Mack of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank for this interview.

JEFF MACK: Tell us about your expansion plans.

TERRY WILLIAMS: We have great expansion plans for ORS. ORS was recently named Number 563 on the Inc. 500. I’m proud of that for a number of reasons. One is that we did that organically. Two: we were able to do that without a sales function, so this is all referral business and channels and through the venture community, through the legal community, accounting community and so forth. It’s very hard to do and achieve that number. We recently opened an office in New York. We hired a general manager. We have seven clients. The reason that we have a big focus on New York City—not that Philadelphia is a soft economic environment: New York City is the number two market for venture capital.

Q. What draws people to ORS? As a company focused on talent acquisition, what do you look for when recruiting for in-house positions?

A. The biggest attraction at ORS Partners is the idea that when people join our company, they’re going to have exposure to multiple clients, they’re going to be able to gain the experience of working with multiple clients, and at the same time get involved in our ORS University—which, in 2016, we provide over 4500 man hours of training and development this year alone.

What we look for in individuals is what we call the “talent ID,” which is measured around grit and tenacity. There are different ways of looking at how you hire, and we have to do it best in-house before we can do it for our clients. But some of these things are non-measurable and some are measurable, so we do subscribe to those two processes within our hiring to enable our ability to hire the best people.

Connect with  Terry on LinkedIn

Sponsored by:

ABOUT NEWMARK GRUBB KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank (NGKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NGKF’s 12,800 professionals operate from more than 370 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NGKF’s strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NGKF’s full-service platform comprises BGC’s real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

NGKF is a part of BGC Partners, Inc., a leading global brokerage company servicing the financial and real estate markets. BGC’s common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol (NASDAQ: BGCP). BGC also has an outstanding bond issuance of Senior Notes due June 15, 2042, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol (NYSE: BGCA). BGC Partners is led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Howard W. Lutnick. For more information, please visit www.bgcpartners.com.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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