Blog / Vice President Tim Knight Retires from ThinkingAhead

Vice President Tim Knight Retires from ThinkingAhead

Successful Southwestern Advantage Alumni Retires After a 40-Year Career

After nearly 40 years with Southwestern Family of Companies, Vice President and Sr. Managing Partner Tim Knight is retiring from ThinkingAhead Executive Search. Knight began his career at Southwestern in 1984 as a student at Mississippi State, selling books for Southwestern Advantage. He served as a student manager, field manager, and district sales manager for Southwestern Advantage totaling 14 years. From there, he stayed within the Southwestern Family of Companies for 25 more years with ThinkingAhead.

“If I were to make it to this summer, it’d be 40 years,” Knight says. “I’ve driven to the same office complex since 1990,” Knight says.

Knight started as one of three people on the Banking and Commercial Finance team, and was promoted to Vice President around seven years ago.

“Working with the partners has been a tremendous experience,” Knight says. “I would say one thing I’ve enjoyed the most is watching the people I work with achieve their goals and grow and develop and improve their lives in that way. We’ve developed a core group of leaders who are ready to take on the challenge of running the firm.”

Building Life-Long Friendships in Southwestern Advantage

“Growing up in the Southwestern Advantage program you go through a unique experience. You develop friendships that last a lifetime,” he says. “That’s [another] thing I look back on with great fondness. The relationships and how those relationships have developed over time.”

Knight says one of the biggest changes he’s seen over the years is the implementation of technology and how it’s aided the recruiting business.

“I think we all thought that with technology some of the tools might hamper our business. When Monster.com came out and LinkedIn came out, everyone was saying ‘this will be the end of the search business.’ But what happened is, our business only improved – it only became more and more essential because we found that while those were useful tools, recruiting is still a relationship business and a ‘contact sport.’ People want to deal with people – they want to deal with people they like and trust and can openly talk about their careers with,” Knight says.

“The world, and ThinkingAhead, is a better place because of Tim Knight,” says ThinkingAhead President Greg Boucher. “The clients, candidates, and colleagues he has influenced over the years are innumerable – his fingerprints are all over the ThinkingAhead brand. As he moves into this next chapter, we are so grateful that Tim was a Southwestern colleague for nearly 40 years.”

For more than 35 years, ThinkingAhead has specialized in matching the right job search candidate with the right client in the areas of banking and commercial finance, life sciences, legal, sales, energy, and non-profit, in addition to the European team.

Share

Apply For An Interview With Southwestern Advantage.


How did you hear about the Southwestern Advantage program?

Connect with a Student Representative to Learn More About Southwestern Advantage Products

Best times to be contacted:

We’ll Connect with You Soon!