Senior Research Manager

About Cresa
Cresa is the world’s most trusted occupier-first commercial real estate firm. Our Boston office is proud to partner with companies across the dynamic Greater Boston area, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and eastern New England. We provide commercial real estate advice and services to diverse industries, including leading technology, life sciences, consumer goods, legal, insurance, and other professional services companies.

Job Overview
We seek a motivated, critical thinker to join our growing Boston office as a Senior Research Manager. This is an excellent opportunity to join the vibrant Cresa team to help establish our research strategy, standards, and platform as we grow our newly established research department. The Senior Research Manager will be responsible for collecting, analyzing, and producing compelling content as requested by leadership and service line leads for inclusion in presentations, whitepapers, reports, and other prospect and client-facing materials. In this highly collaborative role, The Senior Research Manager will partner with account, advisory, marketing, and service line teams to define project requirements while investigating various approaches to deliver best-in-class research that is highly aligned with their business objectives.

Essential Functions

• Partnering with leadership, establish objectives, strategy, and functions for the research team
  • Evaluate current research processes, resources, and efforts
  • Identify best practices, tools, platforms, and methods for developing an impactful research department
• Collect and analyze data to provide insight and compelling content for reports, presentations, whitepapers, and other content that positions Cresa as a leader in the industry and market
  • Create new content that analyzes major occupier trends and project benchmarks across industries
  • Develop occupier focused perspectives and insights around real estate trends in the Greater Boston real estate market as well as varying markets of interest, based on client location(s)
  • Create and maintain a pipeline of actionable research insight including but not limited to construction and development costs, lab buildouts, VC activity, and other market and economic data
  • Collaborate and assist GIS colleagues with various mapping projects and labor studies
  • Support, drive, and leverage global, regional, and local research initiatives as needed
  • Continually track and communicate local and national commercial real estate news internally
• Create and maintain high levels of business engagement for research initiatives through continuous cross-collaboration with internal teams
• Become an expert on the local economies, job and industry makeup, demographics, and local company growth, among other aspects of the markets, so that you can tell a compelling story about each market
• Partner with Marketing leadership to plan and execute impactful research content calendar and to ensure all research deliverables get maximum exposure and engagement
• Support new business development initiatives through various research activities
• Work with pitch teams and marketing to contribute to and enhance RFPs and new business pitches by providing market intelligence, trends, and statistics

• Develop strong relationships with internal and external clients and facilitate the use of research as a differentiator
• Contribute to public relations initiatives to help establish Cresa as market expert and thought leaders

• An expert understanding of research fundamentals and methodologies
• Knowledge of how to apply research and data analytics expertise to benefit our brand and core businesses
• Understands complex data and underlying trends to organize and present thoughts clearly and concisely
• Ability to articulate market trends and insights internally and externally in written formats and live presentation
• Proactive and strategic thinking with the ability to lead research initiatives, align research with the business, and innovate research output
• Ability to exceed client expectations effectively and professionally and positively represent the company/team
• Highly motivated with strong learning agility, analytical skills, and intellectual curiosity
• Self-starter, detail-oriented, well organized, capable of managing multiple projects at any given time
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, both collaboratively and independently
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, with exceptional collaboration skills to lead projects that cross over many groups
• An appreciation for design and layout with the ability to work in Adobe InDesign, following company brand standards

• Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, research, or related field desired
• Three or more years in a research role within the commercial real estate industry or closely related field
• Command of local markets and business, with good understanding of macro trends and historical perspective
• Dynamic presentation skills and experience presenting insightful content to clients/prospects
• Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) and CoStar proficiency required
• Experience with Smartsheet, Adobe InDesign, GIS platforms, open-data sources, and related analytical tools desired, but not required