We hear it all the time in academe: "The most important part of leadership is hiring the right people." Hiring is so critical that an entire cottage industry is dedicated to it -- with search consultants, life coaches, management books, how-to guides (for the employer and the candidate), and serious research on subjects like referencing and interviewing. There is no question that finding and hiring the right person is high on the priority list of campus leaders.
Why, then, do we do it so very badly?
It is not that we have frequent, public failures. To the contrary, academe seems to have fewer outright explosions of the sort all too frequently found in the corporate world of greed and excessive compensation. No, the problem in higher education is not public disgrace but rather a slavish commitment to a search and hiring process that too often wrings the leadership out of a candidate pool.
For example, my consulting firm recently conducted a search for a dean. At the outset of the search, our consultants were told that the entire effort must be expedited to ensure that the campus would have the opportunity to vet the candidates before the spring commencement. When we asked various people what they wanted in their new dean, we were given one set of criteria by the president, the provost, and local community and corporate leaders, and a completely different and incompatible set of criteria by the faculty. It seemed obvious that those people never got together to talk about the search before it started.
The search committee -- made up of an undergraduate, a graduate student, a staff member, a member of the local business community, a dean of a different school serving as chair, and faculty members of the school that the new hire would oversee -- was finally able to come together to endorse a position description after several drafts, but the division of opinion continued to haunt the search.
The real dysfunction began after a pool of candidates had been identified. As search consultants, we had heen brought in to recruit quality candidates and were able to entice several people who might otherwise not have considered the position. We were able to do so only after assuring the candidates that the confidentiality of their applications would be respected.
We should have known better.
The minute our chosen candidates agreed to a preliminary, off-site interview, the search committee began to act as if the candidates's travel schedules were being aired on CNN. They pushed us to call references not on the candidates' lists.
"There will come a proper time for that," our consultants warned. "Well," came the retort from the committee, "if he or she wants this job he or she is going to have to come forward and say so. What does he or she she have to hide?"
But they weren't hiding; they were protecting themselves. Candidates came to the interview to learn more in order to make a rational, informed decision on whether to compromise a current job on the speculation that the one in question may be better. Most candidates are not going to choose "the two in the bush" without at least a glance at them. The best candidates -- the leaders, the ones our clients really want -- understand that they will have other options and, too often, will walk away instead of compromising themselves or their family stability.
In spite of all that, the university was able to identify a group of willing candidates that it thought might be interesting finalists. At that point, consultants generally suggest that an institution bring the finalists (and their spouses or partners if any) to the campus to interview and to get a feel for the community.
"Not so fast," came the response from the search committee. "First, we have to call everyone we know, and some we don't, at the candidates' institutions to assure ourselves that we know everything about these people before we sacrifice any of our valuable time for them." Our consultants protested that doing so would cause great professional harm to the candidates who did not get the job. "They can't be finalists unless they let us do this," was the word from the campus.
So we set about trying to make arrangements with each candidate individually to accommodate the requirements of the institution. Some agreed, some protested but acquiesced, some offered a limited degree of freedom to the committee but not carte blanche, and some withdrew.
That process took about two weeks, during which time the search committee refused to give the candidates any feedback. "We can't tell people that they are no longer under consideration. What happens if we decide in a few weeks that we need them after all?"
The candidates, on the other hand, were calling our consultants daily, wanting to know where they stood, wanting to save time on their busy calendars for campus visits, and generally wanting to know what was happening and why it was all taking so long. The client's position was that the candidates were lucky to be under consideration at all and could wait until the committee was good and ready to inform them of their status.
The committee was finally ready to recommend finalists. But wait. There was another hurdle.
Before the finalists could visit the campus, the institution's human-resources operation had to weigh in on the pool. Each candidate had to submit an "application" to HR formally applying and giving the office permission to check their references and background. Remember, no one in the HR office had actually met the candidates or has reviewed the credentials, but "institutional policy" says they have the right to reject any or all of the chosen finalists.
Once HR authorized the candidates, it then became incumbent upon the provost -- who likewise had had no active involvement in the process -- to approve or disapprove of each candidate forwarded by the committee.
Eventually, a group of finalists was named and invited to the campus. They were not invited to bring their spouses or partners, however. It is the "institution's custom" to invite spouses on a subsequent visit, at which time the finalist(s) would meet with the president, meaning that there would be more than one visit before an offer could be extended.
Each of those visits would require at least two days (including travel time). Did the search committee give any thought to the cost of the candidates' lost time to their current institutions? Of course not, although you can bet our client would begrudge one of its most able people spending several days of work time pursuing another job.
"Next," spoke the committee, "we need electronic copies of the candidates' résumés, and pictures of the candidates, so that we can post them on our Web site and issue a press release. You might also warn the candidates' that the local media will almost certainly call them and their current employer. Each will also need to write and to present a 30-minute talk on his or her vision for the future and then take questions. By the way, can you get the first candidate here next Tuesday? That would be most convenient for us."
All the while, the clock is ticking, ticking, ticking toward that inevitable moment when graduation arrives and the faculty leaves, the day beyond which no decisions may be made -- the day by which our consultants must have engineered a process that results in a single candidate of choice. The institution didn't seem too fazed by that looming deadline. The process, after all, must take precedence over the individual needs of the candidates or even the collective best interests of the university.
It seems to the outside observer that, for this institution and far, far too many others, conducting the process thoroughly and without variation is more important than the ultimate outcome, as if credit were being given for effort. Didn't we say at the outset that hiring the right people is the ultimate goal?
Next month: The endgame. Will practicality triumph? Will any candidates remain in the pool to the end, and, if so, will they be the right ones? After all, presumably the conclusion of this process -- not the process itself -- is the most important part of leadership.
