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March 31, 2009, 12:13 PM ET
The Importance of a Good Rolodex
It’s no secret that whom you know matters when it comes to finding a job, but it might surprise you to learn that the contents of a candidate’s Rolodex are increasingly a deciding factor in presidential hiring decisions. Dennis M. Barden, a senior vice president and director of the higher-education practice at Witt/Kieffer, explains why in his recent Moving Up column.
It’s “perfectly sensible” to regard a candidate’s connections as a major plus if they’ll help to further “the central mission of the institution and to the work of its faculty and students,” Barden writes:
For example, I once worked for a law-school dean who was widely connected to judges and journalists. The former were helpful in placing our students in prestigious clerkships; the latter provided interesting speakers for the law school and gave us access to even more people who could help us … .
He questions, however, the “fund-raising angle of this Rolodex requirement.” Knowing a lot of donors at one institution won’t help you grease the fund-raising wheels at another institution since “donors are most often institution-specific. They are alumni, parents, or local supporters who have come to believe in the mission of an institution — and, thus, are not ‘portable,’” Barden writes.
A college or university might be wise to pick an internal candidate who already knows its VIP’s; on the other hand, an internal candidate might be less likely to expand the institution’s circle of donors, he writes:
Colleges and universities are very, very good at keeping their friends; making new ones is frequently more challenging. When we do development searches, a constant message we hear is that the institution keeps going back to the same small group of people for support rather than broadening its base. The same thing happens with presidents … .
So what’s an institution to do? “You either hire the person who already knows everyone who is important to the campus, or you hire someone who already knows everyone that the college or university would like to become important to them,” Barden writes.
Either way, it comes down to who’s in your Rolodex, he concludes.
Tell us, do you agree that this is a legitimate hiring consideration? What role, if any, does it play in hiring decisions on your campus?
Categories: Administrative-hiring
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