Searches in the Internet Age

The Internet is reshaping administrative searches, Gary Olson observes in his latest column, but not always for the better. While information found on the Web may sometimes keep an institution from making a colossal mistake, Olson writes, other times it can be downright destructive to a search.

As a result of the Internet age, search consultants are seeing a rise in people using information “glean[ed] from the Internet to further their own political objectives—even going so far as to sabotage the candidacy of one finalist because they favor another,” Olson notes. One frustrated consultant told him, “We are constantly doing damage control because committee members or even just other faculty on campus will dredge up what they believe to be damning information on one candidate or another.”

Even a well-meaning Internet sleuth can “contaminate a search” with with information discovered online, information that may just as easily be false as true, since it is often hard to sort out “fact from fiction on the Web,” he writes. “People who engage in this kind of amateur detective work” often “end up shooting themselves in the foot,” another search consultant told him. “They do incredible damage to the institution. If they truly want to be helpful, they need to let the process take its course” and let search consultants do their jobs.

Vetting a candidate takes more than a Google search. It’s “a tricky business” that involves countless phone calls and “carefully assessing the information obtained from converations with ‘off list’ references,” he notes. For example, even a negative reference from a trusted person may not be what it seems, Olson writes. The “candidate and reference may have a longstanding personality conflict, or the two may have become professional rivals,” he notes, offering a case in point:

Some years ago during a search that I conducted for a leadership position, I spoke with the candidate’s former dean, who proceeded to excoriate the candidate. The picture the dean painted was highly unflattering. Rather than accept his narrative at face value, I spoke with the provost at the same institution. She immediately made clear that the former dean had a vendetta against our candidate because of a bitter power struggle that had occurred some years before. I ended up hiring the candidate, with no regrets.

And the Internet makes the spread of such rumor-mongering even easier.

On the plus side, the Internet has made it easier than ever for candidates to learn about the institutions to which they’re applying, and it’s brought a new openness to executive-level searches, Olson writes:

In the days before the Web, an institution conducting a search for a new president, say, could quietly woo an official from a rival campus without anyone the wiser until very late in the process. Today, however, the names of finalists—and, often, even semifinalists—are posted on the Web and their candidacies instantaneously outed at their home institutions.

On the minus side, that openness may “discourage some potentially excellent candidates from applying for fear of embarrassing their home institutions.”

How has the Internet affected searches at your institution?