Moving Up

Interim and Internal

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By Jean Dowdall

Some universities prohibit an administrator who holds an interim appointment from being a candidate for the permanent position. But others allow the interim leader to be an internal candidate for his or her job, and that raises some challenging questions.

I've talked with administrators who have been through the experience, and I will draw on their observations here. I don't have solutions, but I'll try to lay out some issues that people in this not-so-uncommon predicament are likely to face.

The decision to accept an interim appointment and the decision to be a candidate for the permanent post can come in either order.

You may know that you want to be a candidate for the permanent job, and you'll have to weigh whether it is a good idea to hold the interim position. It's a complicated choice with more than the usual personal, professional, and institutional concerns that go along with seeking promotion.

For example, you need to consider the consequences of taking the interim appointment, applying for the permanent job, and then watching it go to someone else. Will you be able to stay on at the institution and work effectively with the person who beat you out? What will you say about not being selected when you talk to search committees at other institutions? (Of course, if you decide not to be a candidate, you may have to explain that, too.)

Alternately, maybe you took the interim appointment because your institution asked you to fill the breach and you had no intention of applying for the permanent post. Only later did you realize that you actually wanted the permanent job.

That is a very common situation, and I believe that most candidates come upon that realization in good faith. They think the interim job would be fun for the short term, and only discover its appeal after they've been doing it for a while. Or they hold the job for the better part of a year or two with no intention of becoming a candidate, but after working hard and making institutional progress, they suddenly realize that they hate to leave the work to someone else.

If you change your mind like that, your colleagues may see you as not fully honest or as a flip-flopper, so you need to find ways to convey that your change of heart and your interest in the position are genuine.

It is generally not a good idea to wait and see who the other candidates are before making your own decision to apply. That often leaves others with a sense that you have taken the safe route and manipulated the situation to your advantage. I have seen people live that down, but I wouldn't encourage it.

As you decide whether or not to be a candidate for the permanent job, your colleagues may urge you to come into the search and tell you how much they support you. One of the difficult things about the interim status is that it's especially hard to interpret the advice of others.

Don't become a candidate just because your colleagues tell you to do it. They are not your best source of advice. If you're unsure, find a trusted friend or mentor, most likely outside the institution, who can help you consider your options.

Once you have decided to be both the interim appointee and an internal applicant, how do you play the simultaneous roles?

Some administrators told me that they put their candidacy out of their thoughts as they went about the daily work of doing the interim job. "I adopted a damn-the-torpedoes-and-do-what-seems-like-the-right-thing approach," said one.

Others kept their candidacy in mind by thinking about what the next person in the job would need as a good foundation. Whoever got the permanent job, laying a good foundation would be important.

It will be difficult for you to ignore your candidacy no matter how hard you try. Tasks that would be difficult for any interim leader -- like hiring and firing staff members, or setting a distinctive strategic direction -- become even more so when you are also an internal applicant fearful of jeopardizing your candidacy by making major and potentially unpopular decisions.

My discussions with interim administrators who ultimately won the permanent position suggest that it's important to try to put your fears aside and use your best judgments in doing the job. Some administrators looked back with regret at their earlier reluctance to take a controversial or demanding stance in complicated negotiations, or to terminate staff members who were not performing as expected. Some such decisions can be postponed and then made once you are on the stronger ground of the permanent position, but in other cases the moment may have passed by the time you are appointed. Think hard about what is the right thing to do for the institution. If you keep that focus in mind, you're most likely to do the right thing. You may even enhance your reputation, and thus your candidacy, in the process.

"In retrospect," said one interim-turned-permanent administrator, "I'd have been more vigilant and aggressive regarding performance evaluations of senior staff." Regarding other kinds of situations, he said, "Even as an interim ... one should be aware that the selective use of [your] full authority can be important to the institution's well-being."

Interim administrators are also learning to do the job, and that creates its own problems. While learning, interims are likely to make mistakes and certainly will do things that, if they were more seasoned, they would have done differently. The hiring committee won't see the other candidates, who may be just as inexperienced, make such mistakes. Missteps take on greater meaning when you're being closely watched.

As an interim apppointee and internal candidate, you will naturally want to appear successful on the job. That can affect how open you are about the institution's problems. In an effort to sustain the appearance of success, some interims may hold back all the details of a difficult or complex situation from the search committee, the appointing officer, or the board. Other interims may take the opposite approach, providing the full openness that they believe in, and in the process they may harm their own candidacy.

Either way, it's hard to know how to proceed. For example, a budget problem may be absorbing a great deal of an interim administrator's time. The administrator may not want search-committee members to know about the problem, hoping to be able to solve it internally and without broader attention or consequence. But finding a solution is distracting the official from other issues that the search committee is watching closely. In this situation, the internal candidate has a difficult decision to make -- whether to handle the issue openly and risk being viewed as ineffective in solving it, or to keep the issue quiet and have others wonder why you are not giving more attention to some other visible items on your agenda.

Many people I spoke with said that spending a year as both an interim official and as an internal candidate is like "a yearlong job interview." Your colleagues continually remind you of the duality of your situation by asking if you plan to be a candidate, or how the search is going, or what you plan to do if you become "the real dean." People will assume they know what you are thinking or intending, and will attribute the wrong motives to the most momentous and the most trivial acts.

So far, I've dwelt on the negatives, but there are obviously some positives about being the interim appointee and seeking the job permanently. First and foremost, you get to try out the job and see if you like it.

You can decide what stipulations the appointing officer will have to agree to before you would accept the job (e.g., more money, additional support staff members, different reporting lines).

Your colleagues have the chance to observe you in action. That means you have an advantage over all the other candidates whom the committee will only see on paper and in interviews. It also means that the committee can make a better selection. If they see you as a bad fit, you may be better off not getting the job than discovering later that you didn't really belong in it.

Along the way, your colleagues may offer you constructive (or sometimes destructive) criticism. Try to benefit from the helpful comments, and learn to have the thick skin that protects you from the vicious or irrelevant ones. As one of my favorite mentors says, "Listen, but don't listen too hard."

It's time consuming to be a candidate, but as the interim appointee, at least you don't have to travel for interviews. You may find the interviews awkward. After all, you may be interviewed by people you have been working with for years, including some who have been reporting to you. But you won't have to worry about going off on tangents in the interview, as you will know firsthand the concerns of your interviewers.

The price of that inside knowledge is that your candidacy will be scrutinized beyond that of others, and your description of your accomplishments will be carefully screened to be sure you don't take credit for the work of your colleagues -- especially a colleague on the search committee.

One of the most damaging things you can do is to conduct a campaign -- inside or outside the institution -- on your own behalf. I have seen candidates try to convince others that their getting the job is a foregone conclusion.

For me, as a search consultant, that creates a significant barrier to successful recruiting. Few people who have heard the rumors of the internal candidate's likely appointment want to take the risk of entering the search.

For the search committee, such behavior is an offense to the committee's independence and authority, and makes the members more likely to judge the internal candidate harshly. Don't run such a campaign yourself, and discourage your fans from running it on your behalf. It's very likely to backfire.

What happens when the interim period and the search are over and you finally get the job?

One person in that situation observed, "The fact that one's status has now become permanent invariably raises expectations. Everyone wants to know what you're going to do 'now that you really have the job,' as though one hasn't been puffing hard all along. But this feature of the situation also helps to encourage bigger thinking and a broader strategic horizon, so in a way it's a healthy spur to making that necessary shift from simply holding the institution together to taking the institution to the next level."

And what happens if you don't get the job?

No matter how clear it seems to you that you are the "heir apparent," you absolutely must anticipate the possibility of failure. I have seen disappointed candidates go off the deep end despite repeated warnings that there were other very strong candidates in the pool.

Contemplate the satisfactions and opportunities of your previous position, or have another next job in mind. Commit to behaving as a highly professional institutional citizen. Find ways to build a good relationship with your successor so that you can stay in your previous job, or so that you will have the support of the person who got the job when you think about your next move. Or plan to leave and look for a new job right away. The choice is partly up to you, and partly up to the person who was selected.

If you choose to be an interim appointee and simultaneously an internal candidate, you're likely to have a rough ride. Although the process of applying while you're on the job may be awkward and time-consuming, if you're ultimately appointed, it will be worth it. Just make sure you have a Plan B.