The Fund Raiser

When All Goes Right

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By Mark J. Drozdowski

Just before the December holidays, I had the good fortune of creating an administrative position out of whole cloth. I had managed to convince everyone from the president to the human-resources folks to the finance office that the development operation needed an extra body to buttress our campaign. Just what that body would do from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. was the real question.

A conversation with my staff answered that question. We concluded that our operation needed a full-time development writer, and other decision makers around the campus agreed. Now I had to draft a job description, pass it through channels, and turn it into an ad.

If you've never written a position description from scratch, you should give it a whirl. It's terrific fun. We're a union shop, so the job description essentially constitutes a contract, a quasi-legal document that can nip one's knickers if poorly conceived. You know that phrase, "It's not in my job description"? We coined it. Lots of care and feeding, then, must attend this task.

Over the course of my career, I have seen two basic types of job descriptions. One kind simply presents a laundry list of duties, sometimes displayed in order of importance. The other kind attempts to quantify those tasks, assigning rather random percentages to the various responsibilities.

When producing the latter, you should ensure that the numbers total 100, and that some fraction is left for "other duties as assigned by supervisor." Every potential employee guarantees a 110 percent effort, but the union frowns on position descriptions requiring one. Keep in mind, too, that it's far easier to file a grievance based on a quantified list, especially if your employees are wont to track their time to the minute.

I therefore opted to forgo the quantification, instead keeping a simple list of tasks ordered by importance. "Other duties as assigned" remained at the bottom, suggesting that we would rarely deviate from the list, but we knew such thinking was pure folly. Development jobs demand flexibility and fluidity, so we often need to assign work on the fly. That's why unions and development jobs are such happy partners.

Anyway, once the description passed muster with key personnel, it was time to write the job ad. I'm ever curious about such ads; they provide a glimpse into the personalities of the institutions, schools, and departments posting them. Most are straightforward, offering the same old buzzwords and hackneyed phrases. But a few attempt to be different, I suppose in an effort to attract attention and suggest some modicum of humor, personality, and originality.

Still others wow us with pomp and bombast, elevating the requirements for the position beyond what any mere mortal could hope to attain. I see those examples frequently from executive-search firms, which send them along with e-mail messages asking me if I might know anyone interested in the position -- anyone, presumably, including me. Reading those elaborate ads, I wonder how someone could match the desired qualifications, and why a tiny college west of nowhere thinks it might attract candidates of such high stature.

Our ad was devoid of fluff and fuzz. My colleagues and I thought a bit about the required qualifications, ever mindful of union ramifications. A bachelor's degree was necessary. Sure. A master's in journalism or creative writing? Any master's degree? Nah.

Three to five years of experience seemed right. We'll probably get someone with more, we thought, but let's not rule out youngsters or career changers who might fit the bill.

And what kind of experience? Daily journalism provides a useful background, but let's not kid ourselves. This isn't journalism. It's marketing. You know, promotional writing. We don't rake muck. We don't even recognize muck. You don't need a Pulitzer to write a letter of thanks to a donor or an annual-fund brochure. You need a steady supply of sugar cubes.

Once the ad was complete, we had to think about where to place it. Money was a factor, to be certain. Given the level of the position, important as it was, we didn't harbor the "money is no object" attitude. A full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times would exceed the job's annual salary.

Nor did we think we would attract candidates from around the globe or even across the country. We couldn't offer relocation reimbursements, and we didn't figure prospective employees would uproot themselves for this kind of job and this kind of money. That's true for most positions we advertise. So we settled on local papers, assuming most candidates would be nearby anyway. Perhaps that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it seemed to work out just fine.

We received three times the number of résumés we normally get for professional positions. That didn't surprise me. I've hired writers before; there's no shortage of people who think they can write. Judging by cover letters alone, most are wrong. But the top handful of candidates were exceptionally well-qualified, and we were giddy. Now we had to make difficult decisions. Phone interviews ensued, followed by on-campus interrogations.

All along, I was reassured that we had created the right position. The more we talked with applicants about our needs and the kinds of work they would tackle, the more the position made sense. Having great candidates no doubt cemented the feeling.

I've been a part of plenty of interviews where the position description seemed to change as the hiring process proceeded. During one interview session, where I was the candidate, the search committee changed the position title and revamped some responsibilities. The position's trajectory kept moving the job further away from my experiences. While the committee may have gained clarity, the conversation for me was about as enjoyable as getting thumped with a bag of nickels.

This time our position description and our expectations melded perfectly with those of the candidates we interviewed. We had done our jobs well. We had been given a line in the budget, assessed our needs, translated dollars into duties, communicated those duties well in an ad, placed it in the right advertising vehicles, and attracted some perfect candidates.

When it all comes together like that, it's a beautiful thing. It often doesn't. We now have our development writer on staff, and all is right with the world.

I must admit, I'm not a big fan of the search process (in case you hadn't figured that out), including the business of defining well-conceived positions. It's rather messy, and so much can go wrong. Higher education hasn't quite mastered it yet, but we're getting close. And this latest search venture renews my faith in our potential.