I started a new
job this spring. After a long search in a tough market, I landed my dream job
as a senior professor and administrator at a top research university – a
university that did not retain a headhunter for its search.
Talks at other
schools had progressed to first or second interviews before fizzling, and they
fizzled due to the ineptitude of the universities’ search firms. The
headhunters deserve a whipping, and this column administers ten lashes.
Capable
academics want to connect with institutions where they can make a positive
difference and advance the institutions’ missions. Search firms really desiring
to help make these connections should:
1. Answer every application and every inquiry. You have not answered my letters re the last cool
job you posted. I give up on you – I don’t respond to your firm’s most recent
posting – and you miss the chance to bring your client a qualified candidate.
Too expensive to answer every message, you say? Sorry, this is the business you
chose to be in. Act professionally. And join the 21st century: Most
replies can be automated.
2. Prep search committees for (phone) interviews. The phone interview is a blunt tool, and not many
know what it’s for. Few interviewers, either at universities or at search
firms, can articulate exactly what they hope to accomplish in a phone
interview. Lack of agenda plus the inability to see body language can easily
add up to bad impressions on both sides. Coach clients on conducting
videoconference and campus interviews too, and assert yourself when necessary.
It’s troubling when a committee commits gaffes and illegalities, and doubly so
when the supposedly knowledgeable headhunter is right there in the room.
3. Prep candidates for interviews. Tell us about the culture of the school, whether the
search committee are experienced or novices at faculty/administrator searches,
who tends to dominate discussions, and whose biases should be watched out for.
4. Help your client structure the search process and
stick to a timeline. You know
universities are not good at this. It is what you, as business people, are
supposed to bring to the table. So why is it that neither you nor I can name a
search that finished on time, at any university?
5. Keep applicants informed of the progress of the
search. Common
courtesy, right? But less common than we’d like. And I don’t mean simply
calendar progress. If interviewing a few applicants causes the committee
(understandably) to change their minds about the kind of candidate they want,
tell us that too – before eliminating us from the running or canceling the search. After all, we
crafted our cover letters to match the originally advertised criteria. A chance
to refocus our letters benefits everybody.
6. Be there. An on-campus interview for a peach of an
administrative post. The headhunter tells me, “Sorry I can’t be there that day.
Don’t worry, you’ll do fine.” Turned out there were two faculty factions
looking for very different characteristics in a new administrator, and faction
members didn’t sport identification badges. I gave what we might call the right
answer to a vocal member of the wrong group. Later the headhunter said, “I knew
who’s who. If I’d been there we could have handled it together.”
7. Refrain from writing “this fine institution” when
it’s a turnaround job. When your
communications are dishonest, you lose the respect of people who know the
institution well. You waste time dealing with the wrong kinds of applicants.
The purpose of your ad is to attract the right candidates, not to butter up
your client. Do you know what candidates call ads that aggrandize client
universities? We call them “clues.” (A more general honesty issue: Don’t imply
to journalists that, e.g., the three-year average tenure of a dean is due
mainly to the job’s increasing pressures. Own up that you and your peers have
matched the wrong people with the jobs.)
8. Send no “do not reply” emails. So disrespectful. Same to you, buddy.
9. Avoid steering professionals to universities’
“online application systems.” 21st-century enterprises have AIs that parse
well-structured CVs. Seasoned candidates send you well-structured CVs. It’s not
that professionals are too stuck-up to deal with the same system used to hire
receptionists. It’s just that the irrelevancies and duplicate work the systems
demand lead us to expect the same from daily life at that university. A major
turn-off.
10. Remember, candidates are your future clients. As I, and others, move up the ladder and retain search
firms on behalf of our universities, we remember who you are and how you
behaved when we were candidates.
Headhunters, I’ve thought through how I could have better handled these
interviews, and I want you to do the same. If only you knew how often your
earnest, helpful, tech-savvy young assistants apologize to candidates for their
principals’ (in)actions. Straighten up and fly right during this storm in US
higher education. Decide to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
