Higher education is looking for inspired, innovative leaders. The field has gotten so complex and competitive that trustees, search committees, and HR managers are swinging for the fences, looking for home-run hires. This is especially true regarding presidents. It applies as well to chief diversity officers as the demands of their positions have expanded dramatically.
Yet boards and hiring authorities are petrified of striking out. Selecting the wrong president, CDO, advancement officer, CFO, or other top administrator can have dire consequences. It can set the institution back years or, in an era in which colleges and universities are literally going out of business, worse. It pays to exercise caution in key personnel decisions.
How can institutions reconcile these seemingly paradoxical goals of hiring big while assuming less risk in doing so? Especially at the senior leadership level, a more sophisticated recruiting process is in order. Allow me to outline a few fundamental practices for reducing risk in key hiring decisions:
