11/22/2023 0 Comments Typo on resume![]() The success of such a search is judged entirely on the effectiveness of the candidate of choice, with the comprehensiveness of the process or the building of consensus around the choice an afterthought at best. Hiring decisions are based, to a large degree, on intangibles. Senior corporate executives in particular are accustomed to very brief searches in which a small number of highly qualified candidates are brought to the table. Trustees are usually familiar with a very different kind of search. These folks really know how to read a CV. ![]() Professors frequently deal with exceptionally large pools of candidates, often numbering in the many hundreds, and yet they probe deeply in an effort not to miss any flags - green or red - that offer a clue to the applicant’s potential to contribute in the classroom and as a scholar. Academics can spend hours poring over candidate materials, evaluating the quantity and quality of someone’s scholarship, assessing letters of recommendation, and making judgments about skills and abilities juxtaposed with disciplinary and departmental needs. It is one of the most important service roles that they play within an institution: serving on faculty search committees. But in a great many cases the dynamic doesn’t start out that way.Ĭontrary to the bias that many trustees bring to the search-committee table, professors actually are involved constantly in hiring. Happily, that is how many searches find their way to a resolution. When the streams cross - when trustees find the intangible where professors find a preponderance of assets over liabilities - strong consensus is built, and that consensus provides confidence in the hire. In most shared-governance environments, differences in perspective can be a powerful asset in a search for leadership. And in that math, a typo is always a negative. ![]() Trustees inevitably believe that leadership has an intangible quality - an “it” factor, if you will - that defies quantification but is there to be perceived.įaculty are typically distrustful of such gut instincts, far preferring to identify quantifiable requirements and preferences and then to measure them, adding up who among the candidate pool is the most worthy in as mathematical a way as is possible. In the search process, perhaps the most important difference I see between the two is that trustees tend to be much more willing to follow their instincts in reacting to a candidate than faculty members, who are trained to focus on the empirical, the provable. Trustees certainly value clarity and precision in communication, and professors definitely understand the importance of leadership. Of course both constituencies want it all in the ideal candidate. They value personal charisma as an important leadership quality, for example, whereas faculty tend to be skeptical of charisma. They are looking at the big picture - the leadership, the vision, the strategy, and the mien of the candidate. But, more often than not, they see a typo in a letter or on a CV as a subsidiary issue. Trustees may agree if the typo is particularly egregious. If there is a mistake in the cover letter, the writer is either not meeting the standard, or the standard is too low. A cover letter or a CV is more than a statement of interest and experience it is a sample of a leader’s communication ability and style, and we have a right to expect it to reflect the standard of excellence held by the candidate. The faculty’s theory is that important documents should be perfect. Professors frequently believe that trustees don’t understand or respect the ways and norms of higher education.įrankly, both positions have merit, and they often find their convergence over a typo. Trustees often maintain that the faculty members chosen to serve on search committees have far too little experience hiring executive leadership and don’t know it when they see it. ![]() My fellow search consultants and I hear the mutual skepticism all the time. Certain common issues regularly crop up that symbolize the divide between the on-campus groups and the off-campus ones, particularly between professors and trustees. But should it?Īnyone who’s ever been involved in a leadership search - especially but not exclusively at the presidential level - knows that guiding the various constituencies toward a consensus on a candidate is a fraught exercise. It is a typo - an ordinary if neglectful mistake that was overlooked in the proofreading.Īnd it can end the applicant’s candidacy. It isn’t an error of fact or a misrepresentation. There it sits, right in the middle of the first paragraph of the cover letter.
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