CHE Article: Difficulty in hiring Provosts

[Bonnie]

We have had some atrocious internal hires of Dean, Provost, and President. We have also had some good to excellent internal hires of Provost and President, with one promising looking internal Dean hire having started this past summer.

We have had atrocious external hires of Dean and President. We have an incredibly promising external hire of Provost who started last year.

Mixed bag. When I think about the worst hires at those three levels in my 20 years here: internal President but a close race with an external President, internal Provost wins worst by a mile, external Dean whose damage is still felt daily three years after their promotion out of my college.

[kaysixteen]

Good fit is an interesting question.   There are many reasons why someone may not be a 'good fit', one of which is certainly  that the boss is incompetent, or the boss has vastly unrealistic expectations about what the job he's hiring should be (think: Latin teacher).

[polly_mer]

For me at the universities where I've worked, externally hired senior administrators make for the worst hires.

Our incompetent hires are always the external hires. Every. Single. Time. I place part of the fault here with the process of selecting the final candidate. If you have a crap process, expect a lot of shiny crap to not get filtered out.

Our unqualified hires are *usually* the external hires. Every once in a while somebody gets promoted beyond their britches because the search committee is optimistic about him/her, but it's pretty rare.

The people that take the job and then quit early --> yup, usually the external hires. Whereas our internally promoted people usually are here for the long-haul. The local folks are far more reliable and steady.

I'm not saying that external hiring is a crap process in Higher Ed. What I am saying is that I haven't seen it work any better than following the traditional process, and in my experience our institution has functioned a heck of a lot better with experienced local talent than with New Guy #3.

How many places have you been?

Your current employer as you've described it hasn't been a fabulous example that all institutions should emulate.  Instead, it sounds a lot like it's seriously broken and outsiders would not be supported in trying to make the necessary big changes.