On hiring capacity over experience

We have a semi-regular brown bag lunch for librarians at Baylor. A frequent agenda item is sharing around the table of highlights from recent conferences. At a lunch meeting last fall I spoke about the
Designing Libraries for the 21st Century conference I had just attended at North Carolina State University. It was a tremendous conference, and a great opportunity to see the truly fabulous new Hunt Library. One highlight of the conference for me was hearing Susan Nutter speak on her vision for the library, and the long-term process of developing the team of professionals around her who made the library possible.

One portion of Nutter's presentation jumped out at me. It was an echo of something I'd read in the distant past, and parallel to a philosophy which has guided me when writing job descriptions or making a hiring decision. I shared Nutter's comments with my colleagues at our brown bag session. One of my colleagues, who was chairing a faculty search, asked me later to repeat these comments, as he didn't capture all of them in his notes. I'm not sure I captured everything Nutter said, but my notes had the following: changed the hiring process - look for talent, knowledge, team players, eager, intellectually engaged, willing to take chances. Nutter also indicated that experience doing the job was NOT a key criteria.

Years ago, well before I began working in libraries, I read the book Growing a Business by Paul Hawken. I think I read it during my stay-at-home dad stint, when I was trying to imagine the entrepreneurial business I could start with zero capital. I never started that business (or at least, haven't yet), but I have tried to bring an entrepreneurial attitude to library leadership. At any rate, Nutter's remarks reminded me of one small section of Hawken's book which really resonated with me back in the early 1990's, and which has stuck with me ever since. Hawken said he aimed to "hire the person, not the position," and to focus on the character and potential of a job candidate. I had to wonder as Nutter spoke whether she had read Hawken, too, especially when I realized that she was hired at NCSU in 1987 -- the same year Hawken's book was published!

The "hire the right person" philosophy plays out in a number of practices for me. First, when writing a job description, I lean toward expanding the applicant pool, rather than restricting it. I always ask my search chairs whether a particular position requires an MLS. Sometimes we agree that an MLS is required (so far we've always required the library degree for cataloging positions). Frequently, we settle on a combination of graduate degree(s) and experience or evidence of related success.

When reviewing candidates, I'm more impressed by evidence of capacity to do a job than generic library experience. I can recall a time when a finalist pool for a very technical, detail oriented position with a need to at least understand databases and programming included someone with no undergraduate work in math or computers, an obvious (from the undergraduate transcript) failed attempt at a degree in the sciences, and an eventual esoteric humanities degree. I strongly discouraged the search committee from advancing the candidate, as we didn't have any evidence of capacity for the type of work required, despite some experience working in academic libraries. The end result of this search was an outstanding, new-to-the-profession librarian who jumped right into the work.

Finally, when making a final selection, do the hard work of reference checks. Go beyond the minimum institutional requirements. If a named reference seems to be avoiding your calls, be dogged in pursuit of them - they may be trying to avoid giving accurate, negative feedback on someone they want to see hired (or hired away). With the permission of the finalist, expand your conversations to include non-directed references. When we are preparing to do reference checks for a finalist, we tell the candidate we would also like to talk to a couple people not included on their list of references. We ask if there is anyone in their current or immediately previous place of employment (or among the faculty of their program) they would not want us to contact. Then we contact at least one or two people who, based on their positions, should have some knowledge of the candidate. Find out about their competence and and their collegiality. Remember, you are looking for ability and fit. Generally, you are going to get glowing reviews from people who really like the person you've liked in the interview process. Occasionally, however, you might gain new insight that helps you avoid a bad hiring decision.