The hard business of searching: for search firms, filling a superintendency can be as demanding as the job itself

School Administrator, June, 2003 by Paul Riede

But Delane acknowledges the group stops short of pirating superintendents from member districts, which private firms can do.

Timothy Kremer, who ran OSBA's search effort for 15 years and now directs the New York State School Boards Association, can attest to the hazards of that practice. He recalls a search in which he found a qualified candidate but the candidate decided not to take the job. Rather than advertising the position again, he went out to recruit a few high-profile superintendents from other districts in the state--districts that paid dues to his organization. "I was cherrypicking and I was doing so on the q.t.," he says.

Kremer found the right candidate, but he soon got a call from an outraged school board president. "What the hell are you doing?" said the voice over the phone. "You're picking off our superintendent, you SOB!"

Kremer's association in New York is phasing out its search arm--for the second time in a decade--because its two searchers, who eagerly accepted the job two years ago, have realized that the travel and frequent night meetings are not for them.

Keeping It Secret

The travel and night work are just two of the down sides of the search business in the current environment. There are others, says Linda Dawson, president of the Aspen Group, a Colorado-based educational consulting firm that has left the search business because it has become so labor-intensive.

"It's fraught with opportunities to make people mad," says Dawson, who earlier worked for the Colorado Association of School Boards.

Chief among them is the issue of confidentiality. As firms more actively recruit administrators who aren't looking for jobs, they are facing more demands to keep the candidates' names secret. If a name slips out and embarrasses a candidate in his home district, the search firm often gets the blame.

Attea says that in searches four or five years ago his firm would routinely trot out the final three or four candidates for interviews with different constituent groups in a district. But confidentiality is such a big issue now that in all of his firm's current searches only the final candidate's name will be revealed.

In states where the law limits confidentiality, such as Ohio, Florida and Michigan, it is far more difficult to get high-quality candidates, says Attea. That leads to various strategies for keeping searches surreptitious. In a recent search in Florida, Attea's firm contacted potential candidates but told them not to apply for the job or send any material. As long as there was nothing in writing, the names would not have to be disclosed, Attea says. The candidates did have to agree to go public if they became finalists, however. (See related story, page 6.)

The confidentiality issue puts smaller firms at a disadvantage because a potential candidate returning a phone call can be so nervous about discovery that he or she won't leave a message on a machine, says Gotgart of the New England School Development Council. Unless the firm has someone answering phones at all times, it may lose its chance at landing some of the best candidates.