A Recruiting Professional Breaks Down the Coaching Search
Nov 13th 2008 - Written by: John Webb
Nearly ten years experience as a professional in the recruiting industry makes me an expert (in my own mind!) regarding Terry Don Phillip’s hunt for a new head coach at Clemson. (Can I get paid for this?) I’ve never done executive level placements, but I have hired many hundreds of employees in the professional and technical ranks. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly; and I’d like to lay out some principles for how a search might be done, and share some of my stories from the war for talent.
First of all, I think that the most successful hires spring forth from an employer truly understanding who they are and what they are looking for. I have seen the job description for Clemson Head Football Coach, and it could be interchanged, with little alteration, with any other coach’s job description in the country. A school has to be honest with itself, and answer the hard questions. A school has to dig deeper than a job description.
Several times I have had someone go through the interview process for Job “A”, only to have Job “A” wash, and to have that person hired for Job “B”.
I have had someone offered $10,000 less than what I thought was the minimum salary (and he took it.)
I worked with a company, once upon a time, who thought that rather than address managerial problems, they would summon an endless parade of quality engineers – I guess it kept those of us in the recruiting field busy.
These people did not understand themselves. A few questions (many of them illegal and/or unethical) that come off the top of my head, and which Clemson needs to answer at the beginning of the search process:
What are we honestly willing to pay this person? Are we willing to give total control to a new coach concerning assistant coaching hires, regardless of who that new head coach is? Is our fan base willing to go “all in” on facilities improvements? What if the answer is no, but an indoor practice facility is a deal breaker for our top candidate? Are we prepared to suffer through a losing season in 2009, like Michigan is doing this year, in order to get our Cracker Jack coach’s new system in place? Are we prepared to hire someone who is very young or very old? What is our honest expectation for the coach’s interaction with the administration? Will the fans buy Terry Don a bus ticket to hell for hiring an atheist or Mormon? How many wins are enough? Are we willing to give up a little winning to continue being successful by off-the-field measures? Does our new head coach need previous head coach experience? Coordinator experience? What if someone has professional but not college experience?
Just a pet peeve here: even though it’s discriminatory, everyone in the world wants to hire someone who is young, aggressive, and has his Ph.D. (poor, hungry, and driven.) Not all great people fall into this category. Young people get old. It happened to some degree even as you read this sentence.
Pet peeve number two: I have never read a job description of a work environment that was not described as fast-paced. Well…the average person is of average height, weight, and intelligence, which leads me to strongly suspect that the average pace of the average American work environment is not fast-paced; by definition, it’s average.
Whew!
This prepares Clemson for the next step in the process: getting rid of candidates. For this discussion, I am assuming that the Clemson opening is the greatest job since the Norman Invasion, and that Terry Don has had no trouble soliciting resumes from the greatest coaches since…well, the Norman Invasion. Come to think of it, the Normans had less trouble conquering England than we have had conquering the Atlantic Division.
Terry Don Phillips should quickly find disqualifying attributes of candidates – hasn’t won enough, isn’t a good recruiter, loves the Gamecocks – so that the list of candidates is winnowed down to a manageable number.
The next step is the interview, which like first step, is guided by an intense understanding of identity. Very often interviews don’t go according to plan. I also think that most people don’t realize that in an interview it is vital for both parties to sell themselves to each other, not just for the candidate to sell himself to the employer. If you think about it, Clemson is asking a coach to uproot his family and take a chance on a new job, based on one conversation. The risk is greater for the candidate than for the school, because the risk is personal. If Terry Don Phillips has done his job, a new head coach will feel at home when he drives into Clemson, though he may never have set foot in the 29631 area code. I always marvel when I lock down a future employee, and he or she agrees to travel thousands of miles to accept a new job, based solely on a phone conversation with me.
If Terry Don Phillips hires a successful coach at Clemson, then he is going to trust his gut feeling. He should be 100% comfortable with his choice, even if he makes an unpopular decision. Ultimately, he will be the only one who knows if he made the right choice, because he is the only one privy to all the information – who was interested, who wasn’t, who interviewed, and what popular candidate possibly had something stupid on his background check (been there, done that, many times.) He should never go against his gut.
There once was a lady I was pressured into hiring who I had to “talk off the ledge” every week when I gave her her paycheck. I dreaded every Friday. Last week in Jason’s Deli I caught a glimpse of a guy who I really liked, and brought down from Wisconsin seven years ago. He was laughing and walking out the door with his coworkers. The feedback on him was always outstanding. Go with your gut, Terry Don, even though the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
Here is a favorite story of mine. Author Alfred Lansing chronicles the exploits of Ernest Shackleton in his book Endurance. Shackleton led an expedition that was stranded in the Antarctic, where from 1914 to 1916 they battled the elements and starvation. Here is how he hired his crew:
In the matter of selecting newcomers, Shackleton’s methods would appear to have been almost capricious. If he liked the look of a man, he was accepted. If he didn’t, the matter was closed. And these decisions were made with lightening speed. There is no record of any interview that Shackleton conducted with a prospective expedition member lasting much more than five minutes.
Leonard Hussey, an irrepressible, peppery little individual, was signed on as meteorologist even though he had practically no qualifications for the position at the time. Shackleton simply thought Hussey “looked funny,” and the fact that he had recently returned from an expedition (as an anthropologist) to the torrid Sudan appealed to Shackleton’s sense of whimsy. Hussey immediately took an intensive course in meteorology and later proved to be very proficient.
Dr. Alexander Macklin, one of the two surgeons, caught Shackleton’s fancy by replying, when Shackleton asked him why he was wearing glasses: “Many a wise face would look foolish without spectacles.” And Reginald James was signed on as physicist after Shackleton inquired about the state of his teeth, whether he suffered from varicose veins, if he was good-tempered – and if he could sing. At this last question, James looked puzzled.
“Oh, I don’t mean any Caruso stuff,” Shackleton reassured him, “but I suppose you can shout a bit with the boys?”
Despite the instantaneous nature of these decisions, Shackleton’s intuition for selecting compatible men rarely failed.
Ernest Shackleton is regarded as one of the great leaders of the 20th century. By working together, and Shackleton’s keen assessment of their character, nearly all of his crew survived. Does Terry Don Phillips have a little bit of Shackleton in him?
So, interview the most qualified candidates and then go with your gut. Last of all, pray that things work out as you planned. People are inherently unpredictable. Every human endeavor has a spoonful of adventure for flavoring; enjoy the successes, and pray that you can fix the snafus. After all, that’s what we’re in the middle of doing right now.
If you need to holler at John Webb, he will be in lot 22 on Saturday, or you can email him at sectionHrowJ@gmail.com.
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