IT Director Search Committee

Here I am with one other person in our group assigned to the search committee to find a new IT Director.  Awesome, I got picked to do something important.  More motivating was that I was picked over several other team members that had been there much longer than me.  I must be doing something right?  Day one, analyze roughly 30 applicants and their resumes and provide recommendations to the search committee who would be a candidate for the first round of phone interviews.    I found 3 that were in fact qualified to do the job.  As a committee we decided to phone interview 5 candidates.

The first was our current server team leader.  We had a list of 30 or so questions that we asked each candidate in the same order to judge their responses and compare them to the other candidates.  After each phone interview we briefly discussed the overall pros and cons of each candidate.  This is a very simple concept. As it goes we discussed the first candidate immediately following the interview while it was fresh on our minds.  EVERYONE on the committee agreed that the candidate answered all the questions with great enthusiasm and expert knowledge.  Not one person had anything that could be listed as a con if you only based your decision on the interview. Why was this person not picked for a face to face interview?

Well, that is the beauty of the search committee.  Two of the members vehemently opposed this candidate based on previous interactions with this person.  I cannot tell you who was "right" in those previous interactions, but I can tell you both parties had their reasons that made sense to them.  The bashing commenced for another five minutes or so stating this individual was hard to work with.  I could only agree that he had a system that ensured stability with the lab infrastructure. This of course would result in testing if a faculty member requested new software be added to the entire lab which would take a day or two.  Which makes sense to me as that lab is used by several faculty members who cannot have their classes jeopardized by a single instructor who had to have this software now.  From my understanding, the instructor wanted this done within 24 hours.

Differences aside, should a candidate really be judged on their past experiences with a single faculty member or should you base your decision on the interview and resume of the applicant?  Keep in mind that the candidates applying from outside the University are free from this judgement as no one really knows them besides their interview and application.

One down, four to go...