Andy 0:03
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs Podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the Chief Operating Officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

Kelly 0:09
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the Director of Editorial Strategy. Today we're lucky to have Gail Freeman, who is the President and Founder of Freeman Philanthropic Services LLC. We're going to be tackling the topic for our employers, our HR professionals, our search committees, talking about making the search process stronger and more strategic. So to give you a background on Gail, Gail is the Principal Founder of Freeman Philanthropic Services, bringing decades of experience in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. She's recognized for her leadership and executive recruitment, fundraising, and strategic consulting for mission-driven organizations. Gail serves as Chair Emeritus of the Lille Lee Family School, Philanthropy at the Indian University and is a founding member of its board of visitors. The school, the first in the world dedicated to advancing philanthropy through education, reflects Gail's lifelong commitment to cultivating innovation and leadership in the sector. Through FPS, Gail partners with organizations to strengthen their capacity, deepen their impact, and build visionary leadership for a more equitable and sustainable future. Headquartered in New York City and founded in 2002, Freeman Philanthropic Services LLC FPS is a retained executive recruitment firms serving the non-for-profit sector. Their FPS has completed 705 executive recruitments, with 100% completion rate across the C-suite, including executive leaders, in development communications, finance, human resources, programs, operations, legal council, CEOs, and executive directors. FPS specializes in building teams and partnering with key stakeholders at organizations during periods of transition, including inaugural executive leadership, leadership transition, after years of service, and succession of founders. Gail, thank you so much for being here today.

Gail Freeman 1:50
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.

Kelly 1:52
So let's get into our conversation today about making that search process stronger. So in your experience, what sets a truly strategic hiring process apart from one that simply fills a role?

Gail Freeman 2:04
The partnership between the executive recruitment firm, the search committee, and the organization. And to really have a clear understanding of what the position is, where does it sit within the organization and the impact, and what does the organization see where they're going in the next three to five years? How does the role relate to that vision? That's important element of having great search process. You need to be able to identify and recruit a successful candidate. A search firm needs to partner with key internal and external stakeholders to understand what we refer to as the four pillars of the search. What is the vision, and how it does the role relate to the vision? What are the challenges and opportunities that the person was going to face in the role? What are the qualities that one needs to possess to be successful meeting those challenges and opportunities? And what are the, not only reporting relationships, but important relationships? Successful search begins by speaking with key stakeholders to discern four pillars. pillars, and a successful search also is about Many times, I should say, a client interviews a candidate, but doesn't do it in an expeditious manner. So you want to present candidates to your client and that the client needs to then respond in an expeditious manner. But you want to do that in a comprehensive way as well. So the process of developing candidates is very crucial to success in search.

Kelly 3:58
Thanks, Gail. I love the fact that you divided those into the four pillars, and I think it's so crucial that the homework has to be done in advance. It sounds like you can't just post something and hope for the best without communicating with each other.

Gail Freeman 4:13
Hope is not a strategy in search. The strategy is to understand and have clarity and specificity about what you're looking for. The skill of search, you can find anything, but you have to know what you're looking for. And that scoping or listening tour with the client is where learn what is it that I'm looking for as a search firm.

Andy 4:40
Thank you, Gail. In that process of finding out what they're looking for, what are some of the common mistakes you've seen in how employers structure job postings or conduct early stage screening interviews?

Gail Freeman 4:52
So when we come in and we do the scoping and we put together a position profile, which is very different than a job description. It's marketing. It's beyond a job description, and we disseminate that out. And it's targeted research solves 92% of searches. It's not, you know, posting. Posting is not recruiting. Posting is a passive approach to hiring. Recruitment is you target, and then you seek that individual, engage them, cultivate them, talk about the opportunity, and that's an important element the search process. But what I would say is that, well, two things. One, posting is not recruitment, posting is advertising what you have available, and seeing who comes. Recruitment is aligning your needs to where candidates are, and going after them. It's a very different mindset. With regards to some of the challenges that come about are that the job description itself or position profiles we refer to it as is not aligned with the marketplace. So you have somebody that's looking for a major gift and planned giving officer for an example. Now someone that's doing planned giving is typically a little bit more professionally mature, than maybe an introductory major gift officer. So coupling those together, they're very different skill sets in many senses. So it's really aligning. It's not only the needs of the organization, but aligning the needs the marketplace, I think is important. Another thing that happens quite frequently. When you're working with a search firm, we phone screen, we interview face to face, we ask for a letter of intent, we bring the candidate to the table. We'll talk about development for a moment. It's not a codified field. It's a field where people are mentored and apprenticed. So you need to build a pool of candidates, and so can contrast and compare. You'll make a better decision, because it's not codified the field. Whereas, many times a big mistake made is that they get into what we refer to as rolling admissions. So they roll people in, and the first candidate that comes through, you have to keep them engaged for quite some time, until they've seen, maybe, maybe candidate number four or five. So they don't have the opportunity to contrast and compare. It's also difficult on the part of the candidate to keep them engaged and involved.

Another thing that happens is because the search firm goes along and does all this vetting, and then presents the candidate to the client, the client, in turn, continues to evaluate. There's a cycle in search at the beginning, you're identifying in the middle, you're evaluating, and then you're selling the opportunity, and the client needs to work in partnership with the recruitment firm to sell the opportunities to shift from evaluation to recruitment. That's a different mentality. So I see that as a, that they continue to evaluate. Another mistake that is commonly made is they involve the staff at a very early part of the search, whereas that should be towards the end of the search. The person that would want to meet the staff, but that needs to be positioned in a way that it's a recruitment interview or conversation, I like to say, versus an evaluation. Some of the challenges that happen.

Kelly 8:54
Thank you for that. I just have a follow-up question can you span a bit more on the, um, I guess the cons of evaluating the staff to early and why this can pose a problem?

Gail Freeman 9:04
Well, um, a couple of reasons. One, the, the staff has skin in that game, and they're, they're looking at through the lens of can I work with this person? And this is going to be my supervisor. That does not usually, that's an awkward position for both the staff and the candidate. If you've come down to maybe the top one or two candidates that you're going to move forward with, it's nice to involve the staff in a recruitment format versus a evaluation format. So if you do that early, the candidate's still being evaluated. Candidates are not manufactured. They're developed over a period of time. I'll make the analogy to dating. Do you want to have, you know, one date, you need to date somebody over a period of time because they tend to reveal themselves over time. They're also in very high state of anxiety, truly.

So they tend, their personalities become more exaggerated during these states of anxiety. So to involve the staff in early is not, I would not recommend that when the staff is engaged if they're doing that as a panel they need to be informed and charged that they're there to recruit not to evaluate because the candidate will have already been evaluated by the key stakeholders, by the search firm. And we need their help to bring them over the line as I say.

Kelly 10:46
Thank you for explaining the difference between evaluating and recruiting. I appreciate that. So I know we talked earlier about the four pillars. You know how important is to identify the vision, the challenges, the qualities to be successful. And then, um, the reporting relationships and I know you referenced how important is to be strategic in finding the candidates. So what steps institutions take to attract these right the who are not just qualified, you know, have that that great resume, but generally are aligned with the role and will potentially fit in with the organization's mission.

Gail Freeman 11:21
I think you ask the question, what is it about the mission that is attractive to you as the candidate? Or what is it about this mission attract you? And if they've done their homework, and they're truly aligned with the mission, they'll be able to articulate that. Another indicator about what are they volunteer? What is their passions in life? Philanthropically, that is, and that will also help align with the organization. What is their work style? What is their workplace preference, you know, searches like a venn diagram, on one side, you know, you've got the two concentric circles that intersect one side being The client has certain values, they want to work in person, for example, we'll talk about because that's always an issue nowadays, do they want to work in person, hybrid or remote if they wanted somebody that's in person, that's one of their values and that is not a bargaining chip in a search that is their value. And the candidate on the other side of the venn diagram is not interested and wants to work remote. No matter what their skill sets, they're not going to fit in the culture, they don't have shared values. And the intersection of shared values is where you have an excellent search. It's not just skill sets, it's shared values, it's shared values around management and organization, it's shared values around, around workplace preference, it's shared values about impact, it's shared values about how you work with volunteers and board members and alumni, if you're in higher education or with grateful patients, it's about that's ultimately what makes a search successful.

Kelly 13:15
I love that that you touched on the idea of shared values and I'm assuming that you are advocating for the committee or whoever is doing the interviewing to maybe it's a phone interview or zoom interview before they reach to that on campus stage interview to talk about those values and see if it's a match so they aren't bringing in, you know, 15 candidates on campus with 12 of them not matching and am I correct in assuming that.

Gail Freeman 13:39
Somewhat so first it's a winnowing process so you might present 10 candidates to a client, they'll contrast and compare as I said earlier it's. un codified fields so they will contrast and compare. they'll winnow it down to maybe six, they might zoom with six that helps you further inform then they might have a panel interview. Possibly with members of the search committee it depends on who the hiring manager is. Is it with the search committee is it with the hiring manager is it with the CEO of the and when I do a CEO search it's with the board so it depends on who's interviewing and then from there let's say if it was a higher ad you want to bring them to campus about 3/4 of the way through the search.

Kelly 14:34
Thank you.

Andy 14:35
Thanks, Gail. I really like the idea of the whole concept is finding the intersection of shared values. In that process, Do you have a go to question or probably more likely a line of inquiry that consistently reveals whether or not a candidate has that intersection of shared values to really further the candidacy and have their candidacy stand out as if not the leader at least one of the absolute contenders that the organization has confidence and pulling the trigger with

Gail Freeman 15:07
yes I asked them about I do biographical experiential interviews to learn about what is it that motivates them. And there's patterns of behavior that you see on a resume of what motivates. And sometimes the motivation is, they've been a recipient of beneficiary of the services. They're an alumni of the school. They're a grateful patient. You know, depends on what kind of organization we're recruiting for. But you want to understand what is their passion in life. And it's also about character. And it's also about workplace preference. That tells you a lot about someone, their workplace preference. Also, people are not just one position. They're, they're compositive of their entire career. So why did they move? That indicates certain kinds of values. There's, I've worked with candidates. I had a gentleman I worked with for, I did 17 searches him. And he had been at a university. He had been with five different presidents over 20 years. And he was able to work well with them. And knew how to adjust his behavior with different kinds of individuals, because each president was a little different. Some people would approach that, that they would leave automatically. So, he had the value of the institution. The institution was more important than the individual that was at the helm. So he had the ability to negotiate and navigate with five different personalities because he cared so deeply about the institution. And I think that's a value that we need to in the not-for-profit sector focus more on the mission of the organization and understanding what are the challenges of the organization versus focusing on how does this serve me a candidate. But that arc of developing a candidate, there's no such thing as rapid recruitment. You want to develop a relationship and it's a relationship with an employer. You're going to spend a lot of time with that employer.

Andy 17:36
Thank you, Gail. That's a lovely way to kind of sum up this conversation, and really look at, taking some of these processes and directions and giving it some real character by that example. We really appreciate you being here. If you're listening and have questions for Gail, please feel free to email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or feel free to send a direct message on X @higheredcareers. We really look forward to hearing you, maybe some of your thoughts on this really deep and insightful subject, but definitely something that is not one size fits all. Gail, thank you for being here. We look forward to having you back on the podcast sometime soon.

Gail Freeman 18:18
Thank you so much.

Kelly 18:20
Thanks, Gail.

Andy 18:21
Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you real soon.