Candidates observe ALL signs
How you reference candidates is a clear sign of your values
Imagine the high performing candidate: they are happy and effective in their work, they have established relationships and routines in place. They also have lots to lose if their current employer discovers they are exploring your senior leadership job opening. They want assurances about their confidentiality in any search process - not just during but after.
Yet your board member - the involved one who knows from experience that ‘interview is theater’, and that what you see is not always what you get - spies a way to help manage the search committee’s risk. Why not activate their outside network of trusted sources?
Enter: the perils of uncoordinated back-channel referencing.
It’s what candidates do.
The case study starts with the unwelcome news we delivered at a Tuesday 9am client meeting:
“One of your finalist candidates texted me yesterday, asking to talk. He withdrew from the search.”
“Why is that?” asked the Head of School.
“Yesterday, one of his colleagues at work asked him if he was looking around specifically at this opportunity.”
“Ah. That’s my fault” the Head responded. “Last week I shared candidate names with our board finance chair, who knows people in his office. I bet my board member called a friend and asked around - and it got back to the candidate.”
We get it: you’ve been burned in the past.
A bad hire, a mis-step, a lawsuit, or a rediscovered social media post - some unexpected circumstance has created the kind of enduring blowback no leader or school community appreciates. As one board member we know says: “Bad news is ok. Surprises are not.”
And knowing things about prospective hires is essential.
Where questions remain, they need to be answered.
And yet, you send a strong signal by virtue of how you go about retrieving background information. Do your actions say: “We are building a trusting relationship with someone who will be worthy of the leadership role here?
The outcome of your search matters.
The stakes are so high that extraordinary measures are sometimes warranted. But in soliciting covert feedback about someone who is gainfully employed, here’s what any agent seeking privileged information independently might be missing: The quality of your search outcome reflects the quality of the recruiting process.
That means your search committee needs to be asking not just “How do we protect ourselves from downside risks?” but also “How do we persuade the one exactly right person to stay engaged and continue the conversation?”
Coordination is the key.
Our clients generate and maintain higher quality candidates in their pool when we proactively coordinate as a hiring team, taking into consideration both the priorities of the preferred candidates and the institution.
Why?
It turns out these positions are always all-in, and performance expectations are very high. The phrase we often hear is: ‘It’s less than a whole life, but more than a job’. How will your search committee choose to show respect for the existing priorities of your future CFO, Executive Director of Enrollment, Chief Advancement Officer, or Head of School? And what does that choice signal about the likely experience your successful hire will have once they are in the seat?
The questions, concerns, and unanswered questions you have about every prospective hire need to be fully addressed. Don’t put blinders on, or fall in love before the first date, or limit yourself to ‘on-list’ references. But establish an order of operations. When the time is right for probing more deeply, the next step is to coordinate in advance and develop a tailored approach to each outreach with your recruiter.
Let your search show who you are.
Did your English teachers always say: ‘Show, don’t tell’? Ours did. The same principle applies: let your search show candidates what it’s like to work with you, don’t just tell them.
How you get things done is your institution’s body language. Those cues and signals reflect both your values and your organizational self-awareness. Whenever those signals don’t match up with what you say out loud, the best candidates will exit.
So our advice is to manage your referencing - and every part of your process - as if your preferred candidates are not only attending to the official direct messages you, your team, your board, and search committee intend to convey.
Because candidates will observe ALL signs, and choose their path accordingly.