Holding an interim leadership position is often thought to give you advantages as a candidate applying for the “permanent” job. But the hiring process in higher education is full of such assumed truisms that turn out to depend on time, situation, place, and players.
Sometimes a temporary appointment does lead to the official job. Indeed, if you are an outside candidate, you may hear rumors that someone has “already been promised the job.” But even if you haven’t heard such rumours, always ask the search firm or committee, “Is there a strong interim who is planning to apply?” (For more on how to spot a sham national search — that is, one with a predetermined outcome — read here and here.)
However, things are not so simple and foregone in most leadership searches. In addition to the obvious benefits, insiders are just as likely to carry baggage that weakens their candidacy. If you are an interim leader seeking to keep your job without the modifier, you need to be aware of how your provisional authority may help and hurt you in the search.
In the Admin 101 series on higher-education leadership, I’ve been writing lately about interim and unexpected promotions into management. To wrap up the series, let’s turn to what to do if you want to stay beyond your interim tenure.
Don’t assume you’re a shoo-in just because you hold the interim job. My most surreal moment as a leadership candidate happened many years ago in one of my first applications for a deanship. When I arrived for a two-day campus visit, I was greeted at the local airport by the chair of the search committee, who informed me, in very somber terms, that he had just learned that this was a “fixed search” — the provost had let slip that she had already promised the position to an internal candidate. The committee was outraged, he said, and he apologized. He felt the only ethical thing to do was to relay the news and let me get on the next plane home, if I chose.
I replied that, whatever happened, I was honored to be on the shortlist and thought I could learn a lot by being a finalist, especially since I had so little experience at that point in dean searches. As he drove me to the campus, we agreed that neither of us would raise this issue during my visit, and the search committee behaved professionally throughout. I tried to play it straight as well — even when I had my interview with the provost and she signaled in every way that she wanted to get through the meeting as quickly as possible.
Interestingly, that search failed, due in no small part to faculty members and alumni upset at the provost’s naked disregard of hiring etiquette. I don’t know what the interim leader in that situation was promised, but the predicted outcome fell through, probably because it was so baldly and clumsily attempted. The larger lesson here: If you are the interim, be skeptical of any guarantees you hear during the interview process, whether they come from a senior leader or from colleagues speculating about who is a “sure thing” for the job. (Incidentally, I did learn a lot about being a better candidate during that campus visit. That knowledge helped lead to the deanship that I held for 10 years.)
Now is not the time for political maneuvering. As an interim administrator, you may have quite a bit of power — to spend money, to approve things, to promote people. Sure, you could be Machiavellian and exercise that power in ways that would curry favor for your candidacy. Resist that urge, and play it straight. Make decisions as an interim leader based on your actual job description and on the best interests of your unit, its people, and its mission, and not to win friends and influence.
I offer two broad reasons to forgo politicking during the hiring process:
- First, it’s vital to maintain your reputation as an ethical leader, both in perception and in fact. Once you go down the path of trading favors, then you might win a short-term victory, but is it worth the price to your integrity? Even if you get the job, your brand will be tarnished, and faculty and staff members will expect goodies and favors to be your everyday governing method.
- Second, your scheming may well backfire. Academe is full of bright people who take fairness, due process, and transparency very seriously. I have heard of many cases in which an interim leader left a sour taste among key players in the search by trying to game the system. A colleague at a small liberal-arts college told me how an interim president had spoiled any internal advantages he had by outright pandering and favoritism. A lot of people were quite happy to accept the favors, but behind closed doors, they brought up that behavior as a reason to oppose his candidacy. He did not win the appointment.
The best way to help yourself while you are an interim is to just do the job well and uphold the dignity of the office.
In your application materials, don’t play the insider too aggressively. The veteran dean of sciences at a Western university told me that, as a candidate for the permanent position, she had felt a great temptation to “offer solutions to everything.” After serving as the interim dean for a year and as a faculty member on the campus for almost two decades, she legitimately knew as much as anybody about the internal workings of the college, including its challenges and opportunities. But as she set out to assemble her vision statement and other application materials, she realized that asserting that she already had all the answers could hurt her candidacy.
Within the college of sciences were multiple constituencies and different views on the best path forward. If, as an internal candidate, she announced detailed plans — “as dean, I would do the following 10 things right away” — she might come off as uninterested in shared governance.
You don’t want to set the impression that your familiarity with the place, as an internal candidate, means you will close off certain avenues of debate.
Likewise, we are at a time of radical disruption in higher education on so many fronts: admissions, curriculum, funding, academic freedom. Practically every job ad for an administrative position calls for candidates with an innovative vision, beyond business as usual. It’s a handicap to an insider candidate to be too tied to existing or insider solutions.
It’s fine to lay out some issues facing the unit or the institution, and to talk about how you would make decisions in your administration. But show an openness to alternative ideas and new trends, not just to ones you’ve advocated for in the past.
Don’t be too chummy in your campus interview. As an internal candidate, you of course know all the players, some of them quite well. But take a step back during the interview meetings or meals, and aim to act like a semi-outsider. Time and again, I’ve seen and heard of internal candidates who made the mistake of being too clubby in the hiring process.
A case in point: An administrator at a large Southern university told me about going to an interview dinner with an interim department chair who was a candidate for the permanent position. The candidate stumbled during that meal by over-calibrating toward intimacy. The entire initial hour of the dinner was spent on his personal chitchat (“Hey Marcia, how’s your daughter doing in her soccer camp?”). People were slightly turned off by his treating the search process as an old-pals-after-work soirée.
Of course, going too far in the opposite direction is equally off-putting. You can’t pretend that you don’t know the people interviewing you, some of them for decades. Your goal here should be to treat the search with seriousness and not assume that because you’re an internal candidate, you have an audience of cheering buds. Give the same solid presentation of data, trends, and big ideas as an outside candidate, but with a tone of measured familiarity.
It’s a delicate dance. Ultimately, though, colleagues will respect you more if you show respect for their professionalism and for the search process by not acting like one of their oldest and dearest friends — even if you are.
Be dignified in defeat or victory. I’m not aware of any metrics on how often inside candidates win out in the search process. On average, I would guess that interim leaders have more advantages than disadvantages as candidates for the ultimate position. But being an insider also means you have known baggage, well-placed enemies, or a trail of unpopular decisions — whereas the outsiders are more likely to be blank slates upon which people can project their hopes and dreams. In short, no matter how good your prospects looked early on, you might not get the job.
Prepare your mind for that possibility, and reflect it in your actions. Whatever happens, remember: If you were good enough to land the interim job and good enough to be considered for the real position, then even if someone else gets it, you at least know you have the qualifications for a similar post elsewhere. Even before the decision is made, if you are looking to move up, start talking with search firms and consider going on the market.
Whatever the outcome, stay professional. It’s all too easy to become resentful, especially if you intend to stay put on the campus. Get the help you need to deal with the disappointment and move on. It’s incredibly important — not just for your career and reputation but also for your institution — that you treat the transition respectfully. Use the time between when you are turned down for the job and when the new hire takes over to show off your administrative skills and your character. Let everybody know that you took the interim gig seriously and that you recognize that preparing for your successor is part of the job.
Even if you win the position, it’s quite possible that certain people and factions volubly opposed your candidacy. That was their right, and now your job is to make clear that you want to work with and for everyone, not just with your most ardent supporters. That’s the nature of administration — even the interim kind.
Being an interim administrator is a case of truly living in the liminal state. You often are not sure about whether you can do the same things that somebody without the interim label can do. You are not certain about your future (no matter who assures you that the official job is “in the bag”). But you owe it to yourself, to your institution, and to the administrative profession to keep your respect for the process front and center. Do the best job you can as an interim administrator, and as a candidate.
