Moving Up

A Fitting End

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By Dennis M. Barden

"We just feel the fit isn't right." Rare is the person who has applied for a job in higher education and not heard that phrase. But what does it mean, exactly?

College and university lawyers are constantly reminding search committees and hiring officials that an objective set of criteria -- coupled with well-documented reasons for accepting or rejecting an application -- are necessary to reduce institutions' exposure to lawsuits alleging bias in hiring. That is excellent advice that everyone involved in a search should take to heart.

But if that is such good counsel, does it not make sense to take it to its logical extreme?

In order to provide additional protection from litigation, should we not quantify every aspect of the job and the qualifications of the ideal candidate and simply hire the one for whom we can check off the most items on the list? In that way, if Candidate A gets 16 check marks and Candidate B only gets 15, then the former must be offered the position. Shouldn't we seek a totally objective process of decision making?

That may sound great, but it ignores -- indeed, seeks to eliminate -- the essential human factors that characterize any search process. Most hires turn on issues of "fit." A candidate may have the right credentials and brains, but does he or she mesh with the organization? Fit is soft, subjective, intuitive, and very, very personal. It is the factor that leaves the institution most vulnerable to accusations of bias.

And it is perhaps the most critical.

Fit is the reason you cannot take the human out of the hiring process, why that process will never be perfect, and why it sometimes fails. Fit is a miraculous and dangerous combination of personal characteristics, professional behavior, history, temperament, and, yes, even appearance, that is impossible to catalog.

In a recent presidential search, my colleagues and I introduced to the search committee a candidate with impeccable credentials. His background was ideal: excellent experience, unsurpassed educational credentials, superb scholarship, and strong strategic sense. The candidate met every item on the search committee's list of ideal qualifications.

Yet the search committee hated him. To the committee, this man was hopelessly arrogant, self-absorbed, and even a bit condescending. That he had successfully led similar institutions in the past spoke not at all to this committee in its specific environment. The members of the committee asked him how he conveyed his authority as a leader. His response was that he is very smart and people almost always recognize that in him and defer to his judgment. His answer was directly on point for several of the requirements articulated in the position description. In an objective process based totally on credentials, experience, and effectiveness, it would have constituted an almost dispositive case in favor of hiring him.

In this case, however, it demonstrated to the search committee how very wrong this candidate would have been for its institutional culture. Instead of earning him the job, his response only served to illuminate his path to the exit. He was enormously well qualified, and that mattered not at all at the end of the day.

Fit is a catch-all word defies definition precisely because it can mean so very many different things. But that does not make it an illegitimate factor upon which to base a hire. In fact, fit is the sine qua non, the factor that ultimately separates the well-suited candidate from the merely well prepared.

Can fit be misused to bias a selection? Sure. Members of search committees have used "fit" as an excuse to eliminate candidates because of who they are rather than how they work. Can the term be used purposefully or tacitly to ensure the maintenance of the status quo? Absolutely. More often than not, institutional citizens define fit to mean the known rather than the new. Is it possible, then, for a candidate to fit an institution too well? Of course it is, especially if the shape of the space into which the candidate of choice must fit is intended to change.

So, if you are a candidate, what should you think if you are rejected by the institution because of fit? My best advice is: Accept the news graciously. "Fit" is a code word. It means that this is not the right job for you, that you and the institution will not be happy together. That is why we interview people instead of simply hiring them on the basis of their résumés.

And what if you think that fit is a code for some sort of actionable bias? Does fit mean that the institution didn't want someone of your gender, color, age, size, religion, or someone with your accent, sexual orientation, or family circumstances? It certainly might.

When you are told that the issue of fit came between you and a job you wanted, does that tell you anything helpful? Sometimes there is actually something specific that made the fit not right. And sometimes the chair of the search committee -- or, more often, the search consultant -- will be able to tell you what that was. You may certainly ask.

But chances are pretty good that it is not something that you can or even should change in your presentation of your credentials or during the interview. Chances are even better that there is nothing specific about the fit that can be articulated reasonably.

Legitimately applied, fit is usually about how you work -- how you bring your individual characteristics to the work and the workplace, how you behave, how you relate, how you respond to different stimuli. Judging fit is most often intuitive, emotional, almost primal. Fit may not be an intellectually or emotionally satisfying rationale for a hiring decision, but at the end of the day you will end up accepting it as an explanation and moving on to an opportunity where the fit is ideal.

The point of a search is to find the optimal match between an institution in need and a person with the capacity both to provide what is needed and to derive satisfaction from providing it. Remember that fit is a two-way street: It must be as right for you as a candidate as for the institution. If either of you think that mutual satisfaction is unlikely -- and if you do so in good faith -- then the fit is not right and the hire should not happen.

The happy news is that when the fit is right and you are offered the job, both parties can begin their time together best positioned for success. That, indeed, is a fitting end to a search process.