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The mission to hire education leadership is a high-stakes process, as executive-level candidates that later vacate their roles due to a poor fit can result in thousands of dollars lost and a significant waste of time. The person you hire must not only be uniquely skilled but be someone that both students and faculty like and trust.

While it may seem logical for your team to conduct its own search, there are several good reasons to consider working with a recruiting specialist to locate your ideal candidate. If your institution is looking to fulfill a critical role, read on to discover how a recruitment specialist can help you find the person you’re looking for.

1. Access to a Network of Qualified Candidates
Many institutions believe that popular job boards make for the best places to find qualified candidates. School leaders who have already held executive positions, however, do not generally frequent job boards and high-performing executives are often already employed and thriving in competitive institutions.

Executive recruiters, therefore, network with these professionals to build a talent pool of qualified candidates, which means they often have access to many sought-after education leaders who have already built a solid reputation for themselves. Leveraging that network to hire school leadership is critical for ensuring the person you recruit has already mastered the skills needed to succeed in the job.

2. Targeted Outreach to Find the Right Fit
If you do decide to post a job online, doing so isn’t a terrible way to hire education leadership, but most job boards target a wide range of candidates, which can work against you when you need to fill a specialized position. You’ll likely have to wade through many candidates whose skill sets, personalities, and qualifications simply don’t fit the role you’re recruiting for.

A recruiting specialist will do more than simply post on standard job boards: They will reach out to professional associations and membership organizations specific to education. If you need a specialized education professional, you’re likely to find them in these and similar places.

3. Take the Administrative Burden Off of Your Team
The recruitment process is lengthy and requires plenty of resources, and your team must be focused and dedicated to the process for many months. However, you must also understand that your institution doesn’t just stop moving while you are searching, which can be problematic if you’re diverting personnel and resources from other critical areas toward focusing on the search.

Partnering with a professional recruiter takes that burden off your team. While you will still be actively involved in the search, someone else will handle the legwork required to find, recruit, and hire education leadership, allowing your team to focus on their current responsibilities while preparing for the future.

4. Maintain Integrity Throughout the Search Process
You must handle your strategy to hire education leadership with great sensitivity. If your prime candidate is already employed at another institution, maintaining confidentiality will be of the utmost importance during the interview process. Failure to do so can jeopardize their current role or the organization they work for, inadvertently sabotaging your tactical approach.

If you are hiring internally, working with a recruiting specialist can ensure you maintain impartiality in the search process, which will help you stay on track with your goals and intentions and hire for skill instead of just going with someone you already know and like.

If you’re replacing an underperforming executive, it will help you maintain professional relationships and prevent pressure and emotions from clouding the process.

5. Well-Defined Process from Start to Finish
While you may be great at your current role, you might need help knowing where to begin to hire education leadership. Executive recruiting specialists usually have their process down to a science, and they will do the following:

● Meet with your panel to review and refine the job description
● Create an appropriate application and list selection materials
● Define participants for each stage
● Develop shared tools to track applicants
● Implement a solicitation campaign
● Facilitate all interviews
● Perform background and reference checks
● Conduct negotiations and finalize offers

As the recruiter has already gone through the process many times, you can rest assured that you’ll get the best outcome possible and end up with the right person for the job.

Having the Right Partner Is Critical to Success
Hiring at the executive level is a unique task in that the candidate must possess proven qualities that will guarantee success in their position, including emotional, organizational, and business skills. Finding a person with these skills and goals that align with your institution can be challenging and often requires someone with dedication and expertise.