Hiring the new President of BeWise College

For this exercise my group and I, we decided to hold the meeting for whom we were going to select for the vacant position of President of the college. We had picked this week to hold the entire process. The interviews were conducted Monday, the cuts were made Tuesday, Wednesday we held the second interview for the prospects we thought we best qualified, and today we held the meeting for making a decision for whom we think would be the best fit for the job. Friday is when we notify the individual we think would be best suited for the position and send out letters of apology to those who didn’t get selected. The initial process started with the team over at HR sent out the job description the Monday prior to the day of the interviews using very specific career websites such as Career Builder, Monster, Yahoo, just to name a few and our school website to bring in potential applicants for the job. The list of applications we had to go through was enormous; it was well over 100 potential individuals who sent in their resumes by that Thursday morning. By that afternoon there was a checklist made to whittle that number down to 20. On this particular Thursday we had only five candidates left to choose from. There are multiple ways of contacting everyone in the group and to ensure that the message was sent, every one of those methods of notifying was used. The decision was made to meet after the classes were done at the local All-You-Can-Eat buffet in town, Golden Carroll; reservations were made for 6:30 and the party size was for 12. The group was made up of the department directors; nursing, information technology, graphic design, electronics, business, criminal justice, dean of academics, registrar, directors of career services, finance, recruiting, and myself. Because I am the network system administrator for the I.T. network, that the entire college runs on, they felt a need for me to be there seeing that the work I do at the school is highly significant. I am the youngest member of the group, the only one under 30, while everyone else is in their late 30’s to late 50’s. It was a pretty even mix of men and women and the ethnicity was a good mix ranging from African-American to Asian to Caucasian. Upon walking in and being directed to the area where the party was seated I was immediately greeted by the director of the I.T., Tim, who was walking back with a plate of food. He was telling me how Rodney had called the meeting and sent out notifications for everyone to show up so that it would be a combined decision of who would be hired for the position of President of the BWC. The way that the tables were placed was ideal for such an event and the Dean and the Director of Recruiting was seated at the opposite ends of the group so that the conversation would have a systematic direction of flow. Everyone else was seated around them. It wasn’t until everyone had sat down and two to three plates of food in their stomachs that the discussion had gotten underway. Rodney had opened up the conversation reminding everyone of why we were all here and the nature of the business at hand. The conversation flowed pretty smoothly with everyone giving their professional and personal opinions of the five individual candidates that made it to this final selection phase. Of the five candidates that were left to choose from three of them were women who were all well qualified for the position and the two men who had equal qualifications. Of the men and women that made it to this final selection phase everyone had come to the decision that two of them were more of a better fit for the position than the other three, so at that time LaTricia, who’s the Director of Recruiting, had posed the question of how would the men feel about having a female president of the school. That particular question is what sparked the conversation as far as weighing in the pros and cons of hiring the remaining female over the remaining male of the five individuals that was left. However, the comment about the last president being male and the school needing a new perspective on everything, which was made by Donna, the Director of Nursing, is what had made the decision final that of the five finalists for the position, Samantha Johnson was going to be the new President of BeWise College. She has a Ph.D. in Business Administration, with a Masters in Psychology with a combined 12 years of being a Principal, Superintendent and a Professor at the college level. We all had a unanimous vote of ‘I’s and after that everyone had said their farewell’s and went into their three day weekend as such the school was closed the next day.