Presidential Personality

Imagine this scenario: a presidential search is underway at a college. A candidate visits campus and is perceived by a board member as being overly ambitious and narcissistic. The trustee is ready to cut the candidate from the short list, but a subsequent test reveals that while the candidate is ambitious, that ambition is reserved not necessarily for self but channeled into whatever organization he or she is affiliated with.

The candidate is hired.

The test in question? A personality assessment.

Though the practice remains unusual, more colleges and universities than in the past are considering using psychological assessments or personality tests as they search for the next leader of their institution. The scenario above isn’t fiction, but an example cited by seasoned search consultant Lucy Leske of how such assessments can aid the often arduous search process.

Leske’s firm, Witt/Kieffer, now offers leadership assessments as a standard part of their presidential search package. And though search committees decline the service more often than not, Leske says more and more are beginning to embrace the practice.

Other search firms also report increased client interest in assessments. Yet that interest is often superseded by concerns over whether personality assessments are accurate predictors of a candidate's behavior. The practice, while common in the corporate world, remains an outlier in higher education, although it appears to be slowly gaining ground.

Jessica Kozloff, president of higher education search firm Academic Search, said in the last year at least three clients have expressed interest in personality assessments.

That's likely because search committees want candidates to possess an ever-broadening set of skills. More and more governing boards are “equally concerned about evaluating the soft skills of somebody, as well as trying to evaluate the hard skills,” she says.

“In the days before YouTube and social media and all that, a lot of people made mistakes in their positions but it didn't get that much attention. Today it does. So every failure or every misstep has the potential to ruin someone's career,” Kozloff said. “People are becoming much more interested in how you lead and your temperament and your ability to roll with the punches, as well as these impressive things you've done in the past.”

Kozloff's firm doesn’t offer an in-house assessment service -- only a few do. Instead Academic Search suggests firms that specialize in such tests, and tries when possible to integrate the assessment of soft skills into the interview and reference checking process. So far none of her clients have ended up pursuing an assessment, but interest nonetheless is increasing.

“We’re seeing the train trying to leave the station on this,” she said. “We’re all trying to figure out how this impacts us.”

Witt/Kieffer declined to share how many clients have used personality tests in their presidential searches, and only said that there’s been a dramatic increase since the firm first began offering the tests three and a half years ago.

Leske attributes the uptick in interest to “the increased scrutiny and risk of these hires.” Standard references and interviews, she said, don’t always reveal how a candidate will respond to controversy.

“Just look in the newspaper. Look at these people. The skills and competencies that they’re required to bring to the table have to be so well developed to handle today’s jobs,” she said. “All boards are concerned about risk when hiring a chief executive and this is an additional way to assess the risk in an environment where the landscape is changing so rapidly that you’ve got to rely on competencies now, not just experience.”