Sex, Religion, and a Colossally Bad Hiring Process
SteveLet's say you have an important, executive level role to fill in your organization. It is the kind of job that does not come open all that often in your organization, or even among your competitors. 
Legendary Marquette coach Al McGuire
It is a really attractive position - internally and externally prestigious, well-compensated, remarkably stable and secure, and offers the right candidate room and opportunity to materially influence outcomes at the organization and quite possibly in the industry at large.
The type of position that you have to hire for very carefully, since it is in the kind of field that while there may not be hundreds of qualified candidates, there will be quite a few, and all of them will bring long histories of achievement and success with them, and many if not most will also possess reams of background material for potential review.
You quickly realize the the complexity, importance, and visibility of this hire requires you to take some 'extra' precautions - you engage an external search firm to assist in the identification and screening of potential candidates, you enlist a large internal hiring committee to gather input and advice from a wide set of perspectives, and at one point, after the search was about one year underway, essentially scrap everything and started all over, having determined that the 'perfect' candidate had not been identified.
So finally after about a two-year vetting process, you finally find the 'right' candidate. A candidate that brings the background, experience, and (hopefully) the right blend of 'soft' skills, you know that intangible but essential blend of attitude, initiative, and collaborative spirit that would make him or her absolutely the best possible choice. The candidate passes the external screening process, gains the support and recommendation of the internal hiring committee, and ultimately is blessed by the highest leaders of the organization and receives and accepts an employment offer.
What could possibly go wrong at this point, with all the time, effort, smart people involved in the process, and 'public' nature of the position and search?
Exhibit A - Marquette University (a Catholic, Jesuit university 'dedicated to serving God by serving our students and contributing to the advancement of knowledge' (from www.marquette.edu), and the search for a new Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences.
In this search, only after the offer was issued did things get interesting.
Here is the quick recap from what I could piece togther:
1. Marquette spends two years searching, screening, vetting, interviewing, and finally finding the 'right' candidate for the Dean position. A long time for sure, but not completely out of the realm of possibility for these kinds of searches.
2. The candidate, and now the prospective new Dean, is Seattle University Professor of Sociology Jodi O'Brien, a scholar whose research focuses on gender and sexuality issues.
3. After some external pressure and influence (allegedly) - Marquette rescinds the job offer citing the sudden discovery of some candidate writings the are 'inconsistent' with the Marquette culture. So sudden in the fact that the expensive, two-year long search process either did not uncover the writings, or even more troubling that they were not actually considered prior to the offer being given.
We are not talking about random Tweets or blog posts here, but published scholarship that is incredibly easy to find and in fact, are documented on Professor O'Brien's resume. Some Marquette students express their outrage.
4. Marquette now has entered what appear to be settlement talks with Professor O'Brien in hopes that the negotiations will (according to O'Brien), "take into account not only the harm done to me personally and professionally, but also acknowledges this situation as a learning opportunity for the Marquette community".
And the cynic in me thinks the 'learning opportunity' may involve cutting a nice-sized 'we really messed this thing up, please now go away' check.
Forget if you can the sex and religion angle to this, and think about the more universal lesson from the Marquette debacle. If you need two years, have to spend buckets of cash, and engage dozens of internal and external experts and you still can't figure out the candidate does not match your culture, then you either don't have any idea what you culture is (or want it to be), or you do know what it is and you just don't care.
But being unable to accurately screen and hire for cultural fit will come back to get you, maybe not in as public and embarrassing a way as in the Marquette example, but perhaps at least in an embarrassing 70s leisure suit kind of way.
Reader Comments (2)
If you want to understand this, you can't forget the religion angle here. As you note, Marquette is a Catholic Jesuit University. If you take a broader look at Catholic Education, specifically Catholic Universities, there is a cultural war going on. As with many things in the Church, after the Second Vatican Counsel, there were many mis-interpretations and of the intent of the Documents of the Counsel and many abuses in the implementation of those incorrect interpretations. Interesting, many of the people who will tell you what is in those documents have never read them.
So what does that mean? Simply put, many things in the Church moved away from the teachings of the Church. Within the Catholic Education system, many universities have become increasingly liberal and have, in some cases, thumbed their noses at the teachings of the Church. Don't believe me, remember the Notre Dame scandal from last year. One of the most prestigious and well know Catholic universities in the country embraced and honored the most pro-abortion president in the history of the United States. Regardless of your position on that issue or your feelings towards President Obama, you can't deny that there was a real conflict there.
ND wasn't unique here, and Marquette isn't exempt. Some in the University are fighting to keep true to the mission, others are fighting for a different direction. While I'm not privy to what happened behind closed doors there, I would suspect that the writings in question weren't unknown, but more they were intentionally overlooked or kept out of the debate in the hopes of bringing someone in that was more in line with the less conservative elements in the University. This of course is only my opinion, based on what I know of the politics inside the Church and Her ministries, one of which is Marquette.
The motto of the Jesuits is Ad Maiorum Deum Gloriam "For the Greater Glory of God". If Ms. O'Brien's scholarly work isn't inline with that, she shouldn't be there, provided that Marquette want's to be a Catholic University. Contrary to what some will tell you, when you are Catholic, you don't get to pick and choose what doctrines you want to support. Historically, those who have done that are called Protestant.
I agree that if after all they went through though, that this happened, it does show that the University is having a cultural identiy crisis. I'm rooting for those that are faithful to the teachings of the Church.
AMDG
Hi Darin - Thanks for the comments. I was careful (I hope) not to try and pass any judgment on the religious angle to this, as I wanted to try and stress a more general point about understanding the internal culture and what is important to the core operating principles of the organization when making hiring decisions. The religious implications in this story certainly make it more interesting and are likely why it has been so widely reported and I heard about it at all. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.