Book Review: Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan The Hiring Game: Reshaping Community College Practices. Washington, DC: Community College Press, 2008. 210 pp

Abstract

Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan Hiring Gome: Community College Practices. Washington, DC: Community College Press, 2008. 210 pp.The opening of the academic year on many community college campuses signals the first wave of job-recruiting efforts for the following year and possibly the current one. Many aspiring job applicants for faculty and administrative positions peruse the pages of Chronicle of Higher Education or other professional job listings in search of a position that they perceive as a professional and personal fit. job listing is vitally important not only for the search committee but also for the potential candidate, ideally providing a concise and accurate institutional portrait of the credentials, attitudes, and behaviors the search committee expects of its future employees. Both screening and final round interviews bring the hiring process full circle and should ensure a for both the college and candidate. Ignoring an institutional fit compromises both the college's and candidate's chances of being successful.Barbara Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan, authors of Hiring Game: Community College Practices, put forward the results of their research study on hiring practices from the growth period of community colleges in the 1960s to the present day. book includes seven chapters, spanning topics that include The Hiring Game; Creating the Hiring Game; The Nature of the Game: Culture, Leadership, and Change; Evaluating the Hiring Game; Stages of the Game; Reshaping the Game; and A New Game in Town. authors evaluate both past and current components of the hiring process or through multiple means of assessment, including observations, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and reviews of the literature.Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan state that their goals are to explore current and past practices in hiring community college faculty, staff members, and administrators (p. 94), recognizing, on the one hand, that hiring practices have remained relatively the same during the past 20 to 30 years. On the other hand, the authors reveal that it is vital to change past rules and policies that have prevented innovation. Over the last 40 years, the hiring process has evolved from having no bureaucratic structure to becoming mired in application minutiae, strict credential and experience requirements, and other barriers, to the detriment of hiring any entrepreneurial educators as potential campus leaders.Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan first acknowledge that the . . community college hiring process is often driven by policy and controlled by culture and (p. 1). Moreover, culture and tradition are often firmly rooted in the system's more-than40-year history, often challenging institutional officials to balance institutional priorities against politically driven staffing needs expressed by internal and external stakeholders. During the early years of community college growth in the 1960s, the tremendous need for personnel, coupled with the urgency to fill positions quickly and judiciously, resulted in a process that was handled almost entirely by direct supervisors. There was little attention to any formal, bureaucratic process or the need to establish mutual between the institution and candidate. If there was a hiring process during the early years, it was spontaneous in nature and involved word-of-mouth referrals and acceptance of unsolicited applications and resumes. Past hiring practice emphasized credentials and experience, whereas current requirements focus on leadership potential.The authors outline valid rationales for modifying hiring practices to reinvent the game (p. 12) and meet the needs of the next generation of learners (p. 14). Community demographics, organizational culture, and diversity in enrollment and staffing needs have influenced and often resulted in hiring-process changes, many of which began to emerge when 2-year colleges transitioned from junior to community colleges. …