Five Hang Gliding or Paragliding Candidates left for USHPA ED
position

Tracy Tillman writes:

Update on our USHPA Executive Director search.

An edited version of this letter has been posted on USHPA.aero web site at:
https://www.ushpa.aero/member_executivedirector.asp

Oct. 26, 2010

Dr. Tracy Tillman

USHPA Board Member Director, Regions 7 & 13

Chair, USHPA Executive Director Search/Hiring Committee

To our hang gliding and paragliding community:

I am the Chair of our USHPA Executive Director Search/Hiring Committee. As such,
I am responsible for oversight of the process, selection of the search committee
members, and keeping the process (a) fair, ethical, and legal; (b) within the
parameters of our Articles of Incorporation and Standard Operating Procedures;
and (c) as transparent as possible while assuring the privacy and
confidentiality of our applicants. Of course, our goal is to find and hire a
great Executive Director.

Our Fall 2010 USHPA Board of Directors meeting took place Oct. 22-23 in Bend,
Oregon, just after the due date for all ED job applications to be submitted to
us. I was scheduled to hold both an open session and closed session at the
meeting to generally describe our process to everyone, and to more specifically
inform the Board on the status of our search.

To start the open session, I described my qualifications, including: (a) my
recruiting and hiring experience in the early and late1980s for two Japanese
transplant start-up facilities here in the US, involving about 80,000 total job
applications; (b) my teaching, research, and consulting business related to
recruiting, evaluation, and hiring since the 1990s; and (c) my participation on
search committees for faculty, deans, and higher administrators during my
university teaching career.

I was also a member of our previous USHPA ED Search Committee in 2007, when an
external consultant was used. I felt that it was important for the Board members
and others to know my background, since I am currently doing the job that was
performed by an external consultant last time. I asked if anyone had any
concerns about my being chair of the committee. Unfortunately, no one came
forward with concerns, so I am still chair of the committee.

I also listed the names of the other members of the Search Committee, who are
all USHPA Board members, including Felipe Amunategui, Rich Hass (our new USHPA
President), Matt Taber, and Steve Kroop. I also asked if anyone had any concerns
about the make-up of the committee. No concerns were brought forward.

Next, I pointed out where our Articles of Incorporation and SOPs state that it
is the Board's responsibility to hire an Executive Director. I also presented a
chronological list of our past USHPA Presidents and Executive Directors, and we
discussed how our ED's have been hired in the past. Our process is not
well-delineated in our SOPs. Because of that, it has not always involved a
wide-scale search, and has not always been transparent to the membership and
Board-to the point that some Board members didn't even know that the Board was
supposed to be kept thoroughly informed and involved in the process. Naturally,
past history has caused suspicion of the process among some of our USHPA members
and Board members. I am trying very hard to fix that.

Although the USHPA was formed in 1974, the organization did not have an
Executive Director until 1987. We have seen five ED's come and go in the last 27
years, which is an average tenure of 4.6 years. This is about average for ED's
nationally at non-profit organizations. Of course, we all know that hang glider
and paraglider pilots are better than average-so, we are putting more emphasis
in this search to find an ED with hang glider and/or paraglider experience, and
thus have intimate understanding of the sport and passion for the job.

Our ED job ad is based on our official ED job description. In open session at
our BOD meeting, I described how the job was posted to the flying community via
direct communiqué to our USHPA members, the USHPA magazine, our web site, and
the Oz Report. We also posted the job in seven other ED job-related venues,
mostly online. We received 60 applications, 5 of which were late, and 8 who are
HG and/or PG pilots.

Next, in open session, I described how our search committee performed (1) an
initial screening of the applicants so as to place them into a top
(most-qualified) group for further evaluation, a middle (stand-by) group, and a
bottom (not qualified) group. I then described the next step of (2) a more
thorough evaluation of the top group along with a few highest ranked candidates
in the stand-by group, to more accurately identify our most highly qualified
candidates for participation in (3) a telephone interview. After telephone
interviews, we will then (4) meet face-to-face for final interviews and (5) make
a recommendation for hire to the Board, via the Executive Committee.
Essentially, it is a five-step process.

For the first two stages of evaluation, the search committee looked primarily at
the most fundamentally important qualities of the applicants that we could glean
from their cover letters and resumes--such as their backgrounds in flying,
education, organizational leadership, and budget leadership. Along with overall
judgment, structured rating forms were used for objective quantification of
evaluations, and to provide a cross-check on inter-rater reliability to assure
some consistency and validity of our evaluations.

The telephone and face-to-face interviews will allow us to review their basic
strengths, and to learn more about other qualities such as their understanding
of business and non-profit organizations, communication skills, presentation
skills, interpersonal and leadership skills, personnel management skills,
understanding of USHPA issues, etc. Again, we will be using structured rating
forms and taking notes on other important factors.

Since the Board, according to our Articles of Incorporation and SOPs, is
supposed be responsible for hiring an ED, and thus should be kept informed and
involved, we held a closed session of voting Board members to present the names
of all applicants and finalists, and to describe more specifically how and why
the finalists were selected by the search committee. USHPA employees were also
invited to attend this closed session, as they are bound to confidentiality, as
are our Board members. We wanted USHPA employees to participate, so that they
could also be informed and involved in a discussion about any past perceived
problems in the ED/BOD relationship--and IF there are or were problems--how that
relationship could be improved.

At the end of the closed session, the Board endorsed our process to date, our
selection of finalists, our plan for telephone and face-to-face interviews, and
the plan for final recommendation to the Executive Committee.

The question has been asked, if we want the process to be as open as possible,
why don't we post the applicants' resumes on our USHPA web site? First of all,
posting 55-60 resumes is too many.

Then, the question is, how about posting the resumes of the finalists on the web
site? Whether 5 or 60 resumes, we just can't do that. Resumes hold confidential
information that must be kept private for the benefit of the applicant. Resumes
provide name, address, telephone, email, and other information that many
applicants would not want to be shared with the public. Resumes also contain
confidential information about past employment, which needs to be listed on the
resume to show experience and qualifications to help get the job, but could be
problematic if known by the public. For example, certain organizations may not
want it known by the public that a former employee worked for them in a certain
capacity and may know certain proprietary information held by the organization.
This could be work related to design and engineering, military, national
security, etc.

The next question is, how about posting bio sketches of the finalists so that
the flying community can know who we've got as finalists? The committee
considered doing that, but decided against it. We felt that posting of bios and
publicly identifying candidates at this time might make some candidates feel
unfairly uncomfortable. It is a very common practice in universities--so as to
keep the university community informed, help prevent shenanigans, and to show
overall success in the search process. But it is not so common in business,
perhaps because there is usually/inherently more job security for professionals
at a university than at a typical business organization.

Unfortunately, I could not provide any information to our flying community or
public regarding the status of our search until it was endorsed by the Board at
our recent meeting, and following that, officially contact all applicants who
were not selected as finalists. It would be rather rude and unprofessional for
them to hear about it otherwise, through the grapevine. I have since contacted
all applicants who did not make the cut, so now I can share some information to
you about our finalists.

Per my responsibilities as listed in the opening paragraph of this letter,
and explanation provided above, the most information that I can share about our
finalists at this point is that we have five. They are all advanced hang gliding
and/or paragliding pilots, and all are USHPA members. We have three external
candidates and two internal candidates--meaning the two internal candidates have USHPA organizational
experience at the national level. They are all very highly qualified and all
have extensive non profit organization/business as well as hang gliding or
paragliding experience.

We are very lucky to have such highly qualified candidates interested in the ED
position. Our committee is going to be very thorough in our final selection
process, and make sure that we get the best of the best. If there are any
issues, questions, or topics that you think we should address in our candidate
interviews, please send them to me at <DrTTUSHPA>.

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