WittKieffer Waste?

Today’s economy is increasingly dominated by “the middleman.” Firms, distributors, and advisors thrive by skimming off the top of producers’ and consumers’ hard-earned profits, siphoning billions of dollars into their pockets as they assert their significance. This parasitic template of business exists everywhere and has recently been employed in Connecticut College’s search for a new president. On June 23, the Presidential Search Committee announced its selection of the “premier executive search and leadership advisory firm,” WittKieffer, to help identify the College’s 12th president. While the decision to hire a firm of this caliber is hardly surprising, given executive search firms have become a norm throughout higher education, it raises the question: Does the benefit outweigh the cost? 

Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, WittKieffer is a major player in the world of executive search firms. Forbes ranked WittKieffer as the 13th best search firm in the US in 2023. Operating as a ‘retained search firm,’ a term analogous to a retainer for an attorney, firms like WittKieffer are considered the gold standard in executive searches. This distinction means they work exclusively with the client. However, the advantages offered by the firm come with a catch: they are paid regardless of the outcome of the hiring process, and their services come at a steep price.

The cost of hiring a retained search firms like WittKieffer is typically calculated based on a percentage of the first-year salary for the open position, along with overhead and expense fees. For a prominent firm – such as WittKieffer – this percentage often hovers around 30% of the first-year salary, sometimes even higher. Taking former president Katherine Bergeron’s first-year salary of approximately $430,000 in 2015 as an example, the cost of hiring an executive search firm at that time would have amounted to nearly $130,000. However, the expenses escalate further when accounting for overhead and additional fees. In 2016, WittKieffer collaborated with the Oregon Institute of Technology to find their next college president. In that case, a 10% overhead fee was applied to the professional cost (determined by the first-year salary), along with approximately $15,000 in supplementary expenses covering advertising, travel, shipping, and other related costs. Applying similar figures to Conn, it is conceivable that the college could face a bill exceeding $200,000 for enlisting WittKieffer’s assistance in the search for the next president

This is an enormous sum of money, yet there is an argument that justifies it. Over the past several decades, the average tenure of a college president has steadily shrunk, sitting at just below six years today. With astronomically high presidential salaries at many institutions, hiring a president is a significant financial commitment. That’s without even considering the financial losses that can arise out of the instability created by a poor-performing president, or worse, one that doesn’t stick around. Therefore, it is no surprise that higher education institutions and large companies around the world are willing to pay a significant price for promised stability and prosperity. WittKieffer appears to offer precisely that, as their website boasts, “We have conducted more than 130 president searches for colleges and universities in the last decade alone. The average tenure of the chief executives we place is nine years, well above the national average.” However, there is one area in which WittKieffer excels even more than in hiring executives: convincing schools their service is needed. 

The firm’s website is flashy and modern but largely substanceless upon closer inspection. Headers that read “Your mission inspires our work” and “We work better by working together” litter the tabs of the site; “Success Stories” are placed on every page. While the firm does have a notable background in hiring for higher education, much of its work seems to be in the healthcare sector. Hiring leaders for hospitals, senior care, and digital healthcare dominates most of the firm’s website, yet WittKieffer claims it operates in the “Quality of life ecosystem” where healthcare delivery, science, and education intersect. 

Ultimately, the question of whether following the corporated approach of using a company like WittKieffer was the right choice for Conn must be explored. In 2021, analysts from HigherEdDive interviewed several college boards on the effectiveness of search firms like WittKieffer, and their research suggests that many major retained search firms often lack the deep understanding of higher education institutions that governing boards possess. These firms’ corporate mindset towards hiring can overshadow the intricacies of higher education leadership and exert excessive control over presidential searches. Ideally, they conclude that the responsibility should rest with the institution itself. The sheer number of consultants and researchers these firms employ means institutions may not even know who is doing the critical work of creating job announcements, running listening sessions, and conducting interviews. While an independent search process lacks the resources a major firm has, it does allow the institution to fit its unique needs into everything from the job posting to the final contract itself. Had Conn chosen to run the search independently, the process would almost certainly be more precise and personalized to the College’s needs and far less costly. However, running a search is challenging, time-consuming, carries a number of inherent risks, and – as with so many other things – the College more than likely lacks the staff to take on this responsibility. Thus, institutions like Conn opt for the easier path and willingly reach for their checkbooks. 

WittKieffer is just one of many multi-million dollar middlemen that continuously justify their existence to higher education institutions by capitalizing off schools’ fear in times of uncertainty and portraying themselves as saviors. As the firm has wiggled its way into the search, it has blocked the College from locating its next president in a more personal and potentially less costly manner. Hopefully, despite these shortcomings, WittKieffer will be able to help the College’s presidential search committee identify our 12th president and set Conn on an upward trajectory for many years to come.