HIring at SPS

Look, I am not a business person so I am probably wrong on this one so help me out.

Once again, while looking for one thing, I found another. I was looking for school maintenance information and found a link for a SPS job listing...at a headhunter firm called Waldron and Company (they cover the NW/SW). Now the listing I found is old but they currently they are looking for someone for another SPS job.

I do understand that higher-end people are harder to find but we have a bad economy (read, more people out there looking for jobs even high-end jobs) and SPS has no money. So how do we have money for a headhunting firm?

I went and looked at the SPS jobs listings and it was maybe 25 jobs. Maybe there's more openings that aren't advertised? I don't know. (The one that the Waldron group is working on is there as well.) Don't we have a Human Resources department?

Comments

SPS parent said…
I was shocked to learn that a placement agenciy charges a fee of about $7000 to place an administrative employee. Filling an exec position can run in the tens of thousands.

Not what I want my tax dollars paying for.
SolvayGirl said…
I'm curious about the position. Was it something that is difficult to fill? If not, why the heck is SPS wasting money on a headhunter?
It's for a senior budget analyst so you tell me.
Jet City mom said…
LOL Melissa. My BIL has been a Chief financial officer at several banks and tech firms ( he has had bad luck with that).
He had to hire his own headhunter firm as there are so many people with that skill set out there- seems like the headhunters are making out , they are getting paid on both ends.
SolvayGirl said…
Hopefully the senior budget analyst the end up hiring will be able to point out the absurdity of wasting money on headhunters.
Maureen said…
Is Meg Diaz interested?!
Unknown said…
These folks hire outside for "way too much".

Remember the board approved a $700,000 plus expenditure using grant money to hire a firm to help with high school curricula.

When you have no plan of your own ... go looking outside. This is Team MGJ academic leadership in action.

Adopt "Discovering" at HS ... then hire professional guidance. Psychiatric Services would have been more appropriate. Services for the entire city when trying to understand this debacle.

(Oh I forgot) Every school will be a quality school so there is no reason to be concerned about SAP or anything else.
dan dempsey said…
Did a headhunter firm bring us MGJ?
Jet City mom said…
Did a headhunter firm bring us MGJ?
Ray and Associates, the Iowa-based search consultant hired by the Seattle School Board

oh
that was rhetorical wasn't it.
Stu said…
I don't know if there's any way to find this out, other than trying to find all the previous hires and explore their backgrounds, but it would be interesting to know how many Ray and Associates candidates are affiliated with Broad.

stu
Chris S. said…
I asked Mary Bass recently who decided to invite the Broad foundation to Seattle. She replied that ALL the candidates had Broad credentials.

So I was just talking to someone a few hours about this post and wondering if a headhunter was used for MGJ and if so, it they had Broad connections. Off to google...
Chris S. said…
Yup: from their website:
"We have enduring relationships with major organizations to include Urban Superintendents of America, the Council of Great City Schools, Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents, the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy and other women and minority organizations. "

http://rayassoc.com/profile.php
Charlie Mas said…
Here's how it works in business. You should stick to your "core competencies" - do YOUR business, do what you are good at doing - and outsource everything else.

So a small business might want to use a payroll service because payroll isn't what the people who run that business are good at doing.

Seattle Public Schools isn't particularly good at most of the HR functions, and they have known problems with hiring. So they pay someone with expertise in that area to assist them. It's not a dreadful waste of money if we hire someone sooner and hire someone better than the HR department could do on their own.
Given that Charlie, we should be outsourcing much, much more work.

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