Search firm that found Norwood Teague also tied to embattled UMD athletics director

hungan1

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For those of you who have faith in professional search firms help, think twice! The University should ask for a refund.

As I have previously mentioned, we should not be afraid to look for internal candidates. We have good internal people under our very noses. We have stability in spite of Norwood Teague's fiasco.

Search firm that found Norwood Teague also tied to embattled UMD athletics director
Nick Halter
Staff reporter
Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal
August 12, 2015


The executive search firm that brought Norwood Teague to the University of Minnesota has a history of facilitating hires that became controversial, including one a few hours north at University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD).

Both the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and UMD (each part of the state's public University of Minnesota system) hired Atlanta-based Parker Executive Search to find athletic directors.

It's easy to see why they chose Parker, as the firm has been profiled by ESPN as one of the most influential search firms in college athletics and has had Indiana, Kentucky, Notre Dame, Oregon and Northwestern as clients.

Parker's searches in Minnesota resulted in the 2012 hiring of Teague, who resigned last week while facing reports of sexually harassing employees. It also brought Athletics Director Josh Berlo to UMD, where he is facing criticism for firing five-time national champion women's hockey coach Shannon Miller.

One Gophers booster told the Pioneer Press he won't give any more money to the university if it uses any search firm again.

How much blame should the search firm get for Teague's hiring? That's a question likely to come up when the University of Minnesota Twin Cities conducts an outside investigation into the case.

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities gave Parker a $125,800 contract in February 2012 that stipulated the firm would examine finalists' backgrounds, including interviews with references who were both on and off of the list supplied by candidates.

At the time Teague was hired, he was facing a gender-discrimination complaint from the women's basketball coach at Virginia Commonwealth University. Minnesota spokesman Evan Lapiska said the university was not aware of the complaint.

The complaint was settled for $125,000, but not until Teague was already in Minnesota.
Parker could not be reached for information about its search process and whether it found anything questionable in Teague's past. Subsequent allegations of sexual harassment made by Star Tribune reporter Amelia Rayno have some wondering if Teague's behavior dates back to his VCU days.

The firm also has been questioned about work it did that led to the hires of basketball coaches Kelvin Sampson at Indiana and Billy Gillispie at Kentucky, among others.

Sampson was hired in 2006, two months before he was hit with penalties for recruiting violations while at Oklahoma.

Gillespie was arrested for driving under the influence twice before he was hired by Kentucky in 2007. He was fired two years later.
 

Hard to say how much the search firm can be blamed, or its effectiveness. It would partially depend on the number of people that they have helped place. Four poor choices might not be bad if they helped to ID 400 people for jobs. However, if the company claims that it will check for this type of thing, it obviously has failed at least a couple of times. On the other hand, wouldn't a Google search show that he was being sued? It seems like that that type of thing would have appeared in the Richmond paper. My guess is that someone at the U could have easily discovered this incident. Overall I think that search firms are a waste of $.
 

It is almost to the point where you have to hire Ace Ventura, pet detective extra ordinaire, in addition to a search firm. Ace may have uncovered poop that the expert search firm missed.
 

We need to hire a search firm to find a new search firm.
 

I wouldn't vicariously blame the search firm for misconduct of someone they helped us hire. However, part of their job was to vet the guy, and the missed the case from his time at VCU. That's pretty bad.
 


Problem is not hiring a search firm, problem is THAT search firm. Let's get an experienced AD- yes, spend BIG $ & get a good one! No more on the job training!


RostovGold
 

Lets just say the only people upset at UMD that Shannon Miller was fired are her assistants and a half dozen hard core women's hockey fans (which includes that team's entire fan base). Miller is a hateful person and impossible to work with. Everyone else in the athletic department was thrilled that she's gone. In addition she could not see why men's coach Scott Sandelin should be paid more than her. She was getting paid $215k for what's been a losing team that draws about 50 people per game and loses over $1 million per year. Next highest paid women's coach in WCHA was around $160k and most were around $100k.

That being said, I wouldn't mind the U of M not using a search firm. Would be fine with keeping Goetz or hiring Najarian.
 

Lets just say the only people upset at UMD that Shannon Miller was fired are her assistants and a half dozen hard core women's hockey fans (which includes that team's entire fan base). Miller is a hateful person and impossible to work with. Everyone else in the athletic department was thrilled that she's gone. In addition she could not see why men's coach Scott Sandelin should be paid more than her. She was getting paid $215k for what's been a losing team that draws about 50 people per game and loses over $1 million per year. Next highest paid women's coach in WCHA was around $160k and most were around $100k.

That being said, I wouldn't mind the U of M not using a search firm. Would be fine with keeping Goetz or hiring Najarian.

I don't understand that comment. I think she's had one losing season in her 15 years.
 

I don't understand that comment. I think she's had one losing season in her 15 years.

The last few years she had a record of something like 4-25 against Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. Maybe it was a bit of an exaggeration to say it's been a losing team, but the team had clearly regressed a ton in recent years. Also, a lot of the wins early on we're when there were far fewer schools with women's hockey and UMD put far more resources into it than just about any other school. Either way, I'd hardly call Josh Berlo (UMD AD) embattled. He won't be going anywhere unless he gets a promotion to a bigger school.
 



The last few years she had a record of something like 4-25 against Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. Maybe it was a bit of an exaggeration to say it's been a losing team, but the team had clearly regressed a ton in recent years. Also, a lot of the wins early on we're when there were far fewer schools with women's hockey and UMD put far more resources into it than just about any other school. Either way, I'd hardly call Josh Berlo (UMD AD) embattled. He won't be going anywhere unless he gets a promotion to a bigger school.

The problem is, since you exaggerated the W/L record, now I have no idea if the rest of what you wrote is also exaggerated. Is everyone else in the athletic department REALLY thrilled to see her gone? I have no idea now. Damn Internet.
 

I am not sold on search firms. I think they probably work great for fields with lots of jobs and lots of candidates like accounting or IT but work less well for smaller fields. In my field, occasionally senior level jobs get given to a search firm. However, the search firm knows little about the field and has no contacts so what do they do? They Google search and pick up names of the senior people. They then call them up and ask are you interested? If not, then can you suggest someone? This process ends up costing $25 000.

I suspect that the AD search works in a similar way. However, it may be that by using a search firm they can offer potential candidates some confidentiality but other than that, I don't see much benefit.
 

I am not sold on search firms. I think they probably work great for fields with lots of jobs and lots of candidates like accounting or IT but work less well for smaller fields. In my field, occasionally senior level jobs get given to a search firm. However, the search firm knows little about the field and has no contacts so what do they do? They Google search and pick up names of the senior people. They then call them up and ask are you interested? If not, then can you suggest someone? This process ends up costing $25 000. I suspect that the AD search works in a similar way. However, it may be that by using a search firm they can offer potential candidates some confidentiality but other than that, I don't see much benefit.

The search firm focuses on athletics so they have connections. It isn't like this is a Robert Half staffing agency they are using.
 

The search firm focuses on athletics so they have connections. It isn't like this is a Robert Half staffing agency they are using.

Correct me if I'm wrong too, but search firms can talk to people close to a candidate the school cannot correct? Gauge interest, etc.
 



Correct me if I'm wrong too, but search firms can talk to people close to a candidate the school cannot correct? Gauge interest, etc.

That is one of the perks. A candidate or school can truthfully say then that they haven't talked to person or school X. They can work through intermediaries.
 

The problem is, since you exaggerated the W/L record, now I have no idea if the rest of what you wrote is also exaggerated. Is everyone else in the athletic department REALLY thrilled to see her gone? I have no idea now. Damn Internet.

It may be slightly exaggerated, but the gist of it is pretty accurate. Miller's program was bleeding money in an athletic department that was quickly going broke. In fact, UMD as a school has been bleeding money for the past few years, which has been a significant concern for folks in the UMD community. I'm not completely sure what the current financial situation is, but the last I heard was that the school was $6 million in the hole. Women's hockey has been losing more money than any other athletic program on UMD's campus and the fact that Miller was the highest paid women's coach in the country was simply unsustainable.

As for her being difficult to work with, that's not exactly a secret up here.
 




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