Caroline: 0:04

What if your next big career decision wasn't about climbing higher, but choosing wiser? After more than 40 years in higher education, Dr. Tara Singer has seen the full spectrum of leadership, great mentors and tough bosses, leaps of faith and gut wrenching calls to walk away. In this conversation, she shares the wisdom that only comes from a lifetime of leading, learning, and listening to your own intuition. This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we're here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who've navigated big career transitions themselves so you can see what it's really like to make bold changes and feel inspired to create your own version of authentic success, one that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours.

1:39

Dr. Tara S Singer is a higher education leader and president emerita of Omicron Delta Kappa, National Leadership honorary, where she served as CEO for a decade and led its first multimillion dollar campaign. Today, she's a senior consultant with Academic Search, guiding executive hires and leadership development across colleges and universities after a 40 year career in advancement, communications, and student affairs. In this episode, you will learn: why the right boss can make or break your career. How to read the red and yellow flags. Your intuition is already showing you. What"leaving things better than you found them really looks like in leadership."

Caroline: 2:28

Welcome Tara to Your Next Success. I am so excited for this conversation.

Tara: 2:36

Well, it is my pleasure to be here and I've been looking forward to it for several weeks,

Caroline: 2:40

Let's try to go back to the beginning. As you know, I wanna talk about careers and career transitions, and we have some other things planned for this conversation. Helpful tips for people for interviews and their careers but let's go back to the beginning. You had a successful career in higher education doing amazing things, but when you think about how it all started, was there any key moment that nudged you toward that type of a career?

Tara: 3:09

In essence, I went into the family business. My mother was in student affairs at the University of Louisville, and my father was on the faculty and the university was a subject of dinner table conversation as long as I can remember. The neighbors were the graduate dean, the law school dean. The university was a big deal. The thing I always remember is that my mother with her student affairs job was always very happy. Loved working with students, loved working with her fellow administrators, and my father was like many faculty of his generation, not always the happiest camper. There was always that pressure to publish or perish, get research dollars, fight the good fight in terms of educational policy. When I went off to college, I knew that I wanted to have a career in higher education, but I thought I would follow my mother's path, through administration and starting out in student affairs. Interestingly enough, my kid's sister decided to follow my father's path, and she's a faculty member at Wayne state. And it's fun to have conversations these days because now we're replicating, I'm replicating mom and she's replicating dad.

Caroline: 4:14

Did you ever think about not going to the University of Louisville?

Tara: 4:17

I looked at a couple of other institutions, but in essence, the university was free. My father with the tuition and remission program, had tuition benefits for us. When I got my master's degree, I only paid for six credit hours and I was working for the university full-time, I was, working on my doctorate, and I only had to pay for 16 hours of that. So I have three degrees from the University of Louisville with only having paid for a total of 22 credit hours in the entire process.

Caroline: 4:46

Wow, that's amazing. Some people say it's like the golden handcuffs, you know, as, as far as people having children and, and then not going anywhere else because they could go there but that's amazing that you grew up in that environment and thrived we're able to not only get into higher education, but advance in higher education, now, what was your first real opportunity for advancement?

Tara: 5:09

When I was a junior in college, I was doing tour guides on tours, campus tours on the weekend for football recruits, baseball recruits, volleyball recruits. The baseball coach, who was also the head of athletic academic advising, asked me if I knew how to type. And I said, well, sure. And he goes, well, do you need a job? And I said, well, I would be happy to have a job. And I went to work in athletic academic advising as a junior in college. Eventually, there was a new person in that role, one of my great mentors, a gentleman named Dr. Steve Millburn. I got my master's degree working in that office, and that was my first full-time job. Working in athletic academic advising where I ran orientation programs and tutoring programs for student athletes. I had just finished my master's degree, in January of one year, and Steve put on my desk internal jobs announcement for the university community, and he circled a job which said associate registrar, and he wrote across it, apply. I looked at the job requirements and I'm going, well, I don't really know what the registrar's office is, but I know it's where transcripts come from. And, where the grades come from and it's where diplomas come from. Looking at the skills required and the experiences required. And I'm going, oh, I've done event planning, I've done publication editing. I've helped students figure out their academic progression. I've looked at their transfer credits and tried to figure out how those would fit with the university. And I thought. Well, maybe I could do this. And I've often thought about how Steve putting that job notice on my desk, advanced my career. And I have tried to do the same thing with my own employees through the years, identifying those promotional opportunities for them because we all need to grow and be challenged in the future. And for me, it's been paying it forward because that was the move in my career that really advanced my career and helped me launch me into the long-term career in higher education.

Caroline: 7:13

And what a great example of him as a manager too, right? sometimes there's a manager or a leader who loves the work that an employee is doing and wants to just keep them in that for the foreseeable future. But then there are some that see beyond and really want the best for you and the best for your potential and the best for your expansion. So that was amazing that he did that and that's also amazing that you carried that forward, and I'm sure, helped others to see beyond their initial scope.

Tara: 7:44

Sometimes we, outgrow the nest and need to be kicked out of the nest so we can learn to fly on our own. Typically, I found that with employees in their twenties and thirties who are still growing and maturing and exploring their career options, they wanna learn about a different area of the organization and maybe serve in that area rather than being specific to one thing. Now, I also have colleagues that have said, oh, I just wanna be a dean of students and just be a dean of students. Does not accurately reflect what it is to be a dean of students'cause that's a big job. There's no just be a dean of students. But there are people who wanna be experts in one area, you learn about yourself and what you wanna do when you have opportunities to get out of the nest and fly on your own for a little while and go see different locations and have different experiences, which is why I think it's a very generative thing to do, is to encourage, employees who are in the early stages of their career to explore their options and to look beyond what they're currently doing.

Caroline: 8:49

Did you ever have a specific, instance of when you saw the next step for somebody before they saw it?

Tara: 8:57

Absolutely. When I was at the University of West Georgia, the number two position in our department, was open and the department was the Division of University Advancement. We had an AVP open for fundraising and that person was the executive director of the foundation. When I had come to the university, there was this younger faculty member, although he was full professor at a fairly early age in chemistry, and he kind of had college president written all over him. He just had all the skills. He knew how to make an apology. He knew how to give a speech, He had worked in student affairs on an interim basis and had really begun to understand the dynamics of working with undergraduate students as well as graduate students. And he wanted another interim appointment and I thought, well, okay, he's the smartest thing I've met around here. Let's just put him in for one year as the Associate Vice President for development and executive director of the foundation, after one year we put him in the job permanently.

Caroline: 10:03

Wow.

Tara: 10:03

He was a chemistry professor. Given your background, he was a chemistry professor! And I always joked about the fact that Andy knew how to change, straw into gold with his chemistry background, and he was very effective as a fundraiser. He just retired as the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. I was so delighted and I got to go to his inauguration, and to see how he had gone from being, you know, sort of a young fireball faculty member to being a, a serious administrator who was the steward of his institution and did a great job, as Chancellor at Oshkosh and led it through some really difficult times.

Caroline: 10:42

Now this kind of brings to mind like if you see opportunities before others see them for themselves and you're helping their growth, how do you decide whether you should pursue something or not? When you're unsure of exactly what it entails what advice do you have for that?

Tara: 11:00

Look at transferable skills. A lot of jobs that have weird titles. but always take a really good look at what are the requirements for the job, not just the years of experience and, the academic degree requirements, but what does the job really do? And in this day and time, you can take a position description or a job posting and your resume and put it all into ChatGPT and ChatGPT will tell you how you're qualified for the job or not. And you can use those talking points in your cover letter. You can use them when you go visit with a search committee. But then there's the other thing about once you get to that point where you're actually interviewing for an opportunity, you probably need to do a lot more research in order to be able to articulate to others who may not necessarily see that you are the ideal candidate or at least a viable candidate for a position. That research activity is really important because it not only helps you get ready for that interview, it builds your confidence, but it also means that you're not wasting anybody's time and they take you seriously. There are lots of questions that you have to be able to answer in an interview process for people to see you as a viable, reasonable, and serious candidate for a job, rather than somebody who just wanted to go to rural Georgia for the afternoon and spend it with a whole bunch of people you've never met before.

Caroline: 12:31

I like to try to help people understand that when you're going for an interview, you wanna also consider the interviewer's perspective. And they wanna be finding not only somebody qualified for the role, but thinking this is a safe bet. So as much as you can draw the line from your past to their compelling future and how what you've done sets you up for the role. And even if you haven't done something, don't say you didn't do something. Tell about the related things that you did do. So like you with the event planning and what you had done and how that sets you up for success for the future. So really good tips. Thank you for those. You've stepped into so many different types of leadership roles, what has surprised you most about some of those transitions?

Tara: 13:21

To a degree how naive I've been, which is hard to admit. And, but it's not so hard at 64. If I had a chance to go back and talk to my younger self, I might say, is that don't be in such a hurry to take a job because you want a title or a paycheck, but you really need to choose your bosses carefully. I was very fortunate early in my career to have two exceptional supervisors, dear friends to this day. Later in my career, I wanted resources that came with a job. I had become a single mother along the way, although my boys father is an absolute great father to the kids, but I needed a better paycheck. I had this career path in mind where I thought I would be a college president by the time I was of a certain age. I was on this very linear path for a long time. I discovered I had a knack for not choosing the best boss. And that one should probably really make a well-informed decision before going to work for somebody directly. Being naive, I never really thought about how that person, although I'd had two great examples, how that person who is my supervisor, might not be the best person for me in the long run. I'll give you a story that one of them actually said to me. He had been a division one hockey coach before he became an alumni director and a vice president for advancement. And one day he said to me, he goes, Tara, I learned with my hockey players that some of them well to being yelled at, and some of them just fall apart. And he goes, that I'm in a different kind of role, I have to remember that just don't always respond well to being yelled at. I'm thinking like, yeah, me, for example, it does me no good. It shuts me down. What I would just say to my younger self is, be very particular about whose apple cart you're gonna hitch your apple cart to and you know, ride off into the sunset with, because that person can do a lot can make you or break you. And that's not just professionally; they can do a lot to make you or break you personally. One of my favorite lines that I learned after having worked for several years for somebody who apparently did not need sleep was that, for years, I would ask the question, after that, tell me about the sleep patterns of the university president or the vice president or whoever it was. Because if they didn't sleep, if they didn't have hobbies, if they didn't have, much of a family, they were gonna be somewhat all consuming. And I had hobbies and I had a family and I had other things that which I was interested in and I need sleep! And therefore, I think it's a valid question for some people because it let you know, and it's like, okay, how do I fit with this person? They may be, the world's best enrollment manager, but if they don't fit with me and I don't fit with them, it's maybe going to be a tenuous relationship at best. And that's just some hard earned wisdom I've acquired.

Caroline: 16:52

So how do you ask, I guess you, you figure out from your examples, what were sticking points or what made a boss not so great, and then trying to find a way to have an open-ended question to let those characteristics come through in an interview? Because how do you balance that? Wanting to get a title or a job or a position wanting that advancement on paper and learning, you know, kind of try before you buy, learning more about their leadership style and how well you may or may not mesh with that.

Tara: 17:24

Well, I once went to a presentation where the woman said, there's great power in asking questions. You know, we can talk more about actually asking questions in a formal interview setting. But if you're walking around with somebody who's gonna be your peer, your colleague, not necessarily, you know, you don't ask the boss how many hours sleep do they get? But you ask, sort of the gentle softball question about what is the culture of the institution and the organization. Tell me about after five. Tell me about the weekends in this institutional environment. Are Slack messages coming in left and right? Are you getting text messages? Are you getting emails at all hours of the day or night? What is it really like to be a member of this team. There are subtle ways of asking that rather than being so direct, the other thing you have to really think about is, are you going to be successful? And often what I would say is that your spidey sense is going to tell you whether or not this is a good environment for you. And I love telling this story about, I had interviewed for a position vice president for communications and marketing at a regional institution, and one is it's a vice president's job, and the president wouldn't meet with the two finalists. I didn't take that to be a really good sign. Because you know, you're gonna be a direct report to this person and you're not gonna visit with them during your campus interview? Thinking this doesn't quite feel right to me. And then communications and marketing. If you wanna market an institution and help drive enrollment and fundraising, you might need some resources. And I had asked about, well, what is the budget for advertising? And they told me the budget, and it was, it was woefully inadequate. And I had worked at regional institutions with not a lot of money, but this was nothing short of appalling about how little it was. And at some point I'm with the search committee and they said, well, how are you gonna get us in the national news? And by this time, it's toward the end of day and a half on campus. And it's already occurred to me, this is not gonna work. And I said, well, unless we have a major crisis on campus, I'm not going to get us on the national news. Because Enormous State University, which is curing cancer, which is 17 miles away, makes the national news and they have a D-1 football program, and they're not a former teacher's college and they're doing major research and oh, by the way, they're in a million dollar campaign, and they are 30-minutes closest to the major regional city where there is a television station and a newspaper. I'm going, we're not gonna get on the national news. And they looked at me and they were a little taken aback. And by that time I just said, this is not, this is not right the association and governing boards provides a mentoring service, the individual who was a mentor had been a former president at my then current institution, and I sent this individual an email dear John, there's no budget, president won't meet. I just don't think this feels good. My gut tells me to run. And I got this very discreet message back. Your gut is wise. And I'm thinking, you know, we should sometimes listen to our guts because, you know, people say gut decisions. Well, your gut is really the sum of all of your experiences and your knowledge. It's not just some floaty feeling of butterflies in your stomach. It really is your background, your experiences, your understanding, and it will inform your decisions if you only let it.

Caroline: 21:16

Mm, so wise. So yes, the visceral reactions you have in your body are trying to give you a message, and the times that I did override those. I learned later. Oh, that was even in interviews. The times that I like, oh nah, that's not a big thing. That's a yellow flag. Yellow flags become red flags when you let them. So tell me a little bit about what you're doing now. What opened the door to your current chapter after all your successful years and now what?

Tara: 21:55

Yeah. I'm presently a senior consultant with a search practice called Academic Search, and I had known for years that I had really wanted to do executive search work in higher ed as this sort of phase of my career. And I had spent a fair amount of time over my last five years with Omicron Delta Kappa visiting with people from different practices. We had a number of volunteers that worked for some of the major, search organizations in this country, I really wanted to work with one that was specifically higher ed focused and what I love about our particular entity is that we are a mission-driven organization. The proceeds that we raise, in addition to paying our salaries, fund the American Academic Leadership Institute and AALI supports schools from the Council of Independent Colleges, which are lots of liberal arts institutions across the country. And then the Association of State Colleges and Universities, which are a lot of regional institutions. And those were the institutions that I served and I love serving most of all, or regional first generation serving residential campuses. We do leadership development programs and we help people, explore whether or not they wanna experience careers on further advancement in higher education and we have a becoming a provost academy and we have a managing the presidential search process. The irony of all this is that the COO and the CEO are both Omicron Delta Kappa members, as are about 15 other people and we have an annual retreat and it's all kumbaya, as far as I'm concerned, these are my people. And we talk about the future of the academy. We talk about students, we talk about political pressures, we talk about doing excellent work and search. We talk about treating candidates the way that we wanna be treated. We talk about helping people pursue their next opportunities. And we talk about helping our institutional partners identify, you know, there. It's always one hire, but we help them identify, hopefully a group of people that they would be willing to consider and are viable candidates who might be really great for the institution, if not today, someday. And we are a leadership development organization and, and therefore, having come out of Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Leadership Honor Society, working for a leadership development organization is really important to me.

Caroline: 24:32

That's so great. You're still developing leaders, helping leaders, serving leaders while also, you know, it's like lifting as you all climb. That's so cool. You've seen a lot of resumes, CVs, throughout your time so I'm curious, what makes someone stand out to you, not just on paper, but as a leader? What are those characteristics that fog the mirror if you will.

Tara: 24:59

Yeah. I tend to be net picky about editing. It's just my thing. And I get teased about it all the time. But often your writing is a reflection of your seriousness, and a well-written resume, vitae, cover letter. All those things are really important and they should follow some style guide, AP, MLA, something they should be consistent. But what is really important to me is that if you've seen a job posting and you're tweaking your resume, and you know, there's a lot to be said for having a standard resume or a vita with a section at the beginning, which highlights your accomplishments, and that way people don't have to dig past page one to figure out whether or not the expectations of the position are aligned with what you've done. I wanna see that on the first page. That's always a good indication. I wanna see that in your cover letter. a cover letter which is aligned with the resume or vita and the summary of qualifications and accomplishments is always a good thing. I just think people can't be lazy about that because particularly in an academic environment, we want you to show some level of education and sophistication and, you need to, you know, write well. And Grammarly helps with that thing. And, and Grammarly is another AI tool that I use all the time. I use it when I'm composing letters to family. It just makes communication so clear. And the thing that we do day in and day out in all of our jobs is communicate. Send emails, we send text messages, we share information with our employees, we share information with our supervisors. We share information with those individuals we serve. We communicate in one's ability to communicate effectively and in coherently is really important, and that's often what I look for when I see documents coming across my desk.

Caroline: 27:12

How about when somebody's in a job search or thinking of starting a job search? What best practices have you learned or, or what stands out for that as far as like what actually works when starting a job search?

Tara: 27:34

Taking it seriously. I often say that if you are presently gainfully unemployed, your job is looking for a job and you should sit down at your home office desk or you go to wherever you'd like to work and you actually do work. Panera, you know, some other coffee house. There was a local pub where I worked on Fridays for years. It was my workspace. I would go there for four hours and I just got accustomed to working there. So you go to wherever your workspace is and you sit down and you approach it like it's your job.

Caroline: 28:08

Imagine what your life would be like if your career aligned with who you are, what you do best, and actually fueled the life you want. At Next Success, we support all ages and stages through career transitions from students exploring majors or careers to job seekers actively searching or re-imagining their next move to professionals committed to self-awareness and leadership growth. Stay connected and explore what's possible at nextsuccesscareers.com and follow@nextsuccessmethod on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

Tara: 28:50

But I always caution individuals to, if you're presently employed, set aside time when you're not, you can go back to your office desk, but don't do it. You know, Monday through Friday, eight to five 30, I used to joke about leaving church, and walking across the street to where my office was, and I would sit down on Sunday afternoon and I would do a job search on occasion. You know, you have to set aside time to do it. That's one thing. The other thing is that in this day and time positions don't just get posted in the local newspaper and within higher education anymore. As budgets are shrinking for any number of reasons, people are not spending money advertising in the Chronicle of Higher Education or higher ed jobs or whatever else. They're only posting on their website or they're posting on LinkedIn and, and you have to sort of look at places other than just the trade publications or LinkedIn or the local newspaper. You might have to go to the website for the institution or the organization. And it never hurts to identify three to five places where you think you might wanna work and, and then sit down once a week and check their website to see is there something there where I've, there's a job that I might be interested in that might align with my skillset? And particularly if you're needing to move for family reasons, which is part of the reason I ended up in Virginia. I did a regional job search and ended up with a dream job. But I was looking at institutions and organizations here in the Commonwealth because I needed to move for reasons of family. But I was finding that many of the jobs were not posted in those trade publications because people couldn't afford to do it, which is why you have to dig. And the other thing that I learned to do was that I went and knocked on doors, not literally, but I did send emails and going. Hi, I'm going to be in, you know, Charlottesville, Virginia, visiting with my aunt and uncle, and I'm looking to relocate because of some family health issues. And I was honest about it. And I would like to come learn about your institution and your division of Student Affairs Institutional Advancement. I would just go say"Hi, tell me about your career" I would interview them in many ways, just sort of like you and I having this conversation. How did you end up here? What is the greatest thing about your institution? What do you see as the future for the school and those information interviews didn't necessarily get me a job, but they built my network because once I finally had a job, I was able to go back and say, oh, I've had such a nice, so nice to visit with you a couple years ago. And by the way, now I'm in this role and your office supports this organization. Can you help?

Caroline: 31:45

Yes.

Tara: 31:46

And therefore, those were good investments in time. But they, they didn't exactly work out the way I'd initially planned, but they worked out well in terms of a long-term career strategy because they're also now people that I can go back to and say, Hey, you hiring? Do you need some search work? You know, a search firm to assist you.

Caroline: 32:05

Ah, so good. Yeah, so what I heard from that is there's a lot of proactive work that can be done. Firstly, identifying where might you want to be, what are the institutions or companies that are in that area. Secondly, getting find a way to try to visit while you're in the area or reaching out to people and genuinely taking an interest in them and their career. Because if you do all of those things naturally, it can turn around to what would you like to do next? How could they possibly help you now or in the future, but really being intentional about your search, building your network. And then do you follow up with them every so often or you let it go for a couple years? How, what's the right frequency?

Tara: 32:54

Within the academic search world experience within our practice. What I am doing these days is I've got an awful lot of Google alerts and some of those institutions or individuals that I've built a relationship with over the course of time who might be looking for search counsel, I have them pop up on my Google alerts. I check my Google alerts once a day. I mean, I probably have about 80 of them. If something pops up and it's good, bad, or ugly, I will send a contact, a note saying, Hey I'm sorry you lost a student, or congratulations on securing the grant. Or, hang in there. Hang in there has gotten to be sort of my favorite message of late. And let me know if there's anything I can do to assist you, even if you just wanna chat. Lots of colleagues need some, you know, lifting up and, cheering on these days. And, just a way of a staying in touch with people that I consider to be friends. They're not necessarily close friends, but they've been colleague friends that, some of these people I've known for 40 plus years. And, I do care about them and we see them on Facebook and the interest is genuine. It's not really about business development. Yes, there's a strategy to it using Google alerts, but as much as it is, it is about just being a decent person and keeping in touch with people who have been walking with me on my journey and I've been walking with them on theirs.

Caroline: 34:28

I like that idea about the Google alerts for staying organized what about for job searches? How can somebody make that more manageable or not overwhelming?

Tara: 34:38

Moral story is you can probably tailor a Google alert for the kinds of positions in which you're searching for, but lots of institutions have, postings, they'll send you a notice, you can sign up for postings with a variety of the higher ed, trade publications. And that those ways they kind of show up in your mailbox, quickly. But I still think that you really pretty much have to do the heavy lifting yourself. That technology can help you to a degree, but if you are actively searching, you have to go look at where those positions are posted and you are gonna have to maybe look beyond a trade publication or a newspaper or LinkedIn. As I said, you may have to go look specifically at that organization.

Caroline: 35:24

Then once you find something that does look interesting, sparks your interest, how do you then move from, you're looking for something to try to get in process now, how do you prepare? How do you prepare to apply or get in that job search?

Tara: 35:42

Yes. Yeah, i'm often amazed at how poorly people interview. Some people are really good at it. In fact, some people are so good at it that they get referred to within our practice, as maybe game show host, because they are just, and you get a car and you get a car and they're so at saying all the right things, but they maybe are not the best candidate for the position that the organization is looking for. And they may not be the loudest voice in the room. You know, I'm a classic e on the Myers-Briggs scale. I'm a chatty Kathy, but sometimes, particularly within the institutional advancement world, a quiet, more reserved person is often a much better fundraiser because they're a really good listener and people who are not always sort of rah rah, rah. They're not necessarily shy, they just get their energy maybe from being not in front of people all the time, they can be exceptional leaders, but they may not be exactly what you think that job's supposed to be. I hope institutions pay more attention to the substance of the individuals that they're spending time with as candidates, but there is so much you can do to get ready for an interview that you will really sort of hit it out of the park using another cliche. When I got ready to interview for, my position at West Georgia, subscribed to the local newspaper for about two weeks before my interview because I knew I had the interview in two weeks. And it was an online subscription, which you can do these days. So it wasn't necessarily getting mailed to my, mailbox 500 miles away. But with that job that I was interviewing for as the Vice President for Advancement, which oversaw communications and marketing, governmental relations, fundraising, athletics, printing and publications, and I forgot what else it had, but those were very external facing operations. Being able to be conversant about what was going on in the community, able to be conversant about the state legislature and its funding of higher education was really important. Being able to talk about the sports teams, what had been successful. All those things were important topics that I knew would come up in the course of my two days on campus. That was a good thing to do. The other thing that I've been known to do, in fact, I've been known to pay somebody to do it when I've been so busy. I paid one of my student assistants once. I gave them the names of all the people I thought I would come in contact with in a course of an interview. In fact, I even did this with ODK, and I had her pull their photos from, Google Images or their LinkedIn pages, get me their LinkedIn. Links and then basically write down what their title was and if, if she could find an online biography. And when I walked into the interview, it was like,"Oh Caroline, it's so nice meet you" And you know,'cause they knew what I look like, right? But to be able to, you know, and then make small talk, particularly if you're gonna have a meal with somebody and to know a little bit about them. To be able to be genuine with people and have, you know, a little curiosity about them, but knowing what the good questions are to ask is always one of those things that I think is really kind of important to do. And then the other thing is that it drives me absolutely nuts every time this happens, but the first question a search committee is almost always going to ask is. Why are you interested in this opportunity at this particular institution, this phase of your career? And if you can't answer that without saying, oh, it's about the salary, and I like the title, and oh, it's warmer here than, and there's no snow, that is, that, that question is all about the institution. They want to hear you say, and this goes for a company, it goes for a nonprofit organization. They want to hear you say, I really wanna come serve this great entity because I know that it's going in this wonderful direction. And you can explain a couple of those things specifically. And I wanna be a part of the team that advances the interest of this organization and makes it more successful. And I just think that, I may have some skills that could be, applied to this opportunity and I really wanna serve. That question is how they vet whether or not you're a good fit for the institution. And while I think fit is sometimes code for reasons for why people exclude candidates based on reasons like they shouldn't, like gender, race, and ethnicity, I don't always like the term fit, but fit can also mean whether or not that person is really gonna wanna come and be a part of the team and contribute and be, a partner with others in making the place a better place. And I think that if you gotta get one question right, that's the question to get right.

Caroline: 40:47

Yeah. It's really not about you, it's about the organization. It itself, you know, why are you interested? It's not your vision, but theirs. And if you join that company, that becomes your vision, mission, values, all the things that you're going for too.

Tara: 41:01

If they've got a strategic plan, mission, vision, and values, you need to be conversant about those things regardless of what kind of entity that it happens to be.

Caroline: 41:10

Excellent. So we've heard how to pre look at people you might be meeting with, get to know them beyond just the title, but what do they actually look like? What are some other things you can have in conversation? How to prepare for that beginning question of, you know, why are you interested? What are some other things of, how else can people prepare for interviews for specific jobs?

Tara: 41:36

Yeah, well, it's not so much the getting ready for the interview as much as it is to get ready for the follow-up. I'm a big believer in thank you notes. I'm old school. have lousy handwriting, so I don't do them by, by handwriting anymore, but I have been known to, take the interview schedule, get the email addresses for all the people that I'm projected to meet, including the student tour guide, and pre-draft a note that would say, you know, dear Suzy, thank you for showing me around, Enormous state university's beautiful campus. I enjoyed hearing about why you chose the institution. Note to self ask Suzy why she chose that institution. So I'll come back to a, preparing your questions that you're gonna ask during, in the interview. But go ahead and sort of pre-draft those and then take something that from that conversation you had with Suzy and put that personal detail in there, but it doesn't hurt to go ahead and have the whole thing sort of prepared in advance and edited on the fly. On the flight home, and get those things out. Maybe not the night you get home, because that does seem a little creepy to a degree. But, you know, it's like canned responses. But, you know, sometime in the following day get those messages out. But, you know, edit them so that they come across as being genuine, which they should be. I said we get back to it. Think about the questions you're gonna ask. Okay? Don't ask what are the benefits that stuff's on the human resources page. Ask about, the future direction of the organization, what are the challenges? If you're talking, to somebody who would be your collegial peer, ask them, what has been your greatest accomplishment to date in your current role? What has been your greatest challenge? What do you like best about working here? What is problematic for the institution? And is there any way my skillset might be able to help? Those are the kind of general questions you should ask. And then the last thing you should always ask is not so much the question, but ask for the sale. Before you leave the interview, make it clear that you are interested in the job. Tell the truth like I did with the job and saying, I'm not gonna get you on the national news, but, but if it's a job you want, say, I really wanna be here. I've learned so much about the organization over the last couple of days. I think it's, an inviting opportunity. I, enjoyed the people that I've met. I know there's some challenges, but I think I can help us all rise. And I wanna be a member of your team, ask for the sale, ask for the opportunity to serve And that's an important thing to do.

Caroline: 44:30

So important, all other things being equal. The person that asked for the job is going to rise above the other people that just said, oh, well, let me know. You know, somebody that gets things done asks for those opportunities. So, so good. When you look back at your career. What are some of the moments that stand out as the most meaningful for you?

Tara: 44:58

I was thinking about this the other day. There are two sets of moments. The first one, some of the personal relationships, I have a former student assistant who is getting ready to interview for a college presidency. She was working in my office one year. She was on her way to spend, summer at the beach. I have a friend who, was the head of a program at a university at the beach. He hired her to, you know, basically folding stuff, envelopes for that summer when she was between her junior and senior year. She got so interested in the profession of student affairs by hanging around the two of us. She decided to get a master's degree. We've kept in touch with her. We're just, incredibly fond of this woman. She actually happened to be our advisor for ODK at one of our institutions I still think of her as the 22-year-old, but she's probably 52 now, and I am so proud of her. And it's just, you know, I laugh, not the right word, but she's one of my gifts to the profession. And I've worked with lots of other young people, but she's my gift to the profession because she will be a president one day, and she calls me up every so often and asks for advice and I'm going you've got this, you know this, but she needs to talk it through with somebody. And I'm flattered that she still thinks of me as her mentor. What an honor. That's one thing, the other thing that I say all the time. Is that I wanna leave an organization in better shape than I found it. I've tried to make that the case. and I'll give you three really quick examples. There's a sorority at Louisville, my sorority that got established when I was in college and I was a founding member of that and had a fair amount to do with the establishment of that particular chapter of that sorority. It's still there. I've been out of college for more than 40 years. Tickles me to no end it's still there. One of the institutions I served went through a mascot transition, which is an experience I would not wish upon my worst enemy. It was genuinely painful for the institution. But when I go to that town these days and I see 20 years later and I see the new mascot all over the place, I'm going like, oh, I had something to do with that. And then with ODK, when I started the endowment was about 800,000. And when I left it was 2.8 million. And that endowment, largely funds scholarships. And scholarships are one of the things that, being a member of an organization that provides scholarships is an incentive to join the organization. And I just keep thinking that that's maybe one of the things that I did to leave ODK in better shape than I found it. Those are all really good things to remember. The final thing along that course of topic is that the way you leave a job is really so much more important than the way you come into a position. Because I learned at a fairly early age, in fact, when I was leaving the associate registrar's position in my early thirties, there were several people who kept handing me matchbooks with the hope that I would burn down the bridges behind me on their behalf. Take the matchbooks, right? Don't take the dynamite. Don't take, you know, don't take, don't take the torch, don't take that stuff. walk out, you document as best as you possibly can for your successors. and your, documentation is not just for the person who will step into whatever role you have, but it is for everybody else because institutional memory is important. And your successor may ignore the workbook that you left for them, which did happen at one time, but the number two in the office used it all the time to figure out how to do something. But, you know, document, hold your head high. If you're leaving, even if you're being a little pushed out, be gracious about stuff. Thank people. You may be celebrated, but it's a great chance for you to celebrate others that, have helped you along the way. Those are all just right things to do they show that you're a class act. I think all of our mothers and fathers would like us to be class acts. And if your children are your retirement dinner, it provides a good example to them about how they manage that moment when it comes their turn to retire.

Caroline: 49:16

Have you ever thought about, if you could go back to your younger self, your 20 something year old self, what advice would you want to tell her, knowing what you know now?

Tara: 49:30

As I said earlier, to not be so naive. Not to jump at an opportunity for a title, or a salary and pick your bosses carefully would be that I would say is probably most significant. But then, there is a little bit of the, they say don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff. that trivializes to a degree, some of the trauma that I think many of us experience in the course of our career. We've all had some hard moments. We've lost colleagues unexpectedly. There has been a budgetary situation, which has forced us to reorganize and let good people go. There has been some other form of a crisis. There has been, expectations not met, and pressure your boss has pressure on top of the pressure that you're feeling. And, sometimes things get said in the heat of the moment. And so I don't mean to trivialize some of the experiences that we have that are difficult, there is a part of it. Don't always take it as seriously as we sometimes want to and to also think about your career does not need to be as linear as we all think that it does. being administrative associate to academic advisor to associate registrar to a VP for alumni relations, to moving to the development office and becoming the head of corporate and foundation relations because I really needed to raise money if I was gonna be a vice president on my way to the presidency. And then I went to be a vice president, and after three years of being a vice president, I realized my skin's not thick enough to be a president. And I decided that. I moved to Chicago for love, and 19 months later I moved away. And when I made that move away 19 months later. I thought I'm pretty fragile at this moment because my heart was broken. And I thought, well, what within the advancement world do I really like? And I thought, well, I really like the communications and marketing piece. I like fundraising, but I really, should have been an editor if I'd known that was a job. I might've done it as a job. Something that they don't tell you in high school. You know, I chose communications and marketing. So I did a search in communications and marketing, I ended up with a job that I really, really liked at an institution that I really liked. And then, I saw the ODK job and actually I'd been interested when it was open four years earlier, but I didn't have, so many months to look for a job, I needed a job now.

Caroline: 51:52

Hmm.

Tara: 51:53

And the job I needed was a great job in many ways. I had to laugh because there's a group that does interim placement within higher ed I told them I thought I would be a good interim placement as a VP for advancement. And they go, your career is just too all over the place. I'm going like, you have no idea what I've done because you're looking only at my titles. But you know, careers are not necessarily linear and sometimes plan B or C or D or whatever, being adaptable is really important and you know, you don't always have to go in a straight line and you might end up with the most rewarding opportunity you can imagine, which is what I ended up with, Omicron Delta Kappa. And it was something that I would've never really about if I hadn't sort of meandered through the way, through the years. I'd actually been an ODK advisor when I was the vice president for advancement. It was like, oh wow, this is kind of cool. You end up often where you belong, but you don't necessarily end up there on the route you intended.

Caroline: 52:57

Now, how can people find out more about your work or connect with you?

Tara: 53:02

I love LinkedIn. I'm on it all the time. And I think I'm one of the few Tara Singers, but you'll see the Louisville stuff so that you'll know that's me. And academicsearch.org, is our practices website and we have team bios and so you can find my team bio there. Feel free to reach out. I like helping people, regardless of whether or not they're really considering a career on higher-ed or nonprofit administration, I find that I'm doing a fair amount of informal coaching and just sort of tips for searching. And I enjoy that tremendously as cheering people on, as they're exploring the next phase of their leadership journeys.

Caroline: 53:41

Oh, all the more reason we're so aligned. I, I'm big on, as you know, authentic success. And authentic success is however you define it. So how do you define authentic success for you in this moment?

Tara: 53:57

I'm doing something I find meaningful. I'm doing for an organization that I think is a leader, as I know is a leadership development organization, which I find meaningful. I'm kind of doing it at the pace and the schedule that after 40 years of working a lot of hours, I am grateful to have time, with my sweetheart, now my fiance and time with my children and, actually our five children between the two of us and granddaughter. And I'm so blessed to have living parents who are well into their eighties and having that flexibility to, be close to friends and family and have time for them, but still do generative work. I serve as a board officer for the local performing arts center. I really enjoy, sharing my knowledge about nonprofit administration, through that. It's just giving back. A wonderful family. I've had a great life and I've had this great career and I've been so fortunate to have good friends, to walk with me along my journey, it's now time to pay it forward, but I'm glad to not be doing it full time.

Caroline: 55:09

Thank you so, so very much, Tara, for sharing part of your story, for part of the search tips, interview tips, wonderful life advice, and for sharing your version of authentic success. And it sounds like you are going to be quite busy, with all the things coming up, fiance's become spouses and,

Tara: 55:32

They do. And even at, 65 and 68, which we will be next year, we're having a wedding. I will say I'm having so much fun planning this, it's a whole lot different than when I was 21 and 22. If I want fried chicken at the reception, we're gonna have fried chicken at the reception.

Caroline: 55:49

I love it.

Tara: 55:49

So

Caroline: 55:50

I love it. Well, thank you again for sharing so much with our audience, and I wish you just continued amazing happiness and success.

55:59

Tara's story is a reminder that success isn't just about collecting titles. It's about collecting wisdom. Every season of your career holds lessons if you're willing to pause and listen. If you'd like to connect with Tara, please find her on LinkedIn or at academicsearch.org.

Tara: 56:20

Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.