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As the Capital Region was recovering from one of the worst financial shocks in living memory, three organizations on the frontline of that comeback had to find new leadership at the same time. In a sense, it made the collective stakes around the trio of recruitment efforts even higher than they would have been.  

Two of these organizations used specialized consultants to assist them, while the other relied on networking and highly targeted advertising. Comstock’s explores how those tactics worked and what lessons were learned along the way. 

Managing markets  

The Sacramento Association of REALTORS isn’t just responsible for the housing health of the region; it also represents the interests of a bevy of individuals who are basically operating small businesses. More than half of the association’s 8,000 members are offices of fewer than five agents. They don’t have the same arsenal of resources that larger brokerage firms have, including in-house legal counsel, risk management experts and compliance officers. That means they need support from SAR, as well as government advocacy and guidance on the trickier sides of the profession. 

In 2021, SAR’s CEO Dave Tanner announced he was retiring. Its board knew Tanner’s replacement needed to have a vision — and a plan — for where the association was heading next. A nine-member search committee was put together with the goal of making a hire by June of 2022. 

“It’s important to be extremely transparent with the candidates about the opportunity they’re about to embark on, because the last thing you want is for them to get into the position and feel as if they weren’t able to come in with their eyes wide open. That’s the quickest way to demoralize their overall success.”Darrell Teat, CEO, Safety Center

“We wanted to look to the future,” says Erin Stumpf, an 18-year real estate veteran and SAR’s then-president. “We had fewer past presidents and more future presidents on this search committee than the one that hired our CEO 10 years before. I think having future leadership — being able to identify who those up-and-comers were — and then have them on the committee provided a lot of balance that I think was helpful in finding this really forward-thinking CEO that we ultimately hired.”

One of the first things the committee did was select a professional recruiter to build their overall applicant pool. Stumpf says that the recruiter did a good job of rounding up ideal candidates but was working on the East Coast, which caused a number of scheduling challenges that slowed the process down. 

Ultimately, SAR’s consultant helped narrow the focus down to 10 candidates, all of whom were interviewed by the committee via Zoom. From there, the top three prospects were flown out to Sacramento for in-person meetings. When the conversational smoke cleared, the job went to Jessica Coates, an executive from Columbia, Maryland, with 15 years of experience in the field. 

“That process allowed us to be a lot more efficient,” Stumpf reflects. “When we met Jessica Coates in person, she seemed to really understand what we wanted and why we wanted it. There was just something sort of magical about it — we just had that feeling.”

A chamber of strategy 

Just as the search for SAR’s CEO was winding down, the mission to find a new leader for the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce was heating up. The chamber is the primary advocacy group for businesses across six counties. Whoever took the helm next had to be someone who understood how to bring local chambers together from Placerville to Yuba City. 

The organization put its own eight-member search committee together and then tapped a recruitment firm to muster a platoon of top-tier candidates. 

“You need to not only create the strategy, but identify the best co-pilot to go along the journey,” says Darrell Teat, CEO of Safety Center and past chair of the chamber. “It takes a lot of time and energy, and you also have to be fully engaged in thinking about the diverse needs of the organization as well as the constituents and the customers they serve. … As far as accessing a search firm, some organizations and companies just might not have the financial resources. So in that case, it’s thinking about asking, ‘How do we best curate the most diverse and effective and talented pool possible?’” 

In addition to the other committee members, Teat worked closely with Keri Thomas, vice president of external affairs at Sutter Health. Thomas is now the current chair of the chamber. Teat, Thomas and their colleagues started conducting Zoom interviews based on the recruiter’s findings. A number of the applicants they spoke to were from California — and there was a reason. 

“We were pretty clear that we didn’t feel like we needed to do real intense outreach outside of California,” Thomas remembers. “If someone applied outside of California, that was great, yet given the politics and all the things that are unique to California, we did have a conversation like that about geography and outreach.” 

The Golden State may have been well-represented in the search, but when the committee transitioned to its final in-person interviews, it was Robert W. Heidt, Jr. — a candidate from Arizona — who won out. Heidt began his new role with the chamber in 2024. 

Teat’s biggest piece of advice is that frankness in the interview process can lead to confidence in the future. 

“It’s important to be extremely transparent with the candidates about the opportunity they’re about to embark on because the last thing you want is for them to get into the position and feel as if they weren’t able to come in with their eyes wide open,” Teat stresses. “That’s the quickest way to demoralize their overall success.”

In Thomas’ view, another takeaway involved the importance of maintaining integrity.  

“The confidentiality of the hiring committee is vital,” she observes. “Because there’s a chance that local people are applying for these positions, and you’ve got to check the personal relationships at that point and not talk about it outside of your colleagues on the committee.” 

Multiple paths  

One firm in the greater Capital Region that specializes in C-level executive recruitment is Wilcox, Miller & Nelson. When boards call them for help, Diane Miller is often the one picking up the phone. Miller agrees with an old adage that “the most important job of a board is to hire and fire the CEO.” Her job, she says, is streamlining and focusing the task of how the net should be cast. Miller also works to broaden an organization’s hiring possibilities. 

“It gets them out of their own network of people and gives them more access, too,” Miller explains. “It usually requires, when someone is involved from the outside, more rigor. And if you were to go on just the time block alone, very few executive teams or boards have that kind of time.”

She adds, “Really, it’s about making sure their expectations for the person are mapped to the strategy.”  

While Miller can’t discuss specific groups she has consulted for, she can talk about her own work on the board of the AARP Foundation. Miller and her fellow members there recently launched an executive search for the foundation’s new CEO. They started by hiring a search firm similar to Wilcox, Miller and Nelson, but one that was based in Washington, D.C. 

“It allowed us to get the right person, in the right seat at the right time,” Miller notes of the decision. “That, in turn, put us in a position to onboard them well. It’s also important to know that there’s a big washout rate of CEOs when there is not a good onboarding plan.”

But not all organizations have the resources to hire an ace headhunter. That was the position the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Sacramento State was in while looking for its new chairperson this year. The department offers a master’s program that is similar to an MBA but for the public sector. Its graduates obtain a broad base of knowledge on economics, politics and institutional structures on the state and local levels. Many students coming through the program have their sights set on becoming city managers or county CEOs somewhere in California. In other words, they’re striving to become the leaders who will work directly with developers and business owners on policy for the future. 

Professors Robert W. Wassmer and Ted Lascher helped build the program up over the last 29 years, evolving it from an inaugural class of 10 students in 1995 to one that’s now seen more than 500 graduates heading into the heart of local government. With both longtime instructors moving out of the leadership roles and gearing up for retirement, the department embarked on a national search for a chairperson that would keep it invigorated.

“What is unique about academia is that we have tenure,” Wassmer acknowledges. “When you hire someone in that situation, they can be dismissed as a leader, but they’re still going to have a job with the company. That’s what is so different than a private search if things really go bad.”

Another difference is that state universities typically only look to search firms to help them find the highest level of leadership, such as a provost or college president. The department of public policy’s search committee, which was made up of Wassmer, Lascher, two other faculty members and an associate dean, had to go an entirely different route. It started advertising the position in a national public sector job bank, as well as some economic and political journals and publications like The Chronicle of Higher Learning. The committee members also spread the word through networks they’d developed by attending conferences. From there, they whittled 100 applications down to 12 that they wanted to interview by Zoom. 

In the final stretch, the committee flew out four applicants for in-person interviews. These hopefuls arriving in Sacramento each had to present their research, do a live teaching demonstration and meet with students to discuss their education philosophy. 

The candidate who outshined the rest was Dr. Shane Nordyke, who’d been teaching public policy at the University of South Dakota. She started at Sac State on Aug. 1. 

“You learn a lot by how much research they’ve done — how much they’ve read up on things,” Wassmer reflects. “And also waiting for them to ask questions to show their interest.”

Asked about the yearlong process finally being over, Wassmer replies, “It’s a relief that you’ve served your company or department well; but you also know you have to step back because it’s the new person’s time to shine.”