Extra efforts are needed to maintain these initial successes of women, and to increase the development of minority group members. Effective affirmative action programs help. Reference checks are important to determine whether a candidate has the necessary strength and courage to reach out, to survive some failures, and to keep trying, without ever losing sight of the individual people who are the most important part of any organization. Interviews assess sociability and verbal fluency but don't predict administrative success. In an interview, learning why a candidate took a particular course of action is more revealing than what was done.
Confidentiality is important in order to secure the very strongest possible candidates in a search.
Search committees tend to look more for proven competence than for potential, particularly when seeking to fill a high-level vacancy. Most people with proven competence already are at work and most often that work involves sensitive political relationships. Some of those people may be willing to consider a move. But, while they are employed elsewhere, they are unwilling to take a chance on eroding their effectiveness on their current campuses. McLaughlin and Riesman have focused significant attention on this issue.