Executive Recruitment Through the Candidate’s Lens: An Interview Study on the Candidate Experience of Museum Executives

Anna Stegmann, Andrea Hausmann

Anna Stegmann conducted her PhD at the Institute of Arts Management at University of Education Ludwigsburg. Her research interest focuses on leadership and executive recruitment in museum organizations. She now works as a consultant for international public sector and non-profit organizations.
Andrea Hausmann is a professor and head of the Institute of Arts Management at University of Education Ludwigsburg. She is the author of several books and articles on cultural leadership and cultural tourism and frequently reviews for international journals, conferences and research agencies. She has served as a visiting professor in Austin, Texas, and Modena, Italy.

ABSTRACT
German museums increasingly struggle with finding and recruiting qualified candidates for executive positions. Research shows that by creating a positive candidate experience, museums can enhance their recruitment success. Against this background, we explore in 35 problem-centered interviews how German museum executives currently experience their recruitment processes and why they apply for and accept a job. Our findings show that the main motivation to apply varied based on the executives’ career status. First-time executives valued job-specific factors, e.g. job conditions and responsibilities, while experienced and high-status executives emphasized organizational factors, e.g. an ongoing transformational process as an opportunity to create a legacy. We found that museum executives expected and, therefore, commonly accepted the often bureaucratic and lengthy recruitment processes. Throughout we identified interpersonal treatment as a key factor both for job acceptance and creating an overall positive candidate experience. We discuss our findings in the context of current research and derive implications for museum management research and practice.
KEYWORDS
Candidate Experience, Candidate Journey, Executive Recruitment, Recruitment Process, Leader Selection, Museum Leadership