Our latest success story highlights our talent acquisition and recruiting services and how we have successfully helped library trustees when they need to appoint a new library director.
Cuyahoga Falls Library is a public library located in northeast Ohio, located between Cleveland and Akron. Their mission is to connect people with the world of ideas, information, and imagination by providing access and professional guidance to resources that inform, entertain, and enrich. We were fortunate to have met the retiring library director, Valerie Kocin, through our work with the Ohio Library Council. We had visited the library in the past and saw the important role it plays in Cuyahoga Falls in helping revitalize this community. When the board learned of Val’s upcoming retirement, they contacted OA to help find her replacement.
Board of Trustees President Deborah Ziccardi was our partner on the project. She said:
Organizational Architecture was recommended to us because of their knowledge of Ohio’s public library landscape and their successes with other library director searches. Beyond that OA’s project team included a professional librarian who has experience in large and small library systems, including working as a library director herself. They guided us throughout the process with defining/refining the role of the library director, developing materials to help communicate the opportunity effectively to those who may be good candidates, and facilitated our decision-making process. They provided weekly updates with their activities and the progress of their candidate screening process. They provided us with a slate of candidates that all had the ability to do the job and at the same time brought unique skills and experience to the table. We were impressed with the quality of the candidates and how OA guided us as we considered each one of them. The Board is excited to start its work with our new Director who started in September. We appreciate their assistance.Being the talent acquisition and recruitment service partner on this project was gratifying to us on many levels. We had the opportunity to help the library system in which OA team member Heather Brown lives. We got to work with friend, colleague, and librarian Heather Muller who was immensely helpful in deepening our knowledge of the role of the library director as well as library operations. And as always, Ryan Sheehan leveraged his twenty-plus years of experience in recruiting and strategic HR leadership to source, screen, and recommend a slate of high-quality candidates to the trustees while ensuring the candidate experience was open, honest, and fair. Organizational Architecture is the trusted partner for more than twenty public libraries for human resources consulting, recruiting, performance management, and leadership development. If you need help in any of these areas, contact us and check out other public library updates to learn more.