With the impending retirement of Town Administrator, Steve Malizia, the Hudson Board of Selectmen once again discussed the process for hiring its next town administrator, during its Aug. 13 meeting.
It was explained by Board Chair, Bob Guessferd, previously that they hired a consulting firm MRI, to help with the process.
“MRI, as we know, is doing the initial selection process,” he said.
Guessferd said that they received multiple resumes for the position, which were then vetted by MRI.
“We received 20 something resumes,” he said explaining that they went through a process conducted by MRI, which included some candidates being asked to write essays.
At that point they had six candidates identified and now have four finalists.
“There are now four candidates that are viable from the MRI perspective,” Guessferd said.
He explained that they were scheduled to meet with the finalists on Thursday.
Selectman, Heidi Jakoby, who asked for the item to be on the agenda, explained that she thought they should discuss the selection process publicly.
Jakoby said they received some questions from different staff members, and wanted to make sure they are on the same page before the interviews.
“We all have questions I think we’d like to ask,” Guessferd said, saying that they received questions from different perspectives including the chiefs, and different department heads.
Guessferd noted that while they may have some follow-up questions for each of the candidates, he said he thought it made sense that whatever questions they ask the first the candidate that they ask all the other candidates the same questions.
“We have to be fair,” he said.
Jakoby said she wanted to get a sense of what the most important things are that people are looking for in the candidates, and prepared a sample rubric that they could use for advisory purposes when going through the different interviews to rate the different candidates.
Guessferd said that for him, he thinks the most important factor should be supervisory skills and leadership.
Selectman, Dillon Dumont, said that as long as they identify their top candidates, that is the goal, and he thinks that the rubric was good, but thought it should be advisory.
“For me, I would like it to be advisory,” he said.
Guessferd said the next step, if they are successful, is to narrow down the top candidates, and then have more informal conversations with the candidates who advance to the next round of the process.
Jakoby said she thinks it’s important to have a second candidate identified just in case, which Guessferd and others agreed with.
“I do think we need to have a number one and a number two,” Guessferd said, explaining that hopefully they will be comfortable moving forward with at least two of the candidates to another interview.
The next Board of Selectmen meeting is slated to take place on Aug. 27 at 7 p.m.