It has been almost six months since the city posted its job description for the newly created position of economic development general manager and it has yet to find a suitable candidate.
Acting city manager Chris Jardine has been assigned the task of conducting the search, which has involved posting the position to the city’s website as well as using a headhunting agency, but to date there has been little success.
“One of the biggest challenges with municipal economic development is if there’s 350 communities in Alberta, there are 350 communities trying to push economic development and make things happen,” Jardine said.
What council is hoping to find is an individual with 10-plus years of experience in senior management who can hit the road and promote St. Albert in attracting business, connecting with potential non-residential clients and local resources.
But finding such an individual has proved difficult. An initial round of recruitment led to candidates who were not deemed qualified enough to interview, so Jardine was instructed to conduct another search.
“We’ve been struggling to find an appropriate candidate who meets our vision on that,” Jardine said.
Jardine said he will be discussing the matter with incoming city manager Patrick Draper later this week, given Draper’s strong experience in economic development. The posting too might have to be re-visited.
“We keep going back to that posting and saying, ‘I think it says what we’re getting at, what we want,’ but we’re not actually lining up anybody that seems to fit that,” Jardine said. “Maybe that doesn’t exist for us and now that we’ve hired someone at the helm that has some experience in that area, we might need to rethink what the posting says.”
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he was experiencing some “disappointment” with the difficulty the city is facing to date but understands some of the challenges.
“We’re seeking a pretty senior person who’s going to be charged with moving things along at a fairly aggressive pace,” Crouse said. “I wish it was going faster, but it’s not.”
Jardine also speculated the nature of what the general manager is responsible for selling could be an obstacle. Successful individuals in sales typically sell something that is tangible, compared to selling something less concrete such as economic possibility.
“People successful in the sales world are working with something that is highly tangible and in the public sector, something that’s not. They might say, ‘That’s going to frustrate me, why would I do that?’ ” Jardine said.
The draw of public service, including a potentially smaller salary compared to the private sector, might also be a factor.
“Some of those high-quality selling thinkers, they are out there doing it now and making a good living doing it, so why leave that and come to a municipality and a bit less of a paycheque?”
Crouse doesn’t think council needs to revisit the job description for the position — they just need to find the right candidate.
“I think we will find the right person. Maybe we don’t have enough of a search. Let’s see what our search firm, our senior leadership team, plus Patrick Draper can do,” Crouse said.
