In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast, guest host Dustin chats with Brittany to get insights from her diverse background working at a variety of institutions on how to develop an effective staff recruitment and performance management strategy. She outlines tips for supporting student staff as well as professional staff so that teams of any shape and size can reach their full potential.
Guest: Dr. Brittany McDaniel (she/hers), Associate Dean of Residential and Community Life, Wellesley College
Host: Dustin Ramsdell, Independent Higher EdTech Content Creator
Listen to the Podcast:
Watch the Video:
Show Notes:
About ResEdChat
Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back everyone to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. If you’re new to the show, every episode, our team of hosts brings you timely discussions on a variety of topics of interest to hired professionals who work in and with university housing, residence life, residential education, whatever you might call it. And our conversation today is another chapter in the continued exploration of recruitment, staff management, organizational development as it comes to residence life teams. So obviously there’s a lot there. I’ll let our guests guide us through her experiences, perspectives and advice strategies, but I think there’s always room and space for new perspectives and reflections and things in this area. So excited to continue our exploration here.
And Brittany, if you want to briefly introduce yourself and give an overview of your professional background because I feel like it’s pretty cool [inaudible 00:00:59]. I was looking at your LinkedIn, different places across the world that you have worked and everything. So excited to explore that together. But if you want to briefly introduce yourself and then we’ll get to the rest of our conversation here.
Brittany McDaniel:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Dustin. My name is Brittany McDaniel. I use she/her pronouns and I serve as associate dean for residential and community life at Wellesley College, which is right outside of Boston, Massachusetts. It’s a historic women’s college and my career has been in res life so far. I started full-time in the profession close to 15 years ago, and I came up through the ranks.
I was a hall director. I served as an assistant director over recruitment selection and training, which is where I first started to develop a passion for this topic. I’ve been an assistant director where my specialty was over residential curriculum, a director, and now serving in a role where I both oversee our residential education and housing ops teams, but then also oversee our honor code process, which includes academic integrity on campus. And so really a breadth of areas that I’ve had the opportunity to get exposure to. And as Dustin mentioned, both working within the US and outside of the US and a proud Georgia graduate, I have my PhD from the College of Ed down there in student affairs administration.
Dustin Ramsdell:
So just a really cool background, I think, just to pull on the thread a little bit, just because I’m curious, what was the experience like because where you worked globally was NYU Abu Dhabi. How did that come to be? Any just brief reflections on that experience because that’s super unique, just curious to learn a little more about it.
Brittany McDaniel:
Yeah, so I was working at the time at NYU’s main campus as an assistant hall director, and so I was responsible for RA supervision, advising hall council, and overseeing community development. They have a more unique setup in their department over there. And when I was working there, they were a few years into their campus over in Abu Dhabi. They had been located in a temporary building in downtown Abu Dhabi and they had built an entire campus, literally from the desert up over there. And so they were quickly expanding and there was an opportunity for me to transition from the New York campus over to Abu Dhabi. And I just had so many great experiences over there. I think because it was in such a young part of its university life, I was able to initially start in a traditional res ed position. I gained exposure to housing operations and that was actually where I served as the assistant director for selection and training. And so quite a memorable experience.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s amazing. Just looking at… You spent three years there, that’s a cool chapter of your life and professional journey. Just a well-placed zooming in since that was like you said, your initial steps in this journey. I’m just curious… We’ll spend a little bit of time here, but just your journey overseeing recruiting and staff practices and everything in the residence life context, was there something that attracted you to it? I’m wondering push-pull factors kind of thing, what interested you about it and what it was starting in that very unique context, doing this work? Any things that you learned as you then moved on to various institutions and everything? We’ll, I think, take some baby steps through this and then go a little bit further.
Brittany McDaniel:
So I think to back up to understand my exposure to this, I think it’s really important to talk about my early days as a hall director. I was that professional where I got into this work because I was so passionate about building community. I loved working with students directly and doing… At the time we had a programming model, being able to bring students together, be able to advise them. I wasn’t really thinking too much about, “How do I construct my RA team?” I participated in RA selection at the time and I would interview and hire RAs, but it wasn’t really until I started to get to Abu Dhabi that I realized, “Oh wait, who I hire for my team has a direct influence on the experience that we’re able to provide to our students.”
And so I think that was where my passion for this really started to flourish. And I started to really think more intently about how are we designing this process to really be able to understand people’s unique strengths and talents. And along with that, being able to help them understand what is it that they’re signing up for? Over in Abu Dhabi, it was such an interesting environment to be in because so many of our students weren’t coming from western countries, and so they didn’t really have an understanding of what was a resident assistant. So it was also being able to work with them on helping them understand what was expected of them, of this role that they didn’t really know too much about. And so I think that both of those pieces, it really started to spark something within me.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, that’s great. And I think that’s something where I’m sure many folks who begin in this work, being a resident director, you’re overseeing a building, you’re building the team, you’re creating a lot of that ownership and that idea of you could appreciate each individual RA that you recruit on their own merits, but trying to think about, “How do all the people that I select work together?” And even with what you’re explaining, I think it’s just a unique wrinkle of how… I guess the word I’m thinking of is the potential of somebody to grow into something that… They have no preconceived notions about what this is supposed to be. So that idea of that being certainly a challenge in one sense, but also an opportunity. But I think for most it might be that a lot of student staff members, I guess for that example that you’re recruiting, here in the States would have maybe some sort of preconceived notion because they may well certainly have lived in a hall and had an RA.
So there might be basing it on that for better or worse, but then movies and TV or whatever else, you just sort of get exposure in culture to what an RA is or whatever else. So how do you lean into that, build upon that, or then what’s it like to maybe dissuade that? So yeah, so you had that very unique initial experience of building your own team as a resident director, recruiting your own RAs and choosing them and everything, and then graduating from that into doing that department-wide and that being what you’ve done now in a few different institutional contexts and everything. So painting with a broad brush, that idea of different institutional types and their cultures and whatever else, any just sort of… As you began on that part of your journey of being like, “Okay, I’m going to be helping to orient these processes of recruitment staff management and whatever else.”
Any sort of anecdotes or milestones of that journey, how you learned and grown through… I guess a couple of different contexts of… At Abu Dhabi, University of Georgia, Washington University of St. Louis, and now… Those are all very different institutions. So I guess that’s what’s cropping up in my mind of doing the same kind of work that we’re talking about here in different institutional contexts to just take us through the rest of your professional journey. Any sort of reflections, anecdotes, kind of things that you can think of around this sort of work in all those different environments?
Brittany McDaniel:
Yeah, so I think that the environment piece is so key. So in Abu Dhabi, even with pro staff, we were trying to recruit for people and helping them understand sight unseen for some of the positions, like what was it like to relocate across the world to this unknown environment? So that was also a… I think a marketing approach that we had to consider of helping people understand what their experience was going to be a half a world away.
But then to move on, I think even when I reflect back during my time in Abu Dhabi, my understanding of recruitment practices and staffing, it was still, I would consider, to where I am today, a very elementary intermediary understanding of what this work can be. I think it was having really strong mentors at Georgia. Dr. K is one of them. I remember he would talk to me a lot about working in housing is often about people, facilities, and budget.
And I think that I’ve really leaned into this idea of people. How are we investing in our people? How are we creating a culture of them, where they feel engaged, where they’re able to thrive, that they want to show up to work? Because in doing that, then we’re going to be able to create and facilitate a really strong student experience. And so that is something that I’ve taken with me since. When I was at WashU, my role there was predominantly overseeing professional staff selection, recruitment selection, and then indirectly with students.
And I was also responsible for the performance management of everybody within my unit. That included both full-time staff as well as indirect paraprofessionals. And so I think with WorkNet WashU, which was a very large institution, there was also a lot of stakeholder engagement because the residential experience was so core to the larger college experience, I really started to recognize the importance of thinking about how are we recruiting professional staff for these positions and what are all these considerations that I should be taking in mind when thinking about who are we interviewing, hiring, and how are we training them to set them up for success in their roles at the college?
Dustin Ramsdell:
I guess what’s resonating with me or sticking out from what you’re saying is… And it’s not just totally one way or another, but the idea of that you have certain maybe mantras or different things that you’re saying, that idea of, “Well, you got to water flowing into whatever kind of container and vessel that you’re in,” sort of thing, versus maybe doing the, “Well, I’ve kind of got my box of tricks, I’m going to pull those out and utilize them, and the best practices mindset or whatever,” that there would be enough variability of different institutions, their history, their context size, whatever, that as long as you have a good core and foundation, you can use that to ground yourself while you’re being flexible to the organization that you’re working in and everything.
Because I want to segue to what to you is emblematic of a successful strategy here of staff recruitment and performance management, whatever else. Because from what you’re saying, I’m getting a feeling that it may be a bit more about the flexibility versus feeling beholden to best practices. If you want to… I don’t know if I’m putting words in your mouth, but speak to you, what is emblematic of a successful strategy here?
Brittany McDaniel:
Yeah, so I always like the term favored practices because I think that there is a lot of great research. There’s a lot of things that work that we know generally will work, but I think to your point of it’s recognizing each institution is its own unique environment, and so being able to remain flexible and adaptable, but I think knowing that framework that you’re operating in. And so I think that some of the things that are emblematic to a successful strategy, one thing is assessing your workforce needs.
This is something since my days going back to Abu Dhabi, but especially during my time at WashU and even during my time here at Wellesley of really thinking about what are our student needs? Our students have changed significantly in the past few years. And so thinking about what do they need out of their experience? How are we supporting them during their time at our institution? And thinking about what are our existing roles? What are tweaks that we might want to be making to existing roles? Or what are new roles that we might want to go to senior leadership to propose to receive funding for to just better meet those student needs?
And so that’s something that I think that leaders should always be thinking about is how are we evolving the position descriptions within our departments and thinking about our staffing needs? I also think about… Thinking about just what is the plans of our current staff? I think that we’re a field that has had, especially in our more entry level role, significant turnover. And so really thinking about what is it about those roles that we can be adapting to maybe retain folks longer in those positions. And so that’s the first thing, and that I think is just something that’s ongoing, whether you’re in an active recruitment cycle or not are things to be considering.
Dustin Ramsdell:
No, I think that’s really good because to me, from what you’re saying, that’s like a throughline… The entirety of what you’re doing day to day, what do our residents, our students need, our student leaders and how do we train ourselves to give everybody what they need and what they’re looking for, what’s relevant to them and all of that. But one thing that I’m curious about specifically is on literally the recruitment piece of getting the word out, getting it out to more different kinds of people to have diverse student staff and everything, I guess on that one point, because I’d imagine just where there’s been a lot of change ever since I was an RA.
So anything that you could speak to about a successful strategy when it comes to literally trying to get the word out, get it out to different kinds of people, how much of it is still analog or tapping people on the shoulder kind of thing or doing things through other platforms, I guess any reflections on changes over time there that you’ve experienced or just what you’d recommend to folks in terms of that kind of student staff recruitment piece?
Brittany McDaniel:
I think that really thinking about your marketing strategy across campus is key. And so that’s both the old school, the flyering, the tabling maybe of getting the word out. But I think also being intentional, working with student org advisors to be able to go to org meetings or to go to cultural… If you have cultural houses on campus to be able to go to those houses and being able to explain what the RA role is, answer their questions, talk about how it fits into their overall collegiate experiences one way to go about recruiting.
I think what I like about in my experiences of being able to go to orgs is that you’re in an environment where students might be a little bit more comfortable in asking those questions because they’re with other students that they feel are likely to feel more comfortable with. And so I think that those can be a great alternative or a great add-on to even info sessions, which I know that those are also a popular approach to do.
Also, when I think about student staff recruiting specifically, what I really like to do too is think about how are we promoting it within the hall? So it’s outside of just the flyering and the tabling, but it doesn’t really… It kind of speaks to the shoulder tapping, but it’s like having RAs go up to those students who might not otherwise see themselves as leaders and say like, “Hey, I really think you should apply. Here’s a QR code.” Or, “Why don’t we all have this session where we can sit down and walk through the application together once again in that smaller, more intimate environment?”
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, because that’s, for me, that was how I became an RA was the individual invitation versus it just being like, “Well, hey, anybody could come out to an info session. Well, hey, we put flyers up. Everybody can see them.” That sort of resting on your laurels of like, “Well, this is a good opportunity. We put the word out there. So if they want to apply, anybody can apply,” but then you may end up still just getting the folks who would feel more archetypal RA reaching out. But I do like that idea of the just shoe leather politicking of just pounding the pavement, getting out there, going out to student org meetings and different places and spaces to at least put a personal face that you maybe at least then say, “If you do have questions, come ask me or something.” Versus it being like… And this maybe harder or easier I guess, depending on the institutional context.
But I think there just being a lot of value in that personal touch to all of this to try to make sure that you’re doing all that you can to cultivate a diverse staff. Because I think what I’ve been grateful to see too is folks with an experience like this, it’s a very impactful opportunity. Becoming an RA is recognizing who are the individuals that I think would do a good job but just get a lot out of the job versus it being the high achieving like, “Well, I’m an OL, I’m an RA, I’m a student club president and this that, the other and whatever.” And it’s like, “Cool, I’m sure you would do an amazing job, but also there’s this person over here who has no leadership opportunities to step up and find their voice and their leadership style and all that.” And giving them that chance to grow and blossom and flourish and things. And I think you make your job easier there getting exposure into more different areas and adding that personal touch, I think.
Brittany McDaniel:
Yeah, and I think what you hit on is so important to keep in mind. It’s this mentality that some students have about, “How can I secure as many leadership opportunities as possible?” As doing your bingo card. And I think that as the hiring managers of being conscious of that, of is that something that could be a factor in why certain people are applying and is that going to result in us having somebody who is doing the RA role, which is a very hard role to do, with the right intent?
Dustin Ramsdell:
And the last thing I’m thinking of here before we start to wind down is because I think staff practices… I think the two big buckets are how are you recruiting a strong diverse team and then managing expectations, performance management, those sort of things. So any thoughts generally on that and ways that… Because I guess for me it’s showing a level of care, of taking it seriously, holding people accountable, consequences, all those sort of things. Because I [inaudible 00:21:14] it’s as much as we’d want for residents and roommate situations or whatever… Follow through and live out your values, whatever else. So any reflections and advice sort of things on that front of what I feel like is the other big piece of this pie is the performance management aspect of how you oversee and lead your teams.
Brittany McDaniel:
Really when you think about performance management, it starts even before somebody is hired. It’s about really throughout the recruiting process, really communicating what are your departmental and institutional values? What is it like to work within your department and larger institution? And really giving the candidate ample opportunity to ask all their questions to really understand, especially if it’s a live-on role, what is it going to be like to live where you work?
Because once again, each institution is just going to be so different in terms of what that environment is going to be like. And so I think that that’s really where it starts because it’s you showing that transparency to the candidates. I think it continues once you hire somebody thinking about the pre-boarding communication. How are you making sure that they have what they need so they can have a successful transition into your organization?
I think it’s human nature to have a lot of questions before you start a new role especially if you’re operating your life. And so making sure that folks feel really good with what they’re coming into. Because I think that when you are able to create that sense of comfort and that openness, that’s going to ultimately contribute to their ability to some extent, to do good work for the department.
And then I think that that continues on through the onboarding and training process, really thinking critically about who are you connecting with them with? How are you ensuring that within the first week, few weeks, several months, they’re getting trained on the systems that they need to understand that they’re learning the unwritten norms of what it means to work at your institution? Because it just all goes back to those pieces of… I think that on paper we can see that somebody is going to do a good job, but it’s really about helping to set up the stage so that way that they’re able to come into your specific organization and thrive in the work that they’re doing.
And so that’s also thinking about what is your working relationship going to be like? What are their needs in setting those expectations? And accountability is part of it, but accountability comes from the beginning of being able to be very explicit and sharing with somebody, “Here’s what you can expect. Here’s how you’re going to know if you didn’t meet my expectations. Here are the things that I promised.” I think that all those communication pieces are just so critical in terms of supporting performance management of those that work for you. And then checking in. It’s an ongoing conversation, so it’s always seeing how they’re doing what questions they have and figuring out how can we continue to add to the experience?
Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, I like so much of what you said there because I think the sort of pre-work in a sense of… Even just during an interview making things very clear of, “This is how we do it.” And somebody might be like, “Oh, okay, I don’t want to work there.” And it’s like, “Great, you saved us both time and all that.” But I think it’s… You’d want to just be able to be clear about how you operate, expectations and all that. Because I think sometimes it is where just too little of that happens or things just aren’t clear and you only end up articulating things or enforcing them when somebody steps out of line or makes some sort of mistake, it’s just like, “Hey, well that’s not how we do it here.” And it’s just like, “Well, I would not have done it if I have known that that was the case. You just didn’t really do a good job of making that clear.”
And it’s those sort of pieces of how much you can start planting seeds early. And I think across our whole conversation, I feel like a lot of this… Depending on where your vantage point and your team could apply to student staff or professional staff. We went with professional staff, I think, for this example. But a lot of it could definitely cross-pollinate.
But the other piece that really resonated with me was what you’re speaking to of the ongoing nature of… And I think it’s just obviously the vernacular is where people, I think, get very limited in their perspective. But training and onboarding a person can really take months to do. And you have to take that approach of… Cool, yeah, you maybe have this intensive of two weeks of here’s all these documents and sessions that you’re doing and whatever else, but then you’re still doing everything for the first time in your first year.
So recognizing that, appreciating that, and just hopefully empowering whoever someone’s manager is to have the mindset of getting in their shoes for a bit and maybe walking along them in their journey and to use that as maybe the context for how you’re supporting someone in their development in the particular position at that particular institution or just knowing, “Well, typically in month three, we like to just make sure that we review this particular platform. You’re probably using it more for your day-to-day work, so we’re going to give that a little bit more emphasis.”
But I think, yeah, both really good points of not just sort of looking at something as, “Well, we hired you. We trained you over two weeks and now best of luck, and we’ll bring the hammer down if you make a mistake and articulate expectations at that point.” It should be a longer continuum of things and I think would be honestly kind of empowering for people to look at it that way versus the feeling like, “Oh my God, if I don’t get to into that two weeks, I could never get to it again,” or whatever.
So to put a nice fine point on this as we start to wind down, what makes all of this work so important from your perspective? Because I think a lot of people may understand conceptually, “Yeah, training is important, all that,” but do you maybe just from a motivational point of view… What inspires you when it comes to this kind of work? What makes it so important?
Brittany McDaniel:
Yeah, I think just remembering that every single hiring decision is ultimately a student success decision. So we are hiring people to do a specific role with the intent that they’re going to support our students. And so I think it’s just so important that we’re leading with empathy, that we’re really designing our employee experience very intentionally and recognizing that our staff are people too. And so being able to pour into them and make sure that they have what they need so that way they can do good work.
Dustin Ramsdell:
That’s a very powerful and succinct way to put that because I think it’s stuff like this of your budget is where you live at your values kind of thing. Similarly, I guess to this conversation, the idea of where you put your emphasis, your perspective, your time, your focus, all of this is a student success decision. Who are you hiring? How many people are you hiring? Are you going to backfill for a position if they leave and all that.
It’s like, “Well, you thought initially that that community deserved to have a dedicated full-time staff member just being like, “I don’t know, we’ll just have one person over two buildings or whatever.” It’s like, well, you’re not really living out your values very well if you’re just saying, “No, no, it’ll be fine. We can just stretch somebody over or whatever.” So I think, yeah, it is really important to center yourself on understanding that all these kind of conversations and decisions and structures that you’re making are going to have a direct impact on the student experience and student success. So for this one, I’ll break this apart. Just make sure if there are any resources and advice, start with resources, stuff we could link out to in the show notes, anything that you would like to refer people to go check out to keep their learning going on this topic.
Brittany McDaniel:
So a couple come to mind. So I think D’Najah Thomas is the director of the Placement Exchange, and she’s done phenomenal work in the past couple of years to really rebrand the Placement Exchange. I think it’s a great resource to not just go and post your jobs and recruit, but I think they’ve really added a lot of quality content around employer resources and what to think about when you’re recruiting, but then also too on the job seeker side, resources to support them in their process as well.
And so I think that that’s an excellent resource that’s also… It caters a little bit more specifically to our work in res life. I came to the podcast game late, and so I’ve just started to get into podcasts probably in the past year or so, and there are two podcasts that I really enjoy listening to.
One is I Hate it Here podcast. It’s a podcast that’s focused on HR practices. And the purpose of the podcast… I’m giving it away… Is that it’s a common across many industries… It’s a common thought of people will say that they don’t like working where they’re working, but it’s really thinking about the HR work through the lens of how are we starting to shift that and what are we doing within our roles to better support our employees? And then SHRM, which is the Society for Human Resource Management, has a few different podcast series that I recommend listening to and they’ve had a few different episodes that speak specifically to thinking about marketing strategy, recruitment, and then also onboarding practices.
Dustin Ramsdell:
Awesome. Good stuff. I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes in the description and blog post for this episode for folks to check out. But I will give you the floor to wrap up the episode here. Final thoughts, final piece of advice to end the episode with.
Brittany McDaniel:
Yeah, I think you said it so well a little while ago, Dustin, is just the idea of… I think that we do so much in our work. The school year starts and we get going and it can be very… We can very quickly get wrapped up in so many different things, but to remember that for many of us… And I think that there’s a significant shift. We used to onboard high numbers during the summer now is happening throughout the year, but really starting to understand that onboarding, especially for our professional staff, it takes the first year. And so it’s not a two week process.
It’s really about doing your best to build it out very intently. What does that onboarding process look like over the course of 90 days, six months, nine months into a year, and having a solid structure that you can commit to following as well as those on your team also follow. I think that that’s just something that I know I can lose sight of, but I think it’s just so critical in terms of supporting staff retention.
Dustin Ramsdell:
And I think it’s even just keeping that North Star, something you aspire to, and work towards. And I think it is an important core to this not to overlook the idea of somebody going through all the things for the first time, and that if you’re not guiding it may be that somebody’s veering off the path that you have in your mind, and then it could just take so much time to get them back on course. And it’s just like, “Okay, earnestly. I wasn’t trying to do things wrong or whatever else, but I just didn’t have the guidance.”
So as much as you can cultivate your new folks staying on the path that you want them to, whatever form it takes, because I can imagine, yeah, you maybe do group sessions or something to keep people up to speed on things or maybe put it more on individual managers, and you have people that are structuring that and giving folks the tools to do that or something like that. There’s a lot of ways to do this from just my mindset, sort of what we’re talking about here.
But yeah, I feel like I’ve always had a curiosity to this organizational development kind of work and just how important it is and my own experiences and just observing how some organizations do it better than others. And so I hope that folks will keep the conversation going, connect with you, check out the resources, and take inspiration from all the different things that we’ve talked about here, because I feel like it was sort of soup to nuts of everything from that initial telling touch point someone to apply through the end of their first year.
There’s a lot that you can be doing to make a really positive impact on their individual experience as a staff member, but then obviously ultimately on the success of your students that you were serving. So all really great stuff and of ways to connect with you and the resources and everything again in the show notes for this episode. So just thank you so much for hanging out, for sharing all that you did and for all the great work that you do.
Brittany McDaniel:
Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.
