OT- Hiring Committee
 

I've been asked to be on a hiring committee for a university's rec services position which will hire, train, and schedule intramural officials (among many other things for the intramural program that doesn't have to do with officiating. I'm trying to stay somewhat within the spirit of the forum). I'm honored to be invited to join the committee as an outsider to the program. In the past few years, I've helped out training some of the officials and, therefore, the director thought I would be a good addition to the committee to get an outside of the program point of view.

As part of the committee I'm going to be involved with the interview process of the applicants. After a week of thinking about it, I don't really know what to ask of the applicants. The point of me being apart of the committee is to give a critique of the applicants views on hiring, training, and scheduling of officials. I really would like to focus on their views of officiating.

I've come up with a few ideas of things to get a grasp on for each applicant but I feel I'm missing some key things I should touch on. Here are some things I've come up with:

1. What is your personal experience in sports officiating, specifically outside of intramural programs (for example high school officiating)?
2. What is the most personally rewarding aspect of officiating?
3. What are the biggest challenges you have faced with officiating? How were those challenges resolved?
4. When training student officials, what are your primary goals? For instance, do you concentration entirely on rules knowledge and mechanics or touch on other topics?
5. What important traits must a sports official have to succeed?

Any of you have any thoughts on what else should be inquired during the interviews? Thanks for your thoughts

-Josh

Something that might be fairly revealing would be to ask them what questions they would ask of prospective officials. This would give you a good feel for how they view officiating.

If you're ever in the position of hiring someone who will be hiring others, this is pretty standard procedure. I've been involved in hiring sales managers who then, in turn, hire salespeople. I always ask this question of them.

Mark-

I must admit, when I saw you responded I wasn't expecting a serious response. Thanks for the post. Very helpful

-Josh

I think I would focus a bit on how they would teach and evaluate rookie officials. Who would be the likely intramural officials? Probably students with a mix of experience, from varsity players looking to build skills for post-playing days reffing to kids who may have played in HS but who not not only can't make varsity, but are outclassed in college level intramurals. I would want to focus on how the hiring person would train new officials with varying levels of game knowledge so that officiating in the leagues has some measure of consistency.