Too many campus rec professional staff searches still confuse instinct with judgment.
In campus recreation and higher education, we still talk about hiring as if fit were something a committee can sense in the room rather than something a process should define and assess. That approach is outdated, expensive and far too consequential to leave to vague impressions.
We need to move away from hiring on feel and toward hiring for outcomes and attributes. Before a search begins, leaders should be able to answer two simple questions: What are we hiring this person to accomplish, and what attributes will help them succeed in doing it? If we can’t answer those questions clearly, we shouldn’t be surprised when the process becomes muddled, the committee gets divided and the final decision leaves people frustrated.
The strongest searches I’ve led began with clarity.
I outlined the outcomes I wanted the role to deliver and the attributes that would matter most in getting there. I gathered input from colleagues and, over time, folded the committee into a process that had a clear center of gravity. That didn’t make the process rigid; it made it more useful.
Committee members still brought perspective and identified meaningful differences between candidates, but they were doing so against a shared framework rather than reacting to personality, comfort level or interview style.
I saw the value of that approach play out in one search I led. Different members of the committee were drawn to different candidates for very different reasons. Some were responding to how a candidate showed up in the interview, while others were more focused on how each person aligned with the role outcomes and the attributes we had identified in advance. What ultimately mattered was not the disagreement itself, but how the group worked through it.
By returning to the role’s purpose, expected outcomes and evaluation criteria, the committee was able to move from competing impressions to a more aligned decision. That kind of discipline doesn’t eliminate differences in perspective, but it ensures those differences are evaluated against something more meaningful than instinct.
That same framework should also shape the interview itself. Questions should be built around the actual work of the role, not around surprise, performance, or canned notions of who interviews well.
If the job requires thoughtful planning, sound judgment and follow-through, then those are the things the process should test. Too often, we rely on performative prompts or “gotcha” questions that tell us little about how someone will lead a team, manage complexity or solve real problems over time.
This matters even more now because the traits we ought to value are becoming clearer, not fuzzier.
In the age of AI, quick answers are easier to produce than ever. Critical thinking, sound judgment and the ability to apply context still matter. Most professional staff roles aren’t built on improvisation; they’re built on sustained decision-making. Our searches should reflect that reality.
For senior leaders, the implication is straightforward. Define success before you define the process. The goal is not to find the person who felt right in the room. It’s to identify the person most likely to achieve the outcomes the role actually demands. That doesn’t mean reducing candidates to a list of deliverables. It means defining success broadly enough to include what the person must advance and how they’ll strengthen the team around them.
A better hiring process for campus rec professional staff should account for both the work to be done and how the person will contribute to shared ownership, team dynamics and collective effectiveness.
