Providing Insights on Leadership and Success. Coach Bechler is a John Maxwell Leadership Team Member.
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Hiring a college coach is one of the most important decisions an athletic director makes.
It is also one of the easiest decisions to misread.
Not because athletic directors are careless. Most are not. They work hard, ask thoughtful questions, involve key people, and carry the weight of knowing how much the hire matters.
But coaching searches are difficult because the most visible parts of a candidate are not always the most predictive.
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Many coaches assume the hiring process starts when the interview begins.
Athletic Directors would tell you it starts much earlier.
It starts the moment they open your resume and cover letter.
And whether you realize it or not, they are asking one central question:
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When coaches prepare for interviews, they often focus on:
All important.
But based on our recent research at Bechler Leadership, they’re not the primary focus.
We asked Athletic Directors a simple question:
“What’s a favorite interview question you ask when hiring a coach?”
The answers told a very different story.
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In college athletics, most coaches believe the hiring process starts when they submit an application or land an interview.
In reality, it starts much earlier.
By the time a search officially begins, athletic directors and search committees often already have a working list of candidates in mind. That list is shaped by reputation, relationships, trajectory, and trust, not just resumes.
If you want to become a serious candidate for jobs, you have to think beyond just applying to a ton of opportunities.
You have to position yourself.
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Every coach wants to know the same thing going into an interview:
“What actually separates candidates?”
Not in theory. Not in a generic “be yourself” sense.
But in real search rooms…what do Athletic Directors actually notice?
As part of our recent national coaching search study at Bechler Leadership, we asked Athletic Directors a simple but revealing question:
“What have candidates done to stand out during the interview process?”
Their answers were consistent, and instructive.
While many things matter in a search, three themes rose clearly above the rest.
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There’s a hard truth in the college athletics hiring process that many coaches underestimate:
You are being evaluated long before the interview.
In fact, based on our recent study of Athletic Directors, many candidates never even make it to that stage, not because of experience, but because of what shows up (or doesn’t show up) in their resume and cover letter.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about signals.
And right now, too many candidates are sending the wrong ones.
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In college athletics, we hold a clear expectation for our coaches:
They recruit.
They don’t sit back and wait for prospective student-athletes to fill out an interest form and hope the right ones show up. They evaluate, build relationships, pursue, and compete for the best possible fit for their program.
Because we all know what happens if they don’t.
The roster suffers. The program plateaus. The results follow.
And yet, when it comes to hiring coaches, many athletic departments take the exact opposite approach.
They post the job. They review the applicants. They hire the best candidate who applied.
No real recruiting. No proactive outreach. No pursuit of the best possible fit.
Just… selection from the available pool.
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At Bechler Leadership, we’ve been studying one simple question with Athletic Directors:
“What’s a favorite interview question you ask when hiring a coach?”
The responses were incredibly revealing, not because of the questions themselves, but because of what sits underneath them.
What became clear very quickly is this:
Athletic Directors are not using interviews to confirm résumés. They are using them to evaluate leadership.
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In college athletics, the on-campus interview is rarely a “final check.” It is a high-stakes, multi-stakeholder audition for leadership.
While your win-loss record and tactical philosophy got you in the door, they won’t necessarily get you the keys to the office. On campus, you are being evaluated by a disparate group of stakeholders, from the Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR) and student life staff to fellow coaches and student-athletes. They aren’t just looking for a coach, they are looking for a brand ambassador, a risk manager, and a coalition builder.
To leave campus as the clear choice, you must shift the room’s perception from “this is a strong candidate” to “this person is already our head coach.”
Here are three essential “Dos” and three critical “Don’ts” to help you command the room and close the deal.
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When I used to do recruiting consulting for college coaches, I always strongly recommended that they develop some kind of detailed grading scale for recruits.
There is certainly a “gut” or “feel” factor when evaluating a player. Experienced coaches often know when someone looks like a good fit.
But when you define categories that matter to you in a recruit, and then numerically grade and rank them, it creates a much more consistent process.