What Frustrates Coaches Most During a Search?

SPECIAL GUEST POST FROM DAN CHRISTENSEN 

Not every candidate is going to enjoy the outcome of a coaching search.

Someone is going to get the job. Most people will not.

There will be difficult decisions, delays, HR requirements, committee schedules, reference checks, and circumstances that athletic directors cannot completely control.

So the goal of a good search process cannot be to make every candidate happy.

But it should be to avoid unnecessarily frustrating good candidates along the way.

As part of our 2026 College Coaching Job Search Study, we asked coaches an open-ended question:

“What frustrates you the most when you go through a search?”

Because respondents were not choosing from a list, the themes that emerged are particularly interesting.

The most common frustrations were:

• Poor communication and a lack of updates
• Lack of transparency, honesty, or clarity
• Slow, delayed, or drawn-out processes
• Predetermined searches
• Too many steps, repetitive interviews, or unnecessary hoops
• Unclear expectations or uncertainty about what the institution actually wants

Other recurring concerns included unclear salary and resources, committees that did not understand the sport, overemphasis on resume pedigree, lack of professionalism, and little or no feedback after rejection.

The bigger story, though, is not six separate complaints. It is uncertainty.

Candidates can handle waiting better than silence

Communication was easily the most common frustration.

Coaches described applying and hearing nothing, interviewing and receiving no follow-up, being given a timeline that passed without an update, or finding out through social media that someone else had been hired.

The lesson is not that athletic directors must make decisions immediately. Searches take time.

A president may need to approve something. HR may slow the process. Another finalist may not be available until next week. The committee may need another meeting.

Candidates generally understand that.

What is harder to understand is silence.

There is a significant difference between waiting two weeks after being told:

“We still have two interviews remaining, and I expect to update you by next Friday.”

and waiting two weeks wondering whether anyone remembers you interviewed.

In fact, when communication, transparency, and timeline concerns were grouped together, nearly two-thirds of the usable responses raised some version of the same problem: candidates did not know what was going on.

A simple update often solves much of that.

Transparency means more than sending emails

The second-largest frustration was a lack of transparency, honesty, or clarity.

Some of that involved the search process itself.

But coaches were also talking about the job.

What is the actual salary? What is the program budget? What staffing support will I have? What are the weaknesses of the program? What does the institution expect? How healthy is the institution?

Those questions have appeared repeatedly throughout our study.

So an athletic director can communicate frequently and still frustrate candidates if every conversation provides vague answers.

There are certainly things that cannot be disclosed immediately. Some information is confidential. Some details should wait until a candidate reaches a particular stage. That is reasonable.

But there is also a difference between confidentiality and avoidance.

If you can share something that materially affects whether a candidate would want the job, consider when in the process it should be shared.

The goal should be to avoid having a finalist discover something during the last conversation that realistically would have caused them to withdraw during the first one.

A long search is not automatically a bad search

Nearly 15% specifically mentioned delays, long gaps, changing timelines, or drawn-out processes.

Some of this is unavoidable.

College searches involve multiple stakeholders, and athletic directors do not control everyone’s calendar.

The compromise is predictability.

If you believe the process will take six weeks, tell candidates six weeks.

If something changes, update them.

If you promised an update Tuesday and now know you will not have one until Friday, send a short note Tuesday.

It may seem insignificant from inside the search committee.

It does not feel insignificant to the candidate checking their phone while also trying to manage their current team, current employer, family, and other potential opportunities.

Make sure every stage has a reason

About 9% of respondents complained about unnecessary hoops: too many rounds, repetitive questions, excessive application requirements, assignments, or meetings that did not seem to accomplish much.

This does not mean candidates expect to be hired after one 30-minute Zoom call.

A thorough search is often appropriate.

But every stage should answer a question.

What are we trying to learn in the first interview? What are we trying to learn in the second? Why are we asking for this presentation? Why does this person need to meet another committee?

If Round 4 largely repeats Rounds 1 through 3, the problem may not be that the search needs fewer steps. The problem may be that the institution has not clearly defined what each step is supposed to accomplish.

That preparation should happen before candidates enter the process.

Predetermined searches create a different problem

More than one in ten respondents independently mentioned searches they believed were predetermined, built around an internal candidate, or conducted primarily to satisfy a requirement.

There are realities here too.

Sometimes there is a strong internal candidate.

Sometimes institutional policies require a broader search.

And sometimes an internal person ultimately wins a legitimate competition.

Candidates understand that losing to an internal candidate does not automatically mean the search was unfair.

The frustration comes when they believe they were asked to invest hours preparing, interviewing, traveling, and involving their families when they never had a realistic opportunity.

Athletic directors should protect the credibility of the process.

If you are conducting a search, conduct a genuine one.

Give candidates a legitimate evaluation.

Avoid asking external candidates to perform unnecessary work simply to create the appearance of competition.

And if circumstances change during a search, communicate what you reasonably can.

A candidate may be disappointed by the outcome and still respect the institution if the process felt legitimate.

Know what you are hiring for before you start interviewing

Another recurring frustration was that some institutions appeared unclear about what they actually wanted.

Candidates noticed shifting expectations, vague priorities, inconsistent questions, or a position that seemed different later than it did when they applied.

Sometimes that is not an intentional lack of transparency.

The school may simply not have decided what success in the position looks like.

Before posting the job, athletic directors should be able to answer a few basic questions:

What are the three biggest priorities for the next coach? What needs to be different two or three years from now? Which qualifications are truly essential? What resources will the coach have? What expectations are realistic given those resources?

A clearer search on the institution’s side usually creates a clearer experience for the candidate.

Why this matters beyond candidate feelings

This is not primarily about keeping candidates happy.

It is about keeping good candidates interested.

Another question in our study found that 62% of respondents had experienced a search where the way the process was managed caused them either to become significantly less interested or withdraw entirely.

Nearly 24% had actually withdrawn.

That changes the conversation.

Poor communication and disorganization are not merely candidate pet peeves.

They can shrink your candidate pool.

And the people most capable of walking away may be some of your strongest candidates—the coaches who have good current situations or other options.

You cannot control everything. You can control more than you think.

A search will not always move as quickly as candidates want. You cannot always disclose everything. You cannot give extensive personal feedback to hundreds of applicants. And occasionally institutional procedures will make the process more cumbersome than you would design it yourself.

But athletic directors can usually control some basic things.

Set a realistic timeline rather than an optimistic one. Update serious candidates when that timeline changes. Share meaningful information as candidates advance. Design each interview stage with a purpose. Notify people when they are no longer being considered. Be honest about the strengths and limitations of the opportunity. And make sure the process you are asking candidates to invest in is a genuine one.

None of those practices guarantee that candidates will like your decision.

That is not the standard.

The standard is whether they can leave the process, even disappointed, believing they were treated professionally, given honest information, and respected for the time they invested.

The clearest message from these responses may be a simple one:

Clarity builds trust.

And in a competitive coaching search, trust may help keep a great candidate interested long enough for you to have the opportunity to hire them.