Successful recruiting has a lot in common with marketing. Companies advertise by pursuing the demographic with an interest in their product. Companies expand that demographic by generating goodwill and trying to make new demographics feel a need or a desire for items, which quite frankly, they never felt a need for before. Thus, we can eat at Subway because it tastes good or because we can be like Jarrod and lose a lot of weight.
“A successful recruiting program must do two things. First, it must identify and reach people who have a propensity to officiate. Second, it must increase the public’s propensity to officiate. In other words, it must make more people want to officiate.”
1. Identify and Reach People Who Have a Propensity to Officiate
Information is the key. Associations must determine which groups of people have a propensity to officiate in their area.
Associations could poll their new recruits and determine their age, their profession, how they found out about the association’s training program and whether they were recruited through an organized association recruiting program, through contacts with an individual official, through an advertisement, through playing or coaching in a league the association serviced or through some combination of those factors.
Current members can provide vital information, too. Associations should poll current members to find out how old they were when they first joined the association, how they got started officiating and what led them to join their current association.
Associations can use that information to determine what types of people have a propensity to become officials. Associations also can find out what types of people in underrepresented groups have a propensity to officiate. Then associations can create plans to target those types of people with a propensity to officiate, leading to more efficient recruiting.
Maybe you’ll find you should target parents with athletes and people in mid-life whose children have left home. Indeed, many recruiting programs solely focus on players, former players, and intramural programs.
However, an association facing a shortage of officials may do well to consider pursuing older people by reaching out to parents, by recruiting business people who have some flexibility in their schedule — such as insurance agents, lawyers, real estate agents and investment professionals — and even by recruiting experienced doctors and dentists (who often have some control over their schedule).
2. Increase the Public’s Propensity to Officiate
Associations must also constantly work to increase the number of people who are interested in officiating. That work involves building goodwill and exposing people to officials and the officiating avocation. The benefits are long-term as the work will gradually increase the number of future prospects, but it isn’t likely to have immediate results.
The public is more likely to empathize with and be interested in a profession when they know people they like or respect, who are involved in that profession. Clearly, associations must expose people to officials. Associations also must take steps to humanize officials.
Associations should expose parents, coaches, and players to officials away from the games. Preseason and midseason question-and-answer sessions with parents, and access to high school and even middle school gym classes are easy starters. Charity events hosted by officiating associations and social events for league participants can open doors and increase dialogue. However, officials can do more.
Associations can inform the media that the police officer who did exceptional work is also a sports official, for instance. Similarly, the lawyer on a big case, the exceptional teacher in a classroom and the recognizable local insurance agent can be promoted for their officiating. People should know that there’s a real, valuable contributing member of society behind the umpire’s mask or encased in the referee’s stripes.
Finally, associations can use local newspapers or television programs to visibly demonstrate a local official’s day, starting with her regular job and moving to her commute to the gym, her pregame session with her partner and finally to the game itself. The key to increasing the public’s propensity to officiate is to expose the public to officials by marketing the special people who make up our avocation.
3. Close the Deal
There’s no sense in marketing officiating if local associations can’t retain their new members. It is imperative that every association develop a retention program and help to keep officials wanting to come back year after year.
Retention programs are like “onboarding” at the workplace for new employees. They have defined steps that a new official goes through that will help reduce or eliminate the factors that might cause them to leave.
They can include, but are not limited to, combating the following reasons officials quit:
- The “old boys club” effect that makes new and younger officials, women and minorities, feel unwelcome in an established association.
- Lack of proper rules and mechanics training that makes a new official feel unprepared for their assignments.
- Absence of a mentor that can impart lessons learned through experience and be a sounding board for the new official’s questions and concerns.
- Lack of tools to deal with verbal comments from coaches and fans and the skills to defuse tense situations.
- No clear path for advancement to higher levels or more prestigious assignments, depending on the new official’s goals.
Finding ways within your association to eliminate or reduce the impacts of the list above can go a long way to keeping the officials you gain through better promotion and visibility of your members.
