The Selection Committee is a group of people who meet to select the best candidate for a position. They review application materials, interview candidates, and make a recommendation to the university’s officers. The deliberations of any Selection Committee are confidential, and members should be prepared to keep their discussions private at all times. The chair of a Selection Committee sets the rules and reminds members of their obligations. This person is also responsible for voting procedures and ensuring that conflict of interest rules are followed.
In addition, it is important that committee members have the time and enthusiasm to participate in this process. Selection errors can be costly and have long-term consequences for the university.
A successful Selection Committee depends on its members being clear about the desired competencies for the position and being able to identify applicants who meet those criteria. It is also necessary for the Selection Committee to develop a consensus on the qualifications of the ideal candidate. This is more likely to occur if the committee invests a significant amount of time and energy in preparation.
The Selection Committee must identify small groups of teams and evaluate each one against the others in a detailed, deliberative manner. The goal is to ensure that each region has a good mix of strong and weak teams, as well as the best possible matchups. The committee is not allowed to move a team from its original seed, but it may change its regional assignments. The committee can do this to help out a region for attendance reasons, reduce travel costs, avoid second-round intraconference matchups or any other reason it sees fit.
If a Selection Committee member or a close family member is compensated by or provides professional services to a school, the member must recuse themselves from deliberations about that school. This includes discussions about the team’s rankings, its potential to win a tournament game and what bowl game it might be assigned to. The committee member must still participate in discussion about other schools, but he or she is not allowed to vote for any of them or answer any questions about those teams.
It is common for a Selection Committee to be divided on its choice of nominees. This is more likely if the committee has not firmly agreed on and properly weighted its ideal candidate profile. One way to mitigate this issue is to use a random ordering when rating and discussing applicants. This eliminates the possibility of “presentation bias,” where a candidate who is evaluated or discussed earlier receives more attention. It is also helpful to have a dedicated meeting room for Selection Committee meetings, as that minimizes the distractions of other university activities and focuses the committee’s attention solely on the deliberation process. Lastly, the Selection Committee should always use a neutral chair, rather than a member of the administration, to ensure impartiality.