Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #9: Gill1918 presents Brian Hallett "Decision Matrix for the Recruiting Process"

Transcript

#9: Gill1918 presents Brian Hallett "Decision Matrix for the Recruiting Process" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
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  coaches, for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
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  Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
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  Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
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  you grow as a coach. We'll bring in the once a year
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  track clinic straight to your ears daily.
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  Interested in creating your own episode?
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  Everyone's welcome to participate.
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  Check out the show notes below For more information.
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  Now let's get into today's topic.
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  This is Brian Hallett and today we're going to talk about using
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  a decision matrix to help and help aid in the recruiting
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  process. Again, my name is Brian Hallett.
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  I've attended Kent State University.
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  I've threw on the track team and then post collegiate.
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  I also threw post collegiately. I'm I've worked as a electrical
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  engineer and a systems engineer for the last 22 years.
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  One of the tools that I've learned to use through my time
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  at work is a decision matrix when you have to make a tough
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  decision comparing multiple projects or multiple solution
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  options. So this is a system engineering
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  tool that I think can be applied by high school athletes to try
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  to help them make the best decision for what's best for
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  them as far as which college they attend.
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  So it's going to be a little difficult to describe a
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  spreadsheet through an audio file, but I'll give it a I'll
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  give it a try here. So the way I set this up is I
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  reserve the first 3 columns for the information relating to the
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  school and coach. So I list in columns AB and CI
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  have the school name in column A, the location in column B, and
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  the coach's name in column C. And so that I've populate that
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  down multiple rows. For the last student that I
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  helped use this, they were lucky enough to be trying to decide
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  between 16 different Division One schools.
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  And then I start using the remaining columns to identify
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  different categories. So the categories were ones that
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  the athlete wanted to use to determine what what would be the
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  best choice for them as far as a university, but not just for
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  their throwing program or their throwing career, but as far as
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  make them the most well-rounded person and have the best college
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  experience. So the very first column was
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  labeled degrees, and in that column they were using a scoring
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  system that comes from Six Sigma where your top option or the
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  best option, you score with the number 9.
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  And then your next best option, what you would consider like a
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  second best choice, get scored with a three.
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  If you have an option that's viable, but it might not be
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  preferable, you score that with A1.
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  And then if it is of a poor choice or you feel like it's not
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  well aligned with what you want to do, you score it with a zero.
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  So the athlete that I was helping work on this was
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  interested in a certain type of engineering.
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  So if the school had the specific engineering type they
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  wanted, it was a nine. If they had an engineering type
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  that they felt would be a good fit but wasn't maybe their
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  preferred engineering type, they scored that with a three.
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  If they didn't have engineering, but they had a degree program
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  that was similar to engineering, such as physics, that was scored
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  with A1, and then if they didn't really have a strong STEM
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  background, any type of science or engineering, then it was
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  scored with a 0. So then for each of those
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  schools that went down down the list that this athlete then
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  scored that school with either A9A3A1 or A0.
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  So that's kind of how the scoring down the column goes.
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  The next column was the evaluating the coach.
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  In this case, the highest score of 9 was a coach that had it was
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  currently coaching world class athletes.
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  Scoring was a three. If the coach was scoring
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  athletes that were at the national caliber, the coach got
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  A1. If they were just coaching some
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  emerging athletes, maybe kids with high potential and then the
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  coach got a scored a zero if they had, if we didn't know much
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  about the coaches, current athletes that they were working
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  with. So that was how that column was
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  scored. But then I won't go through all
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  the details for the remaining columns, but another column was
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  the throwing philosophy of the coach.
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  Another column was lifting philosophy, another column where
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  the number of years that that person was at the school.
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  That was a tough one and I'll get later.
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  Later I'll talk about the weighting of each of the
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  columns. You know, with the amount of
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  movement in the coaching profession, it's, it's hard to
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  figure out how how much weight to put on on that particular
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  column. There was also a column for
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  facilities, a column for the city in which the college is
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  located, a column for campus. And the differentiation there
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  is, you know, you're going to spend a lot of time, most of
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  your time on campus, but you also want to feel safe in the
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  city. So that's why they were two
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  different columns there. There's a there was a column for
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  drive time to home that may or may not be important to some
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  folks. There was a column for
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  competition that would be the type of meats that you're going
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  to go to if you attend that university.
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  There was a column for teammates.
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  I think, you know, if when you're evaluating your
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  teammates, those could be your training partners, people you
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  look up to, people that you might seek advice from.
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  Then another column was Track Vibe.
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  Obviously there's some schools that very much support track one
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  schools known as Track Town USA. Then there are other schools
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  where track is definitely the second class citizen compared to
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  the revenue producing sports. So there's that might not be
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  very important and we'll get into that with the waiting, but
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  maybe for some folks it really is important to be in that kind
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  of culture. The another column where
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  internship and Co-op opportunities, that one was
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  again more related to the degree.
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  Another column for dorm living with what your living situation
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  is going to be like at school, particularly the first two
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  years. Another columns off campus
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  living that would be looking forward maybe to the end of your
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  college career. Then there was another column
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  for out of pocket expenses. You that one you folks may have,
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  you may be able to use this to compare for certain for certain
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  athletes, whether they are going to consider D1D2 NIINAIA or
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  Division Three. And it might be very important
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  that that that full red may determine if you can go to
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  school or not or a partial scholarship or if you're able to
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  pay out of pocket. So that that's another column
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  for consideration. And then the last one that I
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  helped this athlete with was the climate.
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  This person did not enjoy a certain type of climate.
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  So it we waited, tried to wait that, wait that column
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  accordingly. So those were all the columns.
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  And so obviously this is a table with a bunch of numbers in it,
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  nines, threes, ones and zeros. We also though wanted to wait
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  the columns according to importance.
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  So this athlete was felt very strongly that the degree that
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  she this he or she was going to get was very important.
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  So in the criteria column, the the weight was a number between
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  zero and one because we're going to use this later in a
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  calculation. So since the degree was
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  important that we used a .9. So that's a very, very heavily
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  weighted column. The, the coaching column for
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  this athlete was also very important.
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  So we had a 0.7. So that would be like a 7 out of
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  10 coaching, you know, I guess each of those columns and there
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  were, there were specific weights given to him.
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  And one column I mentioned previously, like the number of
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  years of the coaches at the school, since we saw that
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  there's a lot of flux in that and that it may or may not be
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  extremely important, we waited that column as less significant.
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  We made that a point too. So only like a 2 out of 10.
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  Other things we did were waited low.
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  Could be like the city, the person we're I was helping work
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  on This felt at the campus was more important to the city.
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  So the city received a score of .3 whereas the campus received a
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  score of .7. We meant I mentioned drive time.
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  This is just individual felt that the distance from home was
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  important. So drive time was a .8 or an 8
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  out of 10. So there were other other
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  columns that were lightly loaded that that track vibe column that
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  I mentioned, they thought that wasn't extremely important.
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  So that was a .3. The dorm living and campus
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  living, they thought that was an important.
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  So those are both 0 point threes or like fraction would be a
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  three out of 10. So each of the columns had their
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  own weight too. So then how do you then you have
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  to use a little calculation at the end.
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  So each each row is a is a school and a coach.
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  And then do you have all these scores for those different
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  columns At the end of the row, we create a a column that I
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  called score. And so the score is going to be
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  the summation of the individual scores in the columns times the
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  waiting at the top of the column.
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  So if this is the part be the part that's difficult to explain
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  verbally, but if you're going to create that formula, it's going
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  to be you're going to use the the equal sign in that score
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  column. And then you're going to do a
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  bracket and you're going to multiply the cell that you're
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  interested in. So this would be the the number
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  associated with with that school and coach for that particular
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  column. And then the asterisk for
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  multiplying. And then you want to use the
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  dollar sign. And then you want to identify
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  that that weighted that weight in the is is the header I made.
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  I put the weights in the very first row at that.
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  So is at the top of the sheet. It was easy to it's easy to
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  manipulate those later than, but you want to use the dollar signs
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  to lock in that that formula and then close the bracket or close
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  the the parentheses and then use a plus sign.
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  So then add the scores to the next column.
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  And then you want to multiply that score by the weight at the
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  top of the column. So use this formula all the way
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  down across all the columns to get a final summation.
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  So you want to sum up all the weights times the waiting that's
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  at that's at the top of the column and then that'll give you
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  an overall score. And then once you do that for
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  the first row, you can just click on the the little box in
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  the bottom right hand corner and drag it down and and then those
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  scores will populate for the entire table.
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  And there's some other neat things you can do in the in
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  Excel, especially if you're trying to compare multiple
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  schools and coaches, is you can highlight that column and apply
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  conditional formatting and use like a, a heat gradient scale
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  where the higher scores are more green and then it gets down to
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  lower scores become red, which be more of a concern.
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  So actually, when I went through this with the athlete, I, I
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  scored it with my understanding of all that information.
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  And then I had the athlete score it with their how they felt the
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  the numbers should be assigned to each of their columns.
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  And we actually got pretty close, pretty similar results,
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  which I thought was was a good indication.
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  So that's really how the the decision matrix works.
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  And like I mentioned that you could use this to compare
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  several schools that are in the same division, while you can
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  even use it to compare schools that are in different divisions
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  because you just have to have a column that represents that
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  weighting of importance to those different divisions.
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  And I know I went quickly through some of those columns
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  and these are things that the athlete was was concerned with
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  or thought were important. So a way to make those to
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  determine which columns to use would be that you could make a
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  concept map. And then in a concept map, you
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  kind of do a, a bubble diagram where you, you have a maybe a
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  main concept, like for example, if the main concept is throwing
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  far like PRS and and records, then you would then away from
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  that bubble, identify bubbles that that directly impact that.
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  So what are things that impact having far throws big PRS,
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  setting records. We came up with, we did this
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  concept map and we, you know, felt the things that were that
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  would impact that we're like the listing program competitions
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  technique. And then you can you can also
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  then adjust the weighting of those those categories and those
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  would those would represent some of that scoring, the weighting
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  of the columns. Then you have like secondary
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  concepts that can also feed in feed into those those concepts.
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  It's just a way to write down and try to get like this, this
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  mapping of what's, what's important to, to consider.
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  So I know that's really, really difficult to explain in an audio
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  file. And I guess I, I could also
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  maybe make a generic template that folks could use and make
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  that available. If anybody is, is interested,
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  you could reach out to me on the on X or formally Twitter.
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  My, my handle's at B Hallett 71. So that's my first initial last
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  name. And then the 71 was my football
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  number in college. So it's B at BHALLE TT71.
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  And then on Instagram it's somewhat similar.
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  It's it's B Hallett under score 7 one.
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  So BHALLETT under score 7/1. Thanks for this opportunity to
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  to share this information. I hope it may help someone.
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  And if you have any more questions about this, please
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  reach out. Have a good day.
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  Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
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  episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
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  It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
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  amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
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  The Gill 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
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  build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
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  heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
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  there. So please get a hold of me,
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  and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
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  will see you tomorrow.