There was a time in golf's heyday when, once hired, assistants were on a fast track to becoming a superintendent within a year or two, whether they were ready or not. No more.
Turf school enrollment figures are directly tied to the number of golf courses and available head superintendent jobs, both of which have been in decline during the past decade. At any given time, there are more than 100 help-wanted ads on TurfNet. As it turns out, that the prospect of working as a spray tech or assistant for 10-15 years isn't all that attractive.
"We all deal with it. It doesn't matter how good your club is," said Fred Gehrisch, CGCS at Highlands Falls Country Club in Highlands, North Carolina.
Finding a great assistant doesn't have to be a frustrating experience that makes banging one's head against the wall seem inviting by comparison. Gehrisch, who has been a superintendent for 18 years, says superintendents struggling to find assistants should examine how they recruit potential candidates before blaming the system.
"There are a lot of jobs out there, and that's what I am competing against," Gehrisch said. "A lot of the ads I read all the sound the same. They're cookie-cutter: 'Here is the job, here is the course. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.' Hiring an assistant is a sales job in two directions. They have to sell themselves to you, but by God, you better be selling what you have to them. You have to prove that you are just as worthy of their investment in your club. Tell them what you are going to do for them. Tell them that you are going to teach them to be a golf course manager, that you are going to teach them to be a leader. Tell them you are going to take them to trade shows and teach them the business of golf course management. Tell them the club is going to invest in them and their future."
That ad-writing approach worked wonders the last time Gehrisch sought an assistant in June 2015.
His ad, which detailed more about what he was going to do for his assistant than what he expected from a new hire resulted in 20 resumes; some great, some good, some not so good, but 20 nonetheless.
Chris Cowan was just wrapping up his career at North Carolina State University and was fresh off an internship at Pinehurst No. 2 during the concurrent 2014 U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open when he started looking for a job. A native of the Pittsburgh area, Cowan attended high school in North Carolina after his father took a job at a Charlotte bank. He had designs on getting a job in North Carolina or back in western Pennsylvania when Gehrisch's help-wanted ad caught his eye.
"It was more about things not related to the work itself," Cowan recalled. "It was more big-picture stuff. You could tell from the ad he didn't just want someone to come in a couple of times a week to spray and run a crew.
"It was about providing the building blocks to becoming a superintendent; things that were going to pay off for me in the long run. I knew from that add that this was the place where I could turn myself into something if I paid attention and learned."
Of the 20 resumes Gehrisch received for that vacancy, he interviewed five candidates, and very little time was spent with any of them discussing agronomics and the specifics of the job. It was more about seizing another opportunity to sell the club and learning what makes each candidate tick, with questions about what activities they were involved in during high school and what they like to do in their free time.
"Growing grass is the easiest part of what we do," Gehrisch said. "What I wanted to find out was what kind of person they are and are they going to fit into the culture of the club and our department.
"In a nutshell, I wanted to find someone with character and work ethic. I don't think standard agronomy questions are going to tell you that."
They have to sell themselves to you, but by God, you better be selling what you have to them. You have to prove that you are just as worthy of their investment in your club."
Chris Tritabaugh, in his third year as head superintendent at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, which will host The Ryder Cup Matches later this year. Whether it is at Hazeltine, or in his former position at Northland Country Club in Duluth, he looks for the same traits Gehrisch seeks when hiring an assistant. And he found those traits two years ago in Mike Graves, who was an intern at Hazeltine when Tritabaugh was hired in 2013.
"I look for someone who can think for themselves and come up with a solution on their own without coming to me with every little change order," Tritabaugh said. "Are they dependable and do they do quality work?
"Those are things where (Graves) excelled. I give him a spray program for the day, and I won't hear from him the rest of the day. We have a new GPS sprayer. He knows that thing inside out, so if an issue comes up, he knows how to handle it. That's an intangible you can't coach in someone. Either you have that ability, or you don't."
Back at Highlands Falls, Cowan had an interview scheduled with a club in Charlotte the day after he interviewed with Gehrisch, and had interviewed by phone with two other superintendents in the Pittsburgh area. He canceled all of them after spending an arduous, four-hour interview at Highlands Falls.
"It was a different atmosphere," Cowan said. "Fred did a great job of selling the course and the opportunities that would be open to me there. I left that interview with the feeling that I wouldn't find anything better, and that this was the best place for me if I wanted to grow in my career."