In the “Cleveland Harp” thread on the “Auditions” forum, Charles Noble gave some extremely good ideas:
- having orchestras post onto their website audition proceedures as spelled out in their CBA
- trying to get advanced info about whether or not current or acting orchestra members are candidates BEFORE deciding to audition (and potentially to spend money) for said job.

Knowledge is power. The more information people have in the audition process, the more confident they will be if/when they decide to actually attend the audition, especially if it involves spending their own money. And this board is/can be an important part helping to enable that.

So in an effort to be as constructive as possible, I've chatted with my wife (the HR consultant), and she suggested that perhaps it may be helpful to current and future visitors of this site if I/we started to compile the following:

Procedural questions to ask and things to consider before deciding to audition in a given orchestra:
1) Is it possible to get a copy of the orch's Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)? if so, thoroughly read all provisions regarding auditions.

2) If not, be sure to get answers to as many of the following questions as possible:
- To begin with, why is the chair open? Did someone retire? Did they quit for other reasons? If so, what were they? Did they not get tenure? Were they fired for any other reason?
- How many rounds of auditions are there?
- How many people are on the audition committee? Who are they? What sections are they in?
- How does one advance from round to round? What are there a minimum number of votes to advance and/or reject a candidate to the next round?
- Are committee members allowed to discuss the candidate's performance before, during, or after the audition (or none of the above)? Does this change from round to round?
- After the finals, how many candidates does the committee have to "qualify"? If the answer is "none," are there any provisions to continue the audition process? How many candidates can they "qualify?" If more than one, do they have to rank-order the candidate?
- When does the Music Director get involved? What role does he have, if any, in hiring candidates?
- If the committee "qualifies" any candidates, is the Music Director required to hire one of them, or does he/she still have the right to hire nobody?
- Are there any provisions for the orchestra, the audition committee, or the Music Director to consider any candidates outside of the open audition process? If so, what are they?
- Once a candidate is "qualified,” how long are they eligible for a job offer without auditioning again? Are there any "qualified" candidates who are already qualified through some other process who are eligible to be considered? If so, who are they?
- Are there different rules for "qualifying" current orchestra members? How about for "qualifying" acting and substitute players?
- What are the tenure requirements? How long before one is eligible for tenure? Who decides whether someone gets tenure or not?
- What percentage of people hired by the orchestra end up getting tenure?
- Is there a possibility to offer someone an "acting" limited-time position instead of the permanent tenure-track position? If so, how often is an "acting" position offered after auditions instead of the permanent position?
- Are there provisions for trial weeks to be offered before a job offer (permanent or acting) is given? If so, what are they?
- Are screens used? At which rounds are they used? Are there any circumstances where the typical rules change? (e.g. finals don’t typically have screens unless someone currently in the orchestra is involved)
- Is there any mechanism to receive comments or criticism about one’s audition? If so, when is it given? By whom? What kind of information can be given, and what is off limits?

I’m sure I’m forgetting many other important issues, and I think it would great if other people add to this list.

The answers to these questions – even if no answer is given or the answer is, “Sorry, can’t/won’t tell you that – should be ultimately be as vital to someone’s decision to go after an audition as their distinct ability, talent, and experience on their given instrument.

For myself it's more important to ask about such things that: Do I get a private warm-up room? For how long? When can I get in to the hall? How many candidates do you expect? May I try to play in the actual audition room before? How are temperature/humidity conditions there? What are the acoustics like? Possible to buy food in the same building or nearby during waiting time? Long walk from warm-up room / dressing room to audition room? Other things going on in the building at the same time which may cause lots of people around / security issues?

...or, simply: Let's just train ourselves to play our best in any given strange circumstance, temperature, acoustics, noise, small or big jury, open or screen, and with any kind of screen.... after all, we want to show the orchestra that we are able to play well anywhere, anytime, don't we?

I would also ask if there is more than one round going on at once? I went to one audition where two committees were running auditions in two different rooms. I was paraded through the backstage area to the other audition space in my clunky boots while someone else was playing their audition on stage. It was very unnerving to say the least.