...I can speak from experience within the last 10 years.

I was at a rural 3A school within a reasonable (by TX standards) driving distance to a metropolitan area. I got the green light to hire an assistant. We were located 15 miles from one of our more prominent schools of music. I went to the band director at said school about advertising the position, and he refused to help us out and let his graduates know about a position practically on their doorstep. I asked to know why as a new graduate needs to get as many interviews as possible.

This is what he said...to my face:

"You don't understand, I don't care about small school programs. This is about me getting the graduates into the *big* schools. That makes our program look good."

Projection? Isolated incident? Doubt it.

With that said, I'm not so jaded that I think this happens everywhere (although I think it happens much more frequently than people are willing to admit) as a day or two later, a new graduate sent me their resume from another prominent music school about an hour to our south....actually in the metropolitan area that we were close to. Her school of music had no problem advertising my open position when I asked them to help spread the word. Hired them in the interview. A very good hire. She took over the program when I retired...still doing a fine job.

Funny thing, the college director that dissed me to my face couldn't figure out why I stopped asking his staff to clinic my bands (they never did...now I know why), or attending his pre-UIL marching contests; after all, we were "just down the road" from him (apparently he cared about our money).

And, yes, there are candidates who have to limit their job search for legitimate reasons; that's been true since the beginning of time. However, I find it difficult to believe that there are that many people in that situation that it puts rural schools in a bind finding directors. Administrators crying "Teacher Shortage" is a much more recent thing...and I don't buy that either. I retired two years ago, and my school was letting teachers out of their contracts left, right, and center without much issue. If there was such a shortage of teachers, no school would dare release faculty so freely.