I first heard about this problem in a politically incorrect variation: a tribe chief is given the opportunity to choose a wife from a pool of n women, presented in a random order, one at a time. He can choose any woman, but can't choose a woman who he has already passed up. What's the strategy for the chief to choose the most beautiful wife?
Seriously, if you want to go the accurate route, probably best to pick a specific people where that's what actually happens. Not having done that, the problem as stated advances stereotypes of peoples that are referred to as "tribes" as being primitive and misogynistic.
Perhaps use "nation" instead, or better yet, formulate the problem differently.
Come to think of it, maybe I'd argue even stronger: when I was younger, I had a hard time understanding programming problems that were explained in terms of 'foo / bar' classes or function names. 'Applied' examples with cars and wheels made more sense, even if I could easily have come up with 'not every car has 4 wheels' counterarguments. Nowadays, I like foo / bar better, because they expose the problem directly, without an additional layer of real-world application, but only because I've gotten better at abstract reasoning.
(Aside: This is why I think you should work first, study later. University deals with abstract concepts, but without experience these abstract concepts often mean nothing to you)
What you're describing with the rock star vs incompetent people scenario is about bringing prior knowledge in there. You see a rock star as first candidate. You figure that, in your lineup of 10 people, odds are that no one will be better than that rock star. So you pick him/her.
This makes the theoretical solution at best a kind of intuitive justification in practical settings, but you shouldn't apply it mechanically without using your judgment.
You might also be able to recognize a rock star secretary immediately or recognize obviously incompetent people. There's a competence threshold that's present here and has to be addressed if you dissect the analogy. Going for 'best' here has diminishing returns beyond a certain level of competence. The immediate need to decline/accept also really doesn't make sense if we're trying to explain this with a hiring analogy.
However, the Game of Googol nails it and I really like this approach much better when explaining this problem. It's a game with arbitrary rules so I can't easily use my worldly experience biases to solve the problem.