5 Ways to Make Time For Recruiting in 2017!

[trx_quote cite="#" title="Mandy Green"]Recruiting quality student athletes is vital to the continued or future success of our program. Recruiting is and should be a priority, so we need to find a way to give it the time it deserves.[/trx_quote]

5 Ways to Make Time For Recruiting in 2017!

I am 100% guilty of not making recruiting a priority at times.  I would get into the office and then get busy doing other things and would tell myself that “I will do it later.”  I would fit in a few minutes in here or there but at the end of the day, I would leave the office feeling guilty because I knew that I didn’t make any significant progress.
Can you relate?
It is easy to get lost in all of the details of what we do day-to-day.  But for all of us, obviously recruiting quality student athletes is vital to the continued or future success of our program. Recruiting is and should be a priority, so we need to find a way to give it the time it deserves.
As I have been reading about and applying different time management techniques over the last 8+ years, some methods have worked better than others.
Here are 5 most effective things that I have done to make time for recruiting.  Depending on your work hours and situation, maybe some or all of these could help.

1. Start my day earlier.  Instead of waiting to do it when I got into the office, I woke up early and got at least 1 hour of pure recruiting work done before I got into the office.  It was quiet and there were no interruptions so I was able to work for a solid chunk of time and cranked out a ton of emails. It felt great walking into the office for the day knowing that I had already gotten a good amount of recruiting done.

2. I worked from a different location. Depending on the week and how much there was to do, I figured out which were my least busy days and times around the office and went and worked from home or in a coffee shop for a solid block of time.  I was having a hard time making any significant progress in my recruiting when I was only doing it for a few minutes here and there in between 4,000 other things that needed to get done. Going somewhere different where I couldn't be interrupted and was able to work for solid blocks of time was really helpful.

3. I made a long list of everything that had to get done with recruiting.  I figured out what I HAD to do, then I found people to delegate the rest to.  I’ve hired students through work study to do my database entry.  I have gotten my communication majors do our social media for a class project.  I have had to get creative here because my 1st 3 years here at South Dakota I didn't have a full-time assistant.  There was a lot of work to do so I had to think outside the box and go find help with the resources I had on campus.

4. I created systems or checklists for almost everything.  I have checklists for what needs to get done on on-campus visits, recruiting phone calls, game day, preseason, travel, after season meetings, the spring season, etc.  It takes longer, the work doesn't get done as well, things get forgotten, and it is mentally exhausting when you always trying to remember things because you only have everything up in your head.  Get your standard operating procedures out of your head and down on paper.  When you can get those things running smoother, it will free up a lot more time to do recruiting as well.

5. I time tracked what I was actually doing during the day.  From when I started working to when I finished for the day, I wrote down everything I did and for how long I did it.  It was annoying to do for the 2 days that I did it but I was shocked at how much time I was wasting doing unnecessary things and how little time I was allowing for things I know would help grow my program. I tweaked a lot of things from that one exercise and made myself take control of my day better.

I did all of these things above because I was tired of being tired and stressed out about not getting enough recruiting done. As you may have noticed, doing all of these things above required me to change how I was currently working.
It was really hard a few years ago to make changes to how I was working because I was used to doing things a certain way.  But now, I don't think twice about it.
My program is so much better now because I am working on my program, and not just being busy working in my program.
How do you make time for recruiting?  Email me at [email protected] and let me know.  I love hearing all of the ways that everybody else is staying organized and focused on the right things.