How I Made Time for Recruiting During the Season
Mar 28, 2022As the winter sports are in their last month or so and the spring sport seasons have been starting up, I have had a lot of 911 phone calls with coaches these last 2 weeks who are overwhelmed with trying to keep up with their recruiting during their season.
I asked each of them how much time they are spending on it? Not enough was the typical answer that I got.
I can tell you that I was 100% guilty of not making recruiting a priority at times. I would get into the office with the best of intentions to get back on track with it. As always, I would get sidetracked 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 you have to do day-to-day. But for all of us, obviously recruiting quality student athletes is vital to the continued or future success of your 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 10+ years, some methods have worked better than others.
I knew recruiting was important, but ultimately, I wasn’t treating it like it was a top priority because I was choosing to do other things first.
The best advice I can give is to plan ahead and commit to it.
Look at this upcoming week on a calendar. Fill in when you have practice, games, meetings, video sessions, appointments, your kids stuff, etc. Now look at what time you have left that is not blocked off already. Ask yourself, what are your top 3 priorities for this week? Let’s say they are planning training sessions, recruiting, and administrative. How much time do you need? When would be ideal for you to do all of these? Plug them into the calendar and treat these like appointments that you cannot break.
I always liked to do my administrative stuff on Monday so I could get caught up from the weekend’s games, I would proactively take care of all game related logistics for the upcoming weekend, watch all video from the previous weekend, then based on the video, I would plan out the training sessions for the week and get it done with so I didn’t need to worry about it as the week went on. I did nothing with recruiting on Mondays besides moving emails out of my inbox and into the folders that I had created to keep the recruits I was most interested in organized.
Tuesday’s were my recruiting day. I blocked off a big chunk of my Tuesday morning when I knew I had the fewest distractions to work on it. On Monday night, I planned out who I was going to contact based off of the tracking form that I used and batched them into groups based on where they were in the recruiting process, figured out what they were going to get and created a template for it, estimated how much time I would give to each group, and put it into my planner. I NEVER just opened my email and started to respond because I would waste a lot of time and mental energy jumping from one conversation to the next.
Based on the time I had to work on recruiting, I prioritized my time based on the importance of the recruits to me. 80% of my time went to our “A” and “B” groups or my already committed kids, their parents, and coaches. The rest of my time, if there was any left for the day went to keeping in contact with “C” kids, looking at recruiting service emails, or emails from new kids who had contacted me.
This information hopefully gives you some fuel to get going this week. Next week, I will share 6 other things that I did to make sure I gave my recruiting the time it needed.
I’d love to know how you make time for recruiting. Email me your tips and tricks or how you organize your staff to get your recruiting done during the week.
Good luck! If you want my help, please reach out to me at [email protected].
P.S. If you have found this article helpful, please share it with your staff or other work colleagues! Studying time and energy management over these last 8 years and applying it to my coaching and recruiting has been a game changer for me. I am committed to helping coaches get more important work done in less time so more time can be spent with family and friends. Thanks!
