Three Recruiting Trend Themes from This Past Year
What to take away from last year, and what to look forward to as we enter a new year of recruiting this generation of student-athlete.
Every year in college recruiting has a defining ‘personality’. Some years are shaped by rule changes. Others by emerging technology. Others by culture shifts inside locker rooms and living rooms.
This past year was different.
What emerged most clearly, in my opinion as I look over what our research revealed during the last year, was not a new tactic or platform. It was a sharper understanding of how recruits actually think, decide, and respond to coaches who are trying to earn their trust.
Across the articles we published for coaches this year, three ideas kept resurfacing. Not as trends, but as new truths in the college recruiting world. And, the coaches who aligned with them recruited more effectively. Coaches who resisted them found themselves frustrated, working harder for fewer results.
Here are the three lessons this year kept teaching all of us over and over again.
Recruiting Works Best When You Lead With Understanding Instead of Information
One of the most consistent messages this year was simple but uncomfortable for a lot of college recruiters (especially the more veteran coaches): Most coaches talk too much and listen too little early in the recruiting process.
Many recruiting conversations still start with explanations. Who we are. What we offer. Why our program is special. What separates us from everyone else.
The problem is not that those things are ‘unimportant’. The problem is timing.
Recruits decide how they feel about a program long before they evaluate it. They are listening for cues that say this coach understands me, respects me, and sees me as more than a roster spot.
When coaches rush to impress, they often miss the chance to connect.
In looking back, the articles we presented this year repeatedly emphasized that influence comes from curiosity. From asking questions that show genuine interest in the recruit’s world. From slowing the process down just enough to let the athlete feel heard, the trend was definitely ‘feel’ related versus ‘fact’ related.
And in making that observation, don’t think of it as soft recruiting, but more of an emphasis on strategic recruiting. Understanding creates trust. Trust creates engagement. Engagement creates decisions. That’s a strategy that has been effective for coaches we work closely with day in and day out.
Coaches who adjusted their approach found that recruits opened up more quickly, responded more consistently, and stayed engaged longer. Coaches who did not often mistook silence for disinterest, when in reality it was simply disconnection.
The Programs That Win Recruiting Communicate a Clear and Honest Story
Another theme that ran throughout the year was the importance of a program’s narrative.
Recruits hear the same promises everywhere. Great culture. Great relationships. Great development. Great opportunity.
What cuts through and connects is something unique, even if the theme matches another program’s talking points.
What we saw this past year is that the most effective recruiters are able to articulate who their program is really for and who it is not, and do it over the long term of the process. They tell a story that is consistent across emails, calls, visits, and conversations with parents and coaches. When done with consistency over a long period of time, those programs saw more wins than their competitors.
That story is not just marketing language. It’s establishing your brand identity.
When a program knows what it stands for, recruiting becomes simpler. Conversations become more natural. Expectations become clearer, and mismatches become easier to identify earlier by coaches who are trying to build the right kind of program through the athletes they bring in.
The articles and research we posted this past year made it clear that recruits are not looking for perfection. They are looking for alignment. Prospects want to know what daily life on campus will actually feel like, and how they will be coached…and, how they will be challenged. What kind of teammates they will be surrounded by was also a major theme in what we heard this past year’s class of recruits talking about and being valued as part of their decision-making.
Overall, programs that tried to be everything to everyone struggled. Programs that owned who they were attracted the right people more consistently, and ended up being more satisfied with their recruiting results.
In short, recruiting improved not because coaches said more, but because they said the right things more clearly over a longer period of time.
Recruiting Is No Longer Just One Conversation With One Person
The third major lesson from this year was the growing influential voices around the recruit as they went through the process.
Very few recruiting decisions are made in isolation anymore. Parents are more involved, club and high school coaches are more vocal, and even trainers and advisors carry weight deeper into the process. For coaches, that means connections with these orbiting influencers is important.
Most coaches cringe a little when we bring-up this emerging reality, but it’s true. And ignoring that reality doesn’t make it go away.
The research and training we emphasized over this past year consistently pointed out that effective recruiters think beyond the athlete. They understand who else matters in the decision and communicate with those people effectively, with a focus on understanding what their perspective is, and how it might be affecting your prospect’s view on you and your program.
This does not mean recruiting everyone at once. It means recognizing that trust is built through alignment, not avoidance, and pacing your communication with everyone involved.
Some examples of the payoff of this approach? When parents feel informed instead of dismissed, resistance drops. When coaches feel respected instead of bypassed, support for you and your program increases. When influencers around your recruits understand the direction of the relationship and your connection with the prospect, their overall resistance decreases.
The best recruiters this year treated recruiting as relationship management, not message delivery. They anticipated concerns instead of reacting to them. They addressed questions before they became objections. And, they created clarity where uncertainty usually lives.
In doing everything that we’ve outlined, they reduced friction in the recruiting process and gained credibility without having to sell harder…it all had a more natural feel as the relationships and conversations evolved, which lead to better outcomes.
What This All Points To Going Forward Into a New Year
Taken together, these three lessons point to a single conclusion for coaches moving forward:
Recruiting success is less about activity and more about alignment.
Alignment between what recruits feel and what coaches communicate.
Alignment between a program’s identity and the athletes it pursues.
Alignment between the athlete and the people who influence the decision.
Coaches who embraced this approach found recruiting felt more natural and more productive, and faster when it came to understanding how decisions were really being made by the prospect (and his or her influencers). Coaches who resisted it, and held on to a more process-oriented approach, often felt like they were constantly chasing momentum instead of creating it.
Overall, when it came to recruiting, the work didn’t necessarily get easier, but it definitely got a lot more clearer.
And clarity, as this year reminded us repeatedly, is one of the most powerful recruiting tools a coach can have when it comes to managing this part of your college coaching life, and the results you see from it.
Want to partner with the team of professionals at Tudor Collegiate Strategies to help you achieve more in the new recruiting year? We work with hundreds of coaches all over the country, and we should work with you, too. Email dan@dantudor.com to have a one-on-one conversation about why our approach works, what a plan would look like for you and your program, and the results you should expect compared to this past year trying to tackle it all solo, Coach.