Why Recruiting Phone Calls Continue to Frustrate Coaches in Recruiting

Connecting for a phone call with a prospect is still possible, but coaches are learning it takes some maneuvering to make it work consistently.

I’ll jump to the main point:

Your prospects - and this generation overall - don’t like phone calls. They want to text instead.

Shocker, I know…you probably hadn’t noticed that as a recruiter, right?

That’s not the point of this article, though. Actually, phone calls play an important part in the recruiting process according to some of the latest data we have (more on that in a second).

But first, do you want to know what researchers say is the reason for all this? It’s the first time I’ve heard it, but it makes so much sense. Back in 2009, at the start of the smart phone and texting craze, texting was free. As long as you kept it to under 160 characters, there was no cost. But if you actually made a call, the average cost was a whopping $3.02 per minute! So, what did parents do for years? In a loud, threatening voice, we all told our pre-teens, “Only make a call if you have an emergency, but do NOT spend all night talking to your friends! It’ll cost a fortune. Text them instead, that’s free.”

And year after year, the trend just grew and grew. And now, the adults like us who were making all those rules and restrictions are living with the consequences. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.

So how does the typical teen - like the one you’re recruiting - view calls they get on their phone?

Two researchers offer some ideas worth considering in a recent article:

Dr Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist, explains that because young people didn't develop the habit of speaking on the phone, "it now feels weird as it's not the norm".

This can make young people fear the worst when their phone starts ringing (or silently lighting up because no-one under the age of 35 has a loud ringtone).

More than half of the young people who responded in the Uswitch survey admitted that they thought an unexpected call means bad news.

Psychotherapist Eloise Skinner explains that anxiety around calls comes from "an association with something bad - a sense of foreboding or dread".

"As our lives get busier and working schedules more unpredictable, we have less time to call a friend simply to catch up. Phone calls, then, become reserved for the important news in our lives, which can often be complicated and difficult."

"It's exactly that," says 26-year-old Jack Longley, adding that he also never responds to unknown numbers as "it's either scammers or cold callers".

"It's easier to just ignore the calls instead of sifting through to find out which ones are legitimate."

But wait, Dan: Didn’t you just say phone calls play an important role for prospects during the recruiting process?

Yes I did. Because it does.

We did some interesting research back in 2023 with a large group of freshly recruited student athletes, and when we asked them to rank all the contact methods they could engage in with a coach that would give them the feeling that the coach was very serious about them, they ranked phone calls as their #1 choice: