by Dan Christensen, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
If you are a recruiting coordinator or assistant coach that plays a big role in recruiting for your program, there are a lot of things you need to be great at in order to do your job well.
This Wednesday, March 10th at 1:00pm ET, Mandy Green and I will be leading a webinar designed specifically for you called, “How to be an Amazing Recruiting Coordinator.” We’ll cover a lot of these skills and how you can use them to thrive in your role.
For today, I want to focus on two important ones that are critical for bringing in top recruits.
1) Getting recruits to talk
How frustrating is it when you get on the phone with a recruit and they give you nothing? It is like pulling teeth just to get them to say something, let alone something actually useful for you.
It is normal for recruits to be quiet. Especially early in the process. They are full of fears. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of asking dumb questions. Fear of just talking on the phone in general.
But, the best recruiters know how to get recruits to talk. It is a combination of two things. Having conversations about things that are easy for recruits to talk about is one. The other, is being able to ask really good questions that get your recruit to give really good answers.
People tend to like to talk about themselves. So, get your recruit to ease their tension and nervousness by getting them to talk about themselves.
And if you’re looking to get your recruit to talk, ask questions in a way that your recruit cannot just give a “yes” or “no” answer because when they do that, it is back on you to keep the conversation going.
When you can get your recruit to open up and start answering questions better, you’ll have much more productive calls!
2) Write really well
Does this mean you need to know all the grammar rules, have a very extensive vocabulary, and be an expert on technical formatting? Not at all.
A great recruiting coordinator writes in a way that increases engagement and response rates from prospects. How do they get there? They make their writing sound like it is coming from a real person!
Recruits do not want to engage with messages that sound like they were written for a mass mailing. They do want to engage when they believe there was a coach behind the screen on the other end, writing that email or letter directly to them.
If you can make your messaging sound more conversational and personal, that will be what gets recruits to interact more. Now, you probably don’t want to be spelling a lot of words wrong and have your sentence structure not make sense when a recruit is reading it. But, to focus on becoming a great writer of recruiting content, be great at using language your recruits will relate to and be clear in how you want them to interact with it!