Should You Hire A Recruiting Service? Take This Quiz.
For some families, it’s a “nice to have.”
For others, it’s the difference between success and failure.
Here’s a 5 question quiz to figure out which boat you’re in:
Are you early or late in the process?
Do you have 5 or more schools interested that you’re excited about?
Do you have a strategy to systematically generate interest from college coaches?
Do you have the time to execute on your intentional strategy? (if you have one)
Would you define your kid’s interest in playing at the next level as “casual” or “committed”?
Let’s dive into these questions, and what they mean for you.
Q1: Are you early or late?
The later you are in the process, the more it makes sense to hire a recruiting service.
The reason for this is simple: there are less scholarship opportunities with every day that passes.
The longer you wait, the harder it is to secure the remaining spots.
Parents typically ask, “Are there still opportunities available?” And our response is usually some variation of, “There are still spots available, but less than there were last month.” There are fewer opportunities available with each passing month. This is basic time logic.
So what’s “early” and what’s “late” in college recruiting?
If college coaches cannot legally contact you, you likely do not need a recruiting service.
There are things you can do put yourself in the best position possible to hit the ground running when your kid becomes of age to be legally contacted by college coaches, but you don’t need a full-fledged service. For instance, we don’t even work with underclassmen in our full service program. Instead, we just send them through Scholarship School until their kid is old enough where it makes sense to work with us.
If coaches can legally contact you, then a recruiting service makes a lot more sense.
If we have one piece of advice for you, it’s this: if you’re going to hire a recruiting service, do it early.
We see lots of families who try recruiting on their own with the plan of hiring a recruiting service if they don’t get the interest they’re looking for. The problem is that if they aren’t able to generate interest on their own, there are significantly less scholarship spots available by the time they hire the service. It’s not impossible by any means (we’ve helped 2nd semester seniors commit to D1 schools). But it’s significantly harder, and success is not guaranteed.
So if you’re going to hire a recruiting service, don’t wait. Do it early.
Otherwise, you’re wasting the best months to generate interest.
With the transfer portal and NIL, college recruiting is more competitive than ever before.
You want every advantage you can get.
Q2: Do you have 5 or more schools interested that you’re excited about?
The key phrase here: excited about.
Having interest from 8 schools doesn’t mean much if you’re not excited about those schools.
But if you have interest from 5+ schools that you’re excited about, then you probably don’t need a recruiting service.
You’re likely safe to rely on at least one of those schools giving you a scholarship opportunity.
The reason you need at least 5 is because schools drop out all the time.
They ghost you
They find someone else
They run out of scholarship money
Coaches get fired
It’s dangerous to put all your hopes in ONE school.
That opportunity could vanish by the time you finish reading this.
Now, if your kid has less than 5 interested schools that you’re excited about, it means one thing: you haven’t figured out how to generate interest yet.
And you’re not magically going to learn how to do that.
So if you have less than 5 interested schools that you’re excited about, it makes sense to hire a recruiting service.
You basically get the cheat code to college recruiting.
For instance, we’ve been in the sports world for 10+ years. When you hire us, you instantly get all of our learned lessons and expertise in sending thousands of emails for athletes, generating hundreds of thousands in scholarships, and sending dozens of athletes off to awesome schools. You go from “not sure what to do” to knowing exactly what to do in a matter of hours. That’s the advantage of hiring a service.
Q3: Do you have a strategy to systematically generate interest from college coaches?
Most families don’t have a “strategy” in college recruiting.
They say, “We’ll just go to some showcases & camps. If our kid plays well, we’ll get interest.”
But the truth is…the statistics say that won’t happen.
When you attend a recruiting event, there will be hundreds of kids there. Your kid needs to do something so incredible that they stand out amongst the crowd. And sports are hard…it’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid to perform at the EXACT right moment in a short window of time. And what if external factors don’t even give your kid the opportunity? They don’t get a good pitch to hit or the quarterback throws a bad pass…what then? And even if your kid does the amazing thing, what if your favorite school’s coach was in the bathroom? What if he got a call from his wife? What if he was talking to another coach?
This is why it’s so hard to get interest solely from showcases & camps.
It’s why we say recruiting events are for evaluation, not exposure.
So here’s the point — you need a plan.
Interest & offers won’t magically appear in your lap unless your kid is a top 5% player.
Statistics, again, would say that’s unlikely.
There are lots of talented players for a very limited number of scholarship spots. If you don’t have a plan, you’re playing the odds…and you have a better chance of winning in Vegas. (Literally — 13% of people win money in Vegas casinos, and only 7% of high school athletes earn scholarships)
You need to know what actions will drive interest & offers.
And you need to know how they all work together to generate the most amount of interest possible.
So if you haven’t proven the ability to systematically generate interest & offers (meaning, you didn’t rely on luck or “good timing”)…then it makes sense to hire a recruiting service.
Q4: Do you have the time to execute on your strategy?
Knowing what to do & actually doing it are two different things.
Here’s the bummer.
College recruiting is very different than it used to be.
There is significantly more emphasis put on exposure & marketing. It used to be that if your kid was good enough, they’d get a spot. That’s not necessarily true anymore. It’s not always the most talented player that gets the spot…but the player who markets himself/herself the best.
This requires a significant time investment.
For parents, you probably have a job. You might have other kids to take care of. Responsibilities around the house. Grocery shopping. Meetings. Practices & Games to take kids to. If you’re like the parents we talk to, you don’t have a bunch of time to send emails, edit videos, and figure out how this whole recruiting thing works.
And it’s even tougher for kids. Class all day. Homework. Studying for tests. Practices. Games. Workouts. Lessons. Family responsibilities. Fun with friends. Where’s the time to send 100 emails?
Now, if you’re in a unique position where you have a ton of time on your hands, then maybe you don’t need to hire a recruiting service. Of course, this assumes you have a strategy in place to execute on. And if that’s you, then go for it!
But if you’re like most families…and getting your kid to send emails is like pulling teeth…and you, as the parent, don’t have a bunch of time in the day whip off emails to college coaches…then it makes sense to hire a recruiting service.
At least, ours :) Few recruiting services will send the emails for you, but we will.
We can take a huge load of work off your plate.
Your kid will still learn responsibility — they’ll manage the interest we generate and build relationships with college coaches. But it’s a much more manageable workload, and it’s fun.
We basically bring interested college coaches to your doorstep and you get to do the fun part.
So if that sounds nice, then it makes sense to hire a recruiting service.
Q5: Would you define your kid’s interest in playing at the next level as “casual” or “committed”?
I’ll keep this brief.
If your kid is “casual” about wanting to play at the next level, don’t hire a recruiting service.
It just doesn’t make sense.
But if your kid stays late after practice, wakes up early to get more reps in, dreams of playing college sports, works out in their off time, and clearly shows a commitment to playing at the next level…
Then hire a recruiting service.
It’s one of the best investments you can make for your kid. Not to mention, a single scholarship pays it back 10x. And, your life as the parent in the process will be much more stress-free.
Sure, it’s a gift for your kid — but it’s also a gift for you.
Ready to take the next step?
Consider working with us.
Team Experience: In the sports world 10+ years. Team members played in the Pac-12, ACC & SEC. More than 10 years of professional sports experience. Coached at the D3 & D1 levels.
Why We’re Different: This is not a “monthly” fee recruiting service where we throw you in a text chat and give you some advice. This is a full service program combining education, coaching & “done for you” aspects to not only give your kid the best possible chance of playing at the next level, but also help you reduce the workload. You will not need another recruiting service after working with us.
Recruiting Results: We’ve had multiple players go D1. We’ve also helped families who weren’t sure if their kid was good enough to play in college at all — and found them awesome schools they’re stoked about! Our track record is incredibly strong. We sat down with a few families to talk about their experience working with us. You can watch those videos on the page linked just below this.
To learn more about the program, you can book a free consultation call on this page.
