Motivate your team! Now.

The Heart of Recruiting: Motivate Your Team, Now!
by Sue Keever Watts
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals
September 18, 2013

It’s week four of college football, classes have begun, and campus recruiting is officially under way. By now, most of you have set your goals, established metrics, determined your strategy, and brought together your campus recruiting teams for a kick-off meeting. Like any other season opener, we feel a sense of anticipation, excitement, and energy. And, following every new beginning, there’s the dreaded middle. The middle is the most critical part of the journey, and yet it receives the least attention.

I encourage you to take the time, now, to motivate your team. The best way to do that is to be very intentional in your communication. Look for little ways to keep the momentum going, offer words of inspiration and gratitude, and remind the team where you’re headed. Go to http://www.naceweb.org/s09182013/recruiting-motivating-team.aspx to see a sample of a tactical communications plan that I created for a large employer.

It’s my experience that the little things are what truly matter to people. Participating on a campus team is time consuming and it’s rare that an employee’s workload is reduced to accommodate the extra hours. But, when you make people feel like part of something significant and acknowledge their contributions, then it’s worth the journey. The heart of recruiting involves keeping an eye on the end result, but never forgetting that the most important part is in the middle.