Roles of recruiter political skill, influence strategy, and organization reputation in recruitment effectiveness in college sports

Abstract

Recruitment of top talent is one of the most important things organizations do, and if they do it well,it can be a source of sustained competitive advantage. In this article, we propose that recruiting effectiveness has a lot to do with the individual qualities and characteristics of the coaches doing the recruiting, in addition to the reputation of the university. Indeed, we argue that recruiters' political skills equip them to select the proper combination of situationally appropriate influence tactics in the formulation of their influence strategy, while also leveraging the organization's reputation in order to ensure recruitment effectiveness.

Exploring the Relative Importance of Factors That Influence Student-Athletes’ School-Choice Decisions: A Case Study of One Canadian University

“…A number of researchers have focused energies on better understanding influences on student-athletes' school choice decisions and influences in the NCAA (i.e., Cooper, 1996;Finley & Fountain, 2008;Goss, Jubenville, & Orejan, 2006;Klenosky et al, 2001;Magnusen, Mondello, Kim, & Ferris, 2011;Popp, Pierce, & Hums, 2011;Ryan, Groves, & Schenider, 2007) or the NAIA (Johnson, Jubenville, & Goss, 2009). These studies have considered numerous contexts including NCAA Division I football freshmen (Klenosky et al, 2001;Treadway, Adams, Hanes, Perrewé, Magnusen, & Ferris, 2012), NCAA Division I studentathletes more generally (Cooper, 1996;Popp et al, 2011;Ryan et al, 2007), NCAA Division III and/or NAIA student-athletes (Goss et al, 2006;Johnson et al, 2009;Schaeperkoetter, Bass, & Gordon, 2015), and female softball players in NCAA Division I (Kankey & Quarterman, 2007), NCAA Division II (Finley & Fountain, 2008), and community college (Vermillion & Stoldt 2010).…”

“…The influence of the coach was often revealed to be a top three factor in school-choice decisions (Kankey & Quarterman, 2007;Klenosky et al, 2001;Popp et al, 2011;Vermillion & Stoldt, 2010). Further, research energies have recently been directed at better understanding the political skills of the coach within the recruiting process (Magnusen et al, 2011;Treadway et al, 2012) Of the prior investigations, a few have taken a qualitative approach to enhance understandings of school choice decision-making (Finley & Fountain, 2008;Magnusen et al, 2011;Magnusen et al, 2014;Schaeperkoetter, et al, 2015). However, the majority of researchers in this area have sought to understand the perceived importance or significance of factors in decision making models using quantitative approaches (i.e., Likert-scales) (e.g., Judson, et al, 2004;Johnson, et al, 2009;Goss et al, 2006;Popp et al, 2011).…”

She got game: Investigating how reputation can be leveraged to improve recruiting effectiveness in National Collegiate Athletic Association women’s basketball

“…The estimation used to model a given recruit's university selection was a probit analysis assessed by maximum likelihood techniques. The specification of the research model shown in equation (2) assumes that all variables not included in the proposed model are constant from one potential selection to another. The quality of the official visit from one school to another for each recruit is considered the same.…”

The Utilization of Political Skill as Leverage in Sport Management Research

“…Two additional articles dealt with political skill of recruiters in the competitive process of recruiting athletes to Division I university sports programs. Magnusen, Mondello, Kim, and Ferris (2011) argued that securing top talent is perhaps the most important activity in which universities engage in the highly competitive process of recruiting athletes. Furthermore, they focus on the skills, competencies, and characteristics of the coaches who do the recruiting of high school athletes, in addition to the contextual information that can be leveraged by these recruiting coaches in order to more effectively 'sell' the university and athletics programs.…”

“…The importance of leader political skill in sport should not be underestimated. Coaches who have political skill may be better at knowing which influence strategies are best, and knowing how to execute these influence strategies in order to attract recruits (Magnusen et al, 2011). Further, Treadway and colleagues (2014) demonstrated empirically that highly politically skilled football coaches were able to attract and secure the talents of more highly rated recruits than coaches with less political skill.…”