Gaining a Competitive Edge When Recruiting Student-Athletes: The Role of Political Skill

Research efforts to better understand the extent to which recruiter (i.e., coach) characteristics influence student-athlete college decisions are sorely lacking in the sport and higher education literatures. In an effort to better understand the relationship between recruiter characteristics and recruiting outcomes, the present study investigated the role of recruiter personality (i.e., positive affectivity) and social effectiveness (i.e., political skill) on both subjective and objective recruiting outcomes. Recruiter positive affectivity had a significant positive association with recruiter political skill (gamma = .29, p < .01), and political skill had a positive association with the overall quality of recruiting class signed (gamma = .48, p < .01), recruiters' satisfaction with their recruiting class (gamma = .51, p < .01), and recruiters' perceptions of recruitment effectiveness during the most recent NCAA recruiting cycle (gamma = .55, p < .01). Implications for these findings, limitations and suggestions for future research are also discussed.