Prospects need a plan to achieve their end game

When you walk into a hiring manager’s office, one of the first questions you often hear is: “What is your end game?”

The second? “Tell me what steps you plan to take to get there?”

It makes perfect sense. The person hiring wants to know if the company’s resources and your plans can be seamlessly intertwined.  You want something. They want something. What remains is to determine if the company has a proven path already worn by others which will allow you to see steady progress toward reaching your own ultimate end game? That is a sensible approach that most job seekers appreciate.

At National Scouting Report, these are the same two questions we frequently pose to potential prospects during the exploratory and interview phases of our selection process.  It is not a coincidence.

Truth is, if as NSR scouts, we have done our homework well, we know the answer to Question No. 1: to play in college or receive a college scholarship. It is a given.

However, when we pose Question No. 2, we often get a blank stare in return. Families are simultaneously surprised and confused. Panic begins to sneak in as families come face to face with the awful, careless truth: They do not have a plan.

Here you have these well-intended, intelligent people, including an athlete who legitimately can play somewhere in college, with no real idea of how to make their child’s dream become reality.

So, the questions beg: Isn’t everyone’s recruiting process the same? Can’t we do the same thing everybody else does?

Answers: no and no.

All prospects and their circumstances are totally different. Assuming they are all mirror images of one another is a critical mistake many families make. Like falling snowflakes, every prospect’s situation may appear the same from a distance, but under a microscope, it is not even close.

This is a product of our society’s shoot first, aim later tendency, whereby people see a mirage in the form of a college athlete and falsely believe it takes little more than a hop and skip to get there. Imaginations may work that way, but reality is far more time consuming and the journey exceedingly more complex.

The steps to achieve the end game are what NSR scouts encourage families to seriously consider when entering the complicated college recruiting process. Without those calculated steps, prospects and parents can expect to be observers instead of participants when their signing period rolls around and passes them by without even a tap on the brake.