When we talk about building your recruiting profile, it can mean one of two things. Most commonly, we will be referring to your actual profile on College Prospect Network, ie. tips on how to upload a good video, what to write in your biography paragraph and what profile pictures get college coaches’ attention. We will also use the term from time to time to refer to your profile in more general terms, meaning the number of colleges who are interested in you, how good those coaches and scouts think you are and so on.

For this blog entry, we will focus on building your recruiting profile on College Prospect Network.

Some of this stuff may seem like common sense but we’ve seen too many athletes join the site and then immediately attempt to contact college coaches. That is a big mistake and it can give them a bad first impression of you. There are certain steps you should follow when building your recruiting profile so that you and your profile are prepared when a college coach finds you in a search.

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Step 1 – Finish Your Profile

When you get the email notifying you that you’ve been approved to join College Prospect Network, the first thing you should do is go to the “Edit Profile” page and add all the required information.

Here’s what you will need:

• Picture – This can be a head shot or an action photo of you playing your sport but make sure it clearly focuses on you. No friends or family posing with you.
• Physical Attributes – You need to know your: vertical, 40-yard dash, shuttle run, bench press max and squat max.
• Academic Attributes – Add this information if you have it: GPA, SAT and ACT scores, Class Rank and your intended Major in college. If you don’t know it or you haven’t taken the tests yet, then leave these fields blank for now. Do not guess! If you are wrong, it will look like you are intentionally lying and coaches and scouts will feel like you are wasting their time.

Step 2 – Add Game Film

If you don’t have game film, you should not contact any colleges. Game film is the first thing they are going to look for and they will probably not come back to your profile again, even if you put film up in the future. If you don’t have any game tape, make sure you get some as soon as possible and get it added to your profile page.

Just a few notes about building your recruiting profile with good game tape:

• For all athletes on CPN, your film has to come from a high school game! We will remove it if it’s from a summer league, AAU, combine or other event that is not sanctioned by the UIL. If you have good tape from other events, put it on YouTube and then write the link to it in your Bio section.
• For football prospects, you need a good highlight tape of your best plays. It should be at least 3:00 long but not more than 7:00.
• For basketball prospects, you should not post a highlight tape. Coaches want to see 5:00 consecutive minutes of you running the court, playing defense and moving without the ball in addition to scoring. Upload an entire game to our system using the “Manage Game Tape” page and you can use our software to create your 5:00 clip. If you have a good highlight tape, put it on YouTube and add the link in your Bio section.

Step 3 – Upload Your Schedule

Get your schedule for upcoming season and go to the “Add New Game or Event” page. Enter the date, time and teams correctly. Make sure you put the Home Team and the Away Team in the correct spots on the schedule because we provide college coaches with directions when they want to watch you play. You don’t want them showing up at your school if your game is at a different school.

** If you played varsity last year or the year before, you can upload those schedules too.

Step 4 – Add Your Stats

Once you upload your schedule you are ready for the season to start. After you play a game, log-in to College Prospect Network and add your stats for the game. Make sure you put the stats in honestly and correctly because your coaches and CPN will be checking what you enter. If you repeatedly put in incorrect stats, you will be removed form the site and your account will be blocked.

** You can’t add stats until after a game is over. If you can’t access a past game to add stats, check the game times and date that you entered and make sure it was entered correctly.

This should get you through building your recruiting profile on College Prospect Network. Now you’re ready to reach out to college coaches and invite them to watch your game film and check out your profile. We know that there is a lot to do but our college want to know that you truly care about being recruited. Our system rewards the players who work hard to use the website well and maximize their exposure.

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You should be glad that it takes a little bit of work because that gives you a chance to separate yourself from the other athletes on the site.

If you have any questions or problems with the four steps, use the Contact Us page on the website. We will help you fix the problem as soon as possible.