by Sean Devlin, Front Rush 

We are often asked what tech stuff we use internally here at Front Rush. Its a very fair question as our goals are very similar to coaches we serve to the extent that we are both trying to recruit individuals to be a part of our program. We decided to share a short list of our favorite technology tools to start the new year.  Hopefully, some of these can be beneficial to you in your behind-the-scenes life as a college coach.

Contact Management

Front Rush: That's right, we use our own product to track our conversations with our clients, as well as our prospective clients.  This is obviously a biased decision but sales and recruiting are one in the same, so we actually use our own product to manage:

1) “Recruits” or coaches we are trying to recruit to use our program.
2) “Roster” or coaches who are currently using our program
3) “Alumni” or coaches who have moved on to new position
4) “Messages” to communicate with our coaches product updates, changes, or marketing material.

Communication

Gmail: We have switched entirely to gmail. This is actually a trend we are seeing a lot of universities do. Gmail has a very intuitive interface with tons of space and accessible from anywhere. It certainly doesn't have the bells and whistles of an Outlook but because of its limited features, its so easy to use.

Campfire (http://campfirenow.com/): There are dozens of instant messenger programs out there to communicate with the staff but one we have found works great is Campfire. The difference between Campfire and most other IM programs is that you are basically given your own room so you can sign in and sign out at any point and all of the conversations are still there. This way, you can share documents, write messages or respond to posts at any point in time. The other benefits are that it is web-based (no downloads) and free for the initial users.

Browser

Firefox: We actually use all of the web browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, any everything else) but our browser of choice is Firefox. Its quick, easy to use and has a ton of useful extensions.

Image Editors and Screen Recorders

Photoshop: Our design team uses Photoshop. Its the most advanced image editor out there. This is what we use for creating email templates, web-pages, and more.

Snag-it (http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp): Snag-it is a cheap (like $40 bucks) application that lets you quickly grab images from the web. Its incredibly easy to use and has some nice features for editing pictures to send out as emails.

Snipping Tool: This comes standard with Windows and is another tool to quickly grab pictures off the web. We use this to very quickly grab an image off the web and send it out as an email. You can find it in the start menu.

Screen Toaster (http://www.screentoaster.com): This is a neat tool that let's us record video directly from our screen. So whatever we are doing on our computer, Screen Toaster records and let's us share it.

Computers/Operating Systems

Windows 7: So Microsoft has finally taken a major step to building a good operating system. We still have Windows XP in house (because many of our end users are on it) but primarily we are on Windows 7. Windows 7 is a much more usable, stable version of Vista and rarely requires a restart.

Snow Leopard: The Mac users here are on Snow Leopard. This is an obvious choice for mac users. The standard Leopard was great, and Snow Leopard is just a bit quicker.

Hopefully some of these items can be helpful to fulfill your technology needs within your program.  Don't be afraid to try new things when it comes to technology...you may just find some incredible new tools to help you to be a much better coach and recruiter.