Select-A-Sis
 

Are your chapters using Select-A-Sis for recruitment? Does anyone have experience with this method for voting? Any help is greatly appreciated!

I believe there are a number of NPCs that use them on a national level. What exactly are you wanting to know?

For those of us who haven't been advising recently, what type of program is it?

honeychile - I started to type something out and realized the description from their website is better:

"Select-A-Sis is a web-based application that allows chapter members to vote electronically on PNMs on any internet-connected device between rounds. Select-A-Sis manages and securely stores recruitment data while chapter leadership views the results in real time."

How good is the program at keeping out hackers? As in, are we going to read something later on that site :eek: regarding actual information gleaned from a campus hack of a few chapters sites?

That's a good question - I'm actually not sure. I mean, I've never seen or heard anything about a hack and have been using it for a couple years but that's anecdotal.

Thank you! Assuming this isn't hacked, this could be a wonderful time saver!

I have some experience with it in the past from when I was covering recruitment as our recruitment advisor was due with her first child the day after bid day but it's been about two years. Once we figured out the system, it was a tremendous time-saver!

Trying to imagine what would happen if this were hacked.

We've been using it for several years and I'm not aware of any issues, aside from making sure you have the wifi capability to handle many sisters logging in at the same time to vote.

We're switching over to Select-a-Sis this fall. I'm excited to see how it goes for us!

This worries me on so many levels.

What is this, Tinder for sororities? Swipe right for PNMs you met during a particular round and you had a good convo, swipe left for PNMs you met and didn't click with? What is the default for PNMs you didn't meet? If there are 100 actives and 30 PNMs per party, not every active is going to meet every PNM during (say) open house, so is that an automatic swipe left?

How secure is it?

How much does it expose a sorority's membership selection process to third parties - and to PNMs who want to know why they were / weren't invited back or offered a bid and who specifically voted against them?

<-- studying cybersecurity

https://vimeo.com/115197277

Here's a video of how it's used. I skimmed it because I didn't want to watch an hour and a half of training, but it looks like only sisters who met that PNM would score her in between rounds and then the scores would be tabulated and used however the chapter needed them.

I can't speak to security, but I am amused by the thought of Russians trying to hack a sorority PNM election, so to speak.

My chapter converted to electronic voting this year. As it was my first year of recruitment, I don't know how they operated prior, but we use MyVote by TechniPhi. I liked it, personally. We were able to access it on our phones and everything was simple to use. We could only access PNMs for that round as actives, so there was no chance of editing or falsely voting, as any changes after the short period feedback was open had to be done through the computer team.

Gamma Phi Beta was first to adopt Select-A-Sis about seven or so years ago when it first came out. It was a Gamma Phi Beta who pioneered the idea and her engineering major boyfriend (now husband) and his friend helped get the system built.

Specifically, I recall that the chapter I was assisting with was one of the first to pilot the program in around 2011. We alumnae used to sit in a room and tabulate scores by hand from paper slips. Now, the members can enter scores using their cell phones and tablets. It works out great. Like Sciencewoman commented, the biggest issue we encountered was making sure that the chapter's wifi system is robust enough to handle so many sisters logging in at once. Otherwise, it makes scoring so much easier.

With regard to the many questions/concerns posted here. Honestly, I think the worries about being hacked are unfounded. We have to ask ourselves if someone would really have the time and inclination to hack into a sorority recruitment system. I think that's a little over the top. Remember, we score PNMs and then send our invite lists to Panhellenic.


-- Some Panhellenics have chapters e-mail a spreadsheet with the invite list on it. Some in the past may have even hand-delivered it. How secure is that? Couldn't someone hack into the Panhellenic e-mail and read invite lists? Or intercept a paper copy of the lists?


-- Many Panhellenics across the country use ICS to have PNMs register for recruitment and that's where the party lists are generated by Panhellenic. We have to upload our invite lists to ICS website. Do we have any reports of people hacking into ICS to read where Suzy Q got her invites back? Or to sneak a peek at the return rates of specific chapters?


-- The previous process of writing on paper slips wasn't exactly secure either. Nothing says "security" like having hundreds of little pieces of paper floating around. I could totally imagine some chapter throwing those in the trash after recruitment and having someone pull them out of the trash to read them. Also, many chapters/sororities use notebooks to jot down specific notes about a PNM she met. Where did all of those paper notes go after recruitment?


-- Even if someone did get into Select-A-Sis for nefarious reasons, the most they will probably see is a series of numeric scores and not comments on the PNM herself. <shrug> I'm not sure what "juicy" info someone would get from that. :confused:


-- No, Select-A-Sis is not like Tinder for sororities. You don't swipe left on a PNM's picture to pitch her into the virtual trash. Let's not get carried away here. I can't get too deep into it for membership selection reasons; but,it is nearly the exact same as before except that it's now electronic scoring. Members who met the PNM are simply entering a score after each round. Instead of writing it on a piece of paper and handing it in, they now type it on their tablet or phone and it gets put into the system for easy calculation and sorting by the alumnae upstairs who are helping coordinate.


I hope this helps!

I love Select A Sis! I am the recruitment advisor to a chapter of about 145 women. There are 6 NPC chapters on campus. We used Select A Sis for the first time last fall for a small informal recruitment. This helped the women get familiar with the system. It was amazing how much it sped up the process! No more counting scores or tabulating by hand, then entering it into a separate spreadsheet, using that to make lists in ICS, etc. SAS is completely in line with our voting and tabulating, as they contract with IHQ to set it up. The only problem we had during formal recruitment was that for some reason, SAS was not uploading the spreadsheet of PNMs we generated from ICS. But we were pretty quickly able to hand enter them in about 30 to 40 minutes with the recruitment chair and I each on our computers. We were then able to focus with the chapter on voting. The extra time we saved meant that the women could get home and get some much needed sleep to prepare for the next round of recruitment.

DG uses a different program, but the same concept (Bidlilly). Anyway, I do worry about the notes section and someone finding those comments more than any sort of "scores". I'm probably paranoid because, in one of my years of advising, a campus newspaper did get a hold of one of the sororities notes :eek:

Needless to say, all chapters I have worked since then have shredded EVERYTHING.

YOU GUYS. This thread feels like we did a cannonball into MS territory!

(I love it, carry on.)

Ah ... I see.

As long as the secrecy of a sorority's membership selection process is preserved, this could be a very useful tool. It could certainly shorten the time required for MS so that sisters, alumnae, and Panhel officers can actually get some shut-eye before the sun rises - LOL!

While I doubt the Russians would try to hack a sorority's invite list (LOL) I am always concerned about cybersecurity. I'm a software engineer and a paranoid New Yorker. It's in my blood.

When I was an active, we had a truly psycho PNM come through (see the weird rush stories thread for details) who would have given her eyeteeth to know why she didn't get a bid from my sorority (twice!) and which sisters in particular were "to blame" for her bidlessness. Had something like Select-A-Sis existed back then, I wouldn't have put it past her to try to hack it.

LOL! I've been very careful and I don't feel that I've said anything that compromises my organization's MS. We all know that there is some kind of "qualification" process for a PNM to move from one round to the next be it white and black balls, slips of paper, or what have you. I have no idea what other sororities do and so I used the generic term "electronic scoring" as a catch all when describing Select-A-Sis's technology. "Scoring" for some might be pressing "1" for keep and "2" for pass, or pressing 1, 2, or 3 for red, yellow, green light, etc, etc. There is more to it than "scoring" for Gamma Phi Beta, but I'm not gonna go in that direction. ;)

I contacted IHQ and they said we weren't moving forward as an organization with Select A Sis, but as a chapter, we could use it. I'm not concerned about hacking. With VBR, it's hard to eliminate all of those score sheets. But I guess worst case scenario is we pay for it and don't use it.

I talked to Bidlilly and they wanted WAYYY too much $$ for a small chapter's budget.

I have seen it be good for the chapter. Quicker times to get all reports.

Bad part is the members always want to go to their phones and stay on them for longer then needed. If the list isn't uploaded correctly its can be a head ache.

Select-A-Sis, MyVote by TechniPhi, or any other electronic scoring/ranking system will CHANGE YOUR LIFE! Long gone are the little slips of paper and the countless hours entering data into the system. The cost of $200-$300 per academic year is well worth the investment if you can find it in your chapter's budget. We have used both and each works with IHQ to establish specific scoring parameters for your organization (they sign non-disclosures). Like I said, if you are a recruitment person this is life-changing -- literally!

Hello everyone!

I am the CEO and a Co-Founder of Select-A-Sis (and I am the GPB's nerdy husband mentioned previously in this thread).

I am excited to see all of the discussion around Select-A-Sis from new users and veterans alike. All of our customers in this thread have all the answers. :)

However, I would be more than happy to answer any specific questions from any of you. I saw a few major themes that shadokat brought up that I would like to answer:

1. Security: we take security very seriously, and we have worked with each of our national partners to ensure that security standards are met. We earn an A rating for SSL security (https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/anal...sis.com&latest), and our database is host, secured, and encrypted with Microsoft Azure. In addition, just to ensure that, in future years, we will not be a point of security failure, we completely clear all of the data for each recruitment year in May.
2. Scale: during recruitment season, we handle over 15 million votes across over 900 chapters across 20 national organizations. We have handled over 1 million requests per day, easily, and we have individual chapters who cast almost 500,000 votes in a matter of days. shadokat, in response to DPE, we serve about 20 DPE chapters, currently.
3. Features: we work with each national organization to tailor the SAS Experience to their organization's voting structures and needs (and we have a nondisclosure stating that we will not share any information). In addition, we have the most advanced PNM List, Data Hub, Matching, and Analysis tools on the market. We have had many national organizations recently choose SAS as their sole recruitment product after getting feedback from several chapters that tried each of the products in this space.
4. Cost: of the products in this space, SAS is the cheapest (ranging from $99 to $299). However, each of our members love what we do, and each of us would prefer to help people with their recruitment wherever possible. While we would like to cover our costs, and we believe our pricing structure is fair, we do not want to price anyone out of the market. Please let us know if you need any assistance regarding payment.

If any of you have any additional comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to ask me any questions here or at aroney@selectasis.com.

Thanks!

Aaron