Recruitment, 24/7/365
 

On another forum, a question was asked about social etiquette while talking to PNMs. After I posted, I thought it only fair to share the same site with my sisters. :)

Dale Carnegie had a series of books on getting people to know you, the most famous of which was How To Make Friends And Influence People. A great link to a mini-tutorial on this is here.

One thing it doesn't mention is the necessity of learning to phrase your questions in a way to get more than a "yes", "no", "I don't know" or any other one or two word answer.

Does anyone else have more suggestions to share?

Having gone through recruitment less than a year ago, I can remember a few things that really stuck out to me. It was really distracting when girls would jump from topic to topic without even stopping to listen to the answer of the previous question. Also, girls who fiddled with rings, watches, and/or their hair seemed like they had other things on their mind. Ditto for looking around the room. Also, a lot of words such as "umm" and "like" get really annoying. I think that's it! I have to work on a few of these things myself... :p

Listen to what the pnm says as an answer and try to tie that into another question or story... This makes the conversation a lot more interesting and you can bring in things about your sisters and the sorority this way...

When I was a collegian, we worked on this stuff during our recruitment workshops. There is always room for improvement and refreshers throughout the year don't hurt.

We weren't allowed to wear watches during the recruitment parties. We were only allowed to wear a ring if it was an engagement ring. That way we wouldn't have much to fidget with or be looking at the time constantly.

Lavalier (which I spelled wrong, sorry) was the only peice of jewelry I was allowed to wear (again unless engagement ring).


I think the practice of bumping is important. That is the one thing I would hear about time and time again as an alum helping out with recruitment. Some bump groups were going super fast and others were going way to slow.

I remember as a collegian I was actually the girl to start the bump and being at the house some of my bump group were sitting right near each other so I would actually have to wonder the room before I could bump because we didn't want PNM's to know about the bumping. That was also in 98. I'm pretty sure know that most PNM's know bumping occurs. The problem is that groups need to be in sync.

I definitely agree - bumping was especially difficult when we had large parties and some girls had to double rush PNMs. If a "bumper" wasn't doing their job (or floaters, in that case, who were supposed to go in, say a quick hello, and get out!), then it got really chaotic and we had to have any extra bumper/floater go around and discreetly tap the person on the back.

I think the only jewelry we were allowed was necklaces; adpi*nurse might remember differently (I know the watches were a no-no; they went in one of the drawers with our supply of mints, lip gloss, etc until inbetween parties, when we could glance quickly, then have to put them away again)