Low-tier recruiting strategies

[xigirl1995]

Hi Everyone!
As the recruitment chair for a middle/low tier chapter I am constantly trying to think of ways to advance our sisterhood and our chapter's reputation. What are some helpful tips and strategies you can think of to help advance our chapter's recruiting skills? Basically, how do I teach my girls how to properly pick a star pnm and keep that pnm hooked?

[Titchou]

Your recruitment committee should be picking the "star" PNMs from their resumes and recs. Then you assign your best rushers to them at your parties. Also, everyone can benefit from a conversation skills workshop. There are probably companies in your town that teach conversation skills to corporate employees or someone in your Comm department at school.

[LAblondeGPhi]

There are several threads on the forum that address this topic. Search hint: go to "advanced search" and search for terms in the thread titles and in specific forums. A lot of GCers will use Google Search instead of the native search, too.

In my personal experience, the #1 problem that weak-recruiting chapters have is that members aren't very good conversationalists. If you look through the recruitment stories on this site, it's an extremely common pattern: PNMs complain of awkward conversations at their least-favorite chapters. And it's a cycle: strong chapters tend to recruit the star conversationalists, weaker chapters tend to recruit the women who don't shine during formal recruitment and cocktail conversations.

Check out a couple of books:
I Heart Recruitment
How to Win Friends and Influence People

As far as picking "star PNMs" - it can be a challenge if you feel the members of your chapter are looking for different things, so have the chapter come up with the character traits they are going to look for. Many chapters will also spend a lot of time looking through recruitment registration forms to start looking for those traits ahead of time, and then match PNMs with members in your chapter with similar interests and/or personalities.

Good luck.

[33girl]

Also remember that sometimes the "star PNM that everyone wants" turns out to be a blah and uninvolved sister at best, and a divisive force in the chapter at worst. She might be a daughter of someone famous, drop dead gorgeous and involved in every activity there is, but she also might be crushingly wrong for your chapter. It doesn't pay to get too starry-eyed.

As the two previous posters said - CONVERSATION!!! Do some role-playing until all of you can successfully extract yourselves from ANY conversational landmines that might occur.

[Tom Earp]

Seek women who are more diverse who do not fit in the typical mold. Those women who feel the bigger is not always better.
The one mold is always "Blond/Blue Eyed and the Model types who have the wrong type of attitudes.

Some women do not want to join asw they feel like they would not fit into the cooky cut type of the mold! Women who want to be different not the same old, same old. Those who want to join to make a difference not a splash.

Last of all, just be friendly and straight forward with PNM.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

In the longrun, you don't want to go after "Star PNM's," you want to go after the PNM's who will be excited to be in your chapter and therefore stick around and contribute. In many cases, these are going to be the PNM's who are cut from a lot of other chapters, but you make them feel welcome and special, which is to say, for a weak recruiting chapter, the PNM's are picking you more than the reverse.

So, I would do my damndest to make every PNM feel that you know them as individuals and that you remember them from round to round. That means doing research in advance, and either matching them up with women at the door or using bumping to pair them up with women who have similar interests, and, (this part is key!) saying something like, "Hi Suzie PNM! It's so great to meet you! Annie Active told me that I just had to meet you because we are both interested in ___________!"

[Titchou]

"Star" PNMs can vary from chapter to chapter. I would expect that the chapter has done some self assessment and determined what kind of women they need to improve the chapter....higher grades if the overall GPA is lacking, dancers if they need some for the recruitment skit, etc. Then the recruitment team would assess the PNMs based on those needs and rank them - so that what might be a star in one chapter wouldn't even make the list in another. It's individual to the chapter. Don't compare yourselves to others. Compare yourselves to the standards your org has set out.

[FSUZeta]

Spot on Titchou!

[Titchou]

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

Spot on Titchou!

Why, thank you, FSUZeta!

[33girl]

And to contradict myself, but not really because both things are true, don't lowball yourselves and think "Susie Smith is so popular there's not a snowball's chance she would be interested in us." Some girls who have had 18 years' worth of Type-A existence would be happy to not have 4 more.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by 33girl

And to contradict myself, but not really because both things are true, don't lowball yourselves and think "Susie Smith is so popular there's not a snowball's chance she would be interested in us." Some girls who have had 18 years' worth of Type-A existence would be happy to not have 4 more.

I think we also had a few cases of Suzie PNM being the Kelly Kapowski of some small town in high school, which doesn't necessarily mean much once you are in college.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby

Kelly Kapowski

Is an undergrad likely to pick up on this reference?

[catiebug]

A friend of mine from college is married to Tiffani Amber Thiessen (who played Kelly Kapowski).

Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby

Kelly Kapowski

[jolene]

Would they get a Regina George reference? However, Kelly was nice and Regina was not. lol

Anyway, def brush up on conversational skills. I know with my own chapter, we tended to struggle there. We didn't practice or research the PNMs enough. I remember when I was preparing for my first rush on the other side, I asked what all I should explain (I was still relatively new) about our philanthropy. The sister I was practicing with said that no one asks about philanthropy. Guess what I got asked about during one of the parties. LOL Also, make sure the sisters are groomed to a T. I think some of my sisters dropped the ball on this during formal. Yes, everyone was dressed perfectly fine, but recruitment is not when to quickly run a brush through the hair, skip lipstick and skip the manicure. It's all about first impressions and in formal, the parties aren't long enough to get deep, etc. A PNM may be confused about where to rank and hopefully your chapter will have made a great impression enough to put you down even in the crazy haze of rush.

[IndianaSigKap]

My high school kids grew up on Saved by the Bell reruns. It's always being rerun on some cable channel.