Summer Recruitment Questions

[ZK761]

I know the chapter or colony can also sign up for a recruitment visit. Basically someone from Hq comes out and helps you guys out on how to recruit. It helps out a lot.

http://www.sigmanufraternity.org/rec...tmentvisit.php

[TrevorG]

I'm going out of a limb here and saying "Robinson Chapter!"

[SNUIGC]

Originally Posted by TrevorG

I'm going out of a limb here and saying "Robinson Chapter!"

....Robinson Chapter? ?????

But, yeah, we haven't gotten to be able to attend a recruiting institute yet... want to go to one so badly, though. Ummm, Chris Healy and Jake Welshans (i.e. Director of Expansion and Recruitment/Expansion consultant) have been here alot... Jake was actually our live-on semester guy so that was really helpful and Chris was down at LSU being their live-on semester guy and he got to drop by every now and then. It's just...trying to think about what they would do and then trying to do it.

On a side note, though, this live-in guy thing they've started doing for new colonies is...amazing, really. I mean, it's so much help to have a guy that knows what he's talking about just hanging around for a semester and change... I mean, I would hate to see how it was back when they start it up and just leave.... I mean, how do you get your charter like that? It's just so...inefficient and doesn't instill the brotherhood that should be there.

Truthfully, we're only hoping for a candidate class of between 20-30 people...basically doubling the size we're at right now. Already have the facebook group set up, trying to get the website together, etc. It's just...having to go out and try and get people, I guess? ...oh and since we don't have a house yet we're talking to a sorority about using their house. Good idea or not?

[banditone]

Use it for what? Rush functions? If so that would be great. You really need a centralized place to rush.

I guess, now that I think about it, I don't remember going to the chapter house till school started. Most of my getting rushed took place at the Summer Rush Apartment, or at brother Lake Houses (our big Summer event is "Watersport Weekend" at a brothers lake house. Boats, Jetski's, BBQ, Girls. *sigh* take me back to the good old days!!!)

[SNUIGC]

Yeah, planning to use it to hold our rush functions... rush here is informal this year (again, ugh, prefer formal rush to this junk). Just, it makes things flow better, methinks. But, you should see our apartments we have close together...it's slowly turning into a Command Center... we actually have a laptop in the living room that's dedicated to Sigma Nu Rush Fall 07 with everything we could get on all the potential candidates... actually kinda stalkerish, but, we'll definitely know what they're interested in so we can talk to em.

We've also heard about creating a list of things to look for in a candidate and then judging them using that. How's y'alls feeling on that? I mean, I could see where it would help out trying to screen out some of the guys that we don't want to get in...however, truthfully, right now we need numbers WITHOUT sacrificing quality.

[Kevin]

From experience, let me tell you that blanket bidding is a horrible way to go about getting numbers. I won't lie.. it probably saved us a semester. It cost us in the long run though. We bid several guys we shouldn't have just to get that petition together. It was a tough job holding things together for a semester with a bunch of kids who didn't belong. After the petition was approved, several people got cut or dropped.. so problem solved.

It's just something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Lots of late night exec meetings where we were mediating disputes between guys who clearly didn't belong.

[SigmaNuHX766]

Yeah, blanket bidding was a bad choice for our chapter... we bid about 25 guys one semester after a lot of older brothers graduated a while ago, and our chapter GPA dropped from the highest on campus to about mid range. We've since gone back to "quality over quantity" for recruiting.

One thing we do here at ODU is an informational booth during the freshman orientation, and also facebook "flyers" (banner ads on the left hand margin). The school pays for and puts together welcome packages for all incoming freshman so we put our Rush Event schedule out there from day 1. Talk to your school's IFC to see if you can get something like that set up through the school... it's a lot cheaper than (free!!) going to Kinko's or Staples and running off thousands of copies and mailing 'em.

One thing to make sure to do at those informational booths... DON'T EXPECT THE FRESHMEN TO COME TO YOU! Walk out a few feet, shake some hands and meet some people! I see so many other fraternities on my campus sitting on their ass at those events, and their list of interested freshman shows their level of effort... some have less than ten contacts since the start of the summer! So far we have a list of 60 potentials, which we'll probably get a return of 15 bids from, in addition to upperclassmen friends getting bidded, legacy folks getting bidded, and the folks that just plain show up to the rush events and get bidded.

As a chapter we also collaborate on our friends and aquaintances that may be interested, and bid them in the fall... this is where most of our candidates come from. 50 brothers that each know 200+ people on campus means we have a LOT of coverage. Also real-life brothers are recruited as often as they can be.

Things I'm working on for the fall: A series of recruiting videos to be shown on Campus TV, radio ads to be played on WODU, advertisements in the Mace & Crown (student paper), and a "grassroots" campaign of getting brothers to go out in letters on the day of a Rush Event with a goal of bringing at least 1 person that they know or met that day... other fraternities on campus do that with great success.

Also, being that we live near the beach, we're doing some late summer day trips to VA Beach, and I'm bringing a bunch of potentials that live locally.

Any other ideas guys?

[banditone]

[quote=SNUIGC;1479094]Yeah, planning to use it to hold our rush functions... rush here is informal this year (again, ugh, prefer formal rush to this junk). Just, it makes things flow better, methinks. quote]

It seems like you'd guys would want Open rush as opposed to Formal. Reason being the lack of house.

Our chapter had the ugliest house on campus; so we were not fans of formal rush at all. Hell, I didn't even see the house till I had been pledged for a while over Summer. We'd get a BIG bulk of the class already set befre formal (20 to 25ish), and then maybe get 1 or 2 with formal to close out the class.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by ZK761

I know the chapter or colony can also sign up for a recruitment visit. Basically someone from Hq comes out and helps you guys out on how to recruit. It helps out a lot.

http://www.sigmanufraternity.org/rec...tmentvisit.php

I'm going to sticky this link. Great stuff.