Recruitment unpredictability

The five questions of recruitment chapter is draft ready, more or less. There are a few things I'd like to go over, but other than that it's done. Now I get to move on to this chapter on recruitment unpredictability.

Technically, I've been moved-on for a few days already. The previous version of this chapter (written years ago) was terrible, so I killed it and more or less started from scratch. But I still wasn't happy with this. At all. So just now I stepped backed and asked, "What am I trying to say here?" I found my answer and realized that the previous re-do was also garbage, so I killed that as well. So now I'll try a third time...

What is recruitment unpredictability? It's all those random and spontaneous factors that show up which can totally derail a recruitment effort: When other chapters play dirty. When a freshman suddenly has a change of heart. When parents become problems. This chapter discusses these, and then goes into ways we can try to mitigate their effects.

This may be more theoretical than the previous chapter. But it could be fun. We'll see.

Recruitment theories of Recruitment Theory

Up until now, Recruitment Theory has been very much like a manual--a description of very concrete things we can do to get new members. Chapter IV is a little different. Its origins lie in a set of essays I started writing in early 2006 called "Recruitment Theories", the first of which looked at recruiting people who are like you vs. those who aren't. The second was about the conflict between the house and the fraternity. These essays were more philosophical than instructional, and when Recruitment Theory was born I decided that they needed to go somewhere. Hence Chapter IV came to be.

I realized that those two essays sorta answered the "Who" and "What" of recruitment, so I decided to answer the other news questions too. Interesting stuff came out of it. Briefly, it looks like this:

WHO do you recruit? - Recruiting people who are like you vs. those who aren't.
For WHAT do you recruit? - Looks at the interesting conflict that arises when you have to decide between bidding someone because you need numbers, as opposed to because the candidate would be a perfect fit at your house.
WHEN do you recruit? - Obvious, but it's there anyway.
WHY do you recruit? - There's a little more to it than you think!
HOW (and WHERE) do you recruit? - Looks at a few apparent Rush paradoxes and resolves them.

I also like this chapter because it serves as a break before Part II on Rush.

And I think I'm pretty sure that "Recruitment Theory" will not be the final title of this whole thing.

Active Recruitment complete!

The chapter which includes such topics as spring recruitment, CPW, the summer, and an overview of Rush is draft ready. This is exciting, since it means the material that grew into Recruitment Theory is finally in such a shape that it fits into the whole. Phew!

Next comes some recruitment philosophy, with the "Who, What, Why, and Where/How of Recruitment".

A new spring dilemma

Revising this original section of RT has been interesting (and well needed), but writing and reading all of this stuff on Spring recruitment has led to a new question:

Is Spring recruitment necessary at MIT?

Most of this chapter is spent explaining why general year-round recruitment efforts don't work for us, and how modifying these isn't exactly the answer either. So doesn't that say something on its own? Maybe spring recruitment (what year-round becomes at MIT) just isn't worth it at the Institute after all. Hmm...

Passive Recruitment complete

Finally! The chapter I thought I finished years ago just finished its facelift and is officially draft ready. It finishes at a light 7-pages (single spaced; standard margins). Let me know if you're interested in proofreading. Unfortunately it will not be electronic draft, so you'll have to request a hard copy.

Now on to a much larger task: revising Active Recruitment. Remember that Recruitment Theory was born from its section on Spring Recruitment, so finally smoothing this out should be fun. And by fun I mean not. But you get the picture.

Passive recruitment (cont'd)

There's a lot more here than I initially thought. Originally the discussion was a little jumbled, mixing the general goal of passive recruitment (establishing a reputation, etc.) with the ideal goal (establishing a positive reputation). But I realized that not all houses may want to realize the ideal; i.e. maybe they don't want to epitomize the general fraternity values (brotherhood, leadership, scholarship, etc.) Nevertheless, such chapters should still be aware of all the passive recruitment concepts.

But that leads to something else. Fraternities don't exist in a vacuum, so what one of us does impacts everyone else. Surely that's a "global" form of passive recruitment, too?

Retention again

While rounding out Passive Recruitment I can't help but look (way) ahead to Part III on retention. When I wrote about this previously I was stumped as to what it would include. But now I think I have a better idea. Retention in this context comes in three forms:

• Retaining freshman excitement between pledging and the formal end of Rush
• Retaining freshman energy between the formal end of Rush to the formal start of pledge program
• Retaining freshman interest from the start of pledge program to its end

(Buzzwords subject to change. Maybe I can make some fun acronym out of them. No? Too corny?)

Part III will never be about the details of pledge period; from a recruitment perspective it's just a means to an end. So I don't plan on spending any time on outlining the ideal pledge period, although elements discussed could be included in one.

Another tricky thing will be generalizing this for those fraternities that don't pledge. Or maybe I'll just do a separate section on that.

I suppose what I mean by "retention" should be added to definitions, too...

Recruiting passively

Passive recruitment: it's this general idea that we're always recruiting through our every day actions. Buzz words in this chapter include "branding", "reputation", and "alignment". It's not about pledging people directly, but rather creating a climate that is conducive to pledging.

When Recruitment Theory became Recruitment Theory (i.e. evolved from "The Spring Dilemma"), this was actually the first chapter I wrote. I think it was done after a few days and I was very happy with it. And for that reason I've pretty much let it be for the past 4 years. But not anymore! On Wednesday I started the process of putting it through a serious review, which means grammar and structural fixes, some content reorganization, and even a few additions.

I have to give credit for the origins of this section to Recruitment Boot Camp. That's when I was first introduced to these general marketing concepts as being fraternity related. But at RBC, the spin was that developing a brand and solving alignment issues were ways to go from Rush to year-round recruitment. In Recruitment Theory I admit that these are things to consider over the entire year, but they are NOT to replace Rush.

I like opening Recruitment Theory with this topic because I don't think it's something MIT students think about often (e.g. "How do we brand ourselves and is it consistent with the image we want to put forth?") Passive recruitment may not be as exciting as Rush, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Terms defined

Recruitment Theory opens with a brief glossary of recruitment-related terms. This chapter will probably go through a number of iterations as the entire thing nears completion, but this is what I have for now:

First there are the types of recruitment:

• Passive (Focus of Chapter 2)
• Active (Focus of Chapter 3)
• Rush (Focus of Part II)

Then there are terms that deal with Rush specifically:

• Rush (the verb)
• [Active] rushing (Rush events)
• [Passive] rushing ("Wanna play some frisbee?")

Next we move on to the joiners:

• Always
• Maybe
• Never

And finally, I go into various terms for Rush.

As an earlier post stated, I don't like the adjectives "passive" and "active" for the two types of Rush. Also, [active] rushing can be broken down as well. I'm thinking of adding that here too.

Back in business

The summer's here and the thesis is almost done, which means it's time to sit down and finish this thing. The goal is to have a complete draft finished by September 4th (do you know the significance of that date?) Is this possible? We shall see.

For those of you who are new to this, it's good to start with the following posts:

What is Recruitment Theory?
--A running outline of the contents.

Why Recruitment Theory?
--The reasoning behind this project; probably will be the prologue of the piece.

Over the past few weeks I've been jumping around from section to section, revising certain parts and completely writing others. The problem is that this makes it very hard to keep track of changes. So I decided that from here on out I'm going to complete each major chapter (capital letters on the outline) in order.

As for the updates on this log, I'd say there should be something new at least every two days.

Why Recruitment Theory?

Although I've explained what this project is, I have yet to explain why it got started to begin with. The following is is revised version of the original prologue:

*****

My interest in fraternity recruitment was born in January of my freshman year in 2005. I had volunteered to help the IFC Recruitment Chair with his Spring Recruitment campaign, so I found myself coming back for IAP early to assist him with a few projects. During this time I was introduced to Dave Stollman, the most well-known fraternity recruitment strategist. After his workshops and lectures (both of which stressed the importance of abandoning Rush and moving to continuous recruitment) I quickly realized that this area was a lot more complex than I had initially thought.

Jump to a year later. After attempting to tackle "Spring Recruitment" and seeing Rush from the affiliated side for the first time, I threw my hat in the ring and ran for IFC Recruitment Chair. I won this election and saw it as my opportunity to take the focus solely off of Rush and expand it to year-round recruitment. Unfortunately, after weeks of brainstorming I realized that this was not an easy problem. In fact, it seemed like every tip and trick Stollman offered just didn't apply to MIT. I ended up writing my thoughts down in an essay called "The Spring Dilemma".

Now, since Freshmen on Campus was only 3 rushes old, there was still a big burden on my position and Exec as a whole to find ways to boost numbers to pre-FoC levels. The FSILG office offered their assistance by hiring a group to come in a give a 13-hour course (over two sessions) called "Recruitment Boot Camp." All rush chairs were invited to attend. I went in with an open mind, but you can imagine my dismay when I found out the program was created by Mr. Stollman. "Please," I thought, "Be tailored to our school." But alas it was not. In fact, the facilitator continuously ignored and brushed aside our dorm situation. It wasn't until the morning of the second day that she said, “So I heard that dorms aren’t very receptive to Greeks…” which sent all of us into a fit of annoyed laughter. Now she realizes. Her comment essentially invalidated the whole first day of the program.

The whole first day. Six hours. Wasted.

My evaluation of Recruitment Boot Camp was that the facilitators were nice but the subject matter was irrelevant. Why couldn’t any of the “experts” tailor a presentation to the needs of MIT Greeks? Why couldn’t they use their knowledge to help us with our problems? This all annoyed me considerably.

Afterward, the IFC faculty advisor asked me if I would be interested in creating a program for our guys, to which I replied no; I hate seminars myself, so there’s no way I’d force my peers to endure me rambling for hours on end. I instead revised "The Spring Dilemma" and kept to writing other brief recruitment essays.

Now leap to right after Rush in 2006. I had written "Rush Memoirs" (after a joking suggestion from an older brother of mine) the previous year, and I planned on doing it again. I started when Rush began so I had real-time notes, but something interesting happened when I tried to wrap up my thoughts at the end of the week. The Memoirs from 2005 were mostly anecdotes and stories of things that happened. This 2006 version included some of that, but it also starting venturing into a number of "big picture" concepts and instructions on how to do things properly. Memoirs were not the place for that material. But what was?

Then I remembered "The Spring Dilemma" and the other recruitment essays I had written. I also recalled my advisor suggesting I hold a seminar. And then it all clicked. I still wasn't sold on the seminar idea, but what about a manual? A book of sorts to guide MIT Greeks down the right path to obtaining new members? Something which could address our problems and needs? Hmm...

And just like that, Recruitment Theory came to be.

*****

Interesting to note is how it all grew out of a piece on Spring Recruitment. This is painfully clear if you were to look at the draft of Part II: Active Recruitment (if you can't already tell from the outline). One of my biggest challenges continues to be the smoothing down of the Spring section so it fits in properly with everything else.

Anyway, I'm going to leave you with that. I'm taking a break from Recruitment Theory to work on the second draft of a piece I'm writing on my chapter's history (oh, and to finish my master's thesis).

The Recruitment Breakdown

So here's the hierarchical recruitment model I've come up with:

• At the top we have recruitment, which refers to fraternities doing that which results in new members.
• This can be divided into passive and active recruitment. The passive sort relates to how our day-to-day operations are perceived, while active recruitment is just as it sounds: actively trying to increase our ranks.
• The most complex method of active recruitment is rush. Rush can be broken into what I have been referring to as passive and active rush. Passive rush is essentially what's done during Orientation, whereas active rush is what begins with the Greek Griller (also known as Rush).
• But there's yet one more level of depth! Active rush consists of two different flavors too. The bulk of the week is indirect rush, where we entertain freshmen with fancy events, free food, and so on. And then the final days are direct rush, where the flashiness goes away and we talk to rushees explicitly about pledging.

But here's a problem. "Passive" and "active" rush are poor terms for what I'm trying to describe. Can you think of anything better? And from a grammatical angle, when should "Rush" be a proper noun?

Status Update: 2.16.10

I did some work yesterday on the following:

> CPW (Active Recruitment) - Went a little into how our goals during CPW don't necessarily align with the task Admissions gives us, and that we must compromise the two.

> Rush (Active Recruitment) - Finally found something to put here! I outlined the three Rush stages, going from the "Meet-and-greet" to "Hanging out" to finally sealing the deal with serious "power rushing".

The updated outline should be coming soon.

EDIT (10pm): The outline in the first post has been updated, and a permanent link is at the top of the right sidebar. I'll just keep modifying it when the structure changes.

Back to the grind

It's been a long time since the last update, hasn't it? But it's somewhat misleading since I have been working on Recruitment Theory, albeit much less I would have liked. But after participating in my final Rush this past Fall, I'm sure that I have enough material and experience to finish the first draft. So expected completion date: August 2010.

It's funny that I've restarted RT now. I'm at crunch time for my master's thesis and I'm in a draft phase on a piece about my chapter's history. This probably isn't the best time for this, but I suppose RT gives me the opportunity to relax.

Oh yes, a little on the August deadline. I plan on taking a summer-long break before I start work, so I'll have hours and hours of time to burn. If I can't finish RT under those circumstances then I won't finish it ever (even with baseball as a distraction...)

Enough about that; onto the text. I'll post an updated outline later, but here's a brief description of the things I worked on yesterday:

> The Rush Week
The first pass of "The Beginning" is complete. I also moved onto "Midweek" and better organized the outline for "Endgame". There will also be discussion on what I've termed the "Power Rush" in the latter section. This refers to having those serious talks with bidsmen on the eve of pledging.

> Rush Special Topics
Wow. Since my last update, this section has changed a lot. I'll save the full description of that for the new outline.

Also, I did a lot of miscellaneous formatting and touched up a few sections.