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.