Three Keys To Summer Fraternity Recruitment

By Taylor Deer

In my experience, your chapter either loves summer recruitment or you have absolutely no idea what “summer recruitment” is.

Summer Recruitment is like air conditioning, once you’ve lived with it, you’ll never want to go another day without it. So in this blog I want to open your eyes to the benefits of meeting people and building relationships from right now, until school begins. By doing so, your chapter gets to be the first upperclassmen that new students meet, thus giving you a head start on building relationships with them. By the time school begins, you already will have a group of people that are interested in joining your organization before the recruitment process even starts.

If you do fall recruitment just like you did last year, you’re going to get the same results (depending on enrollment size). Add summer recruitment into the mix, and not only are you getting those same members, but you are also adding more people that you wouldn’t have met through that process.

Here are three different sources on your campus that your chapter can partner with in order to meet more people and build more relationships over the summer.

1) Admissions Office

• Using a Scholarship: Chapters across the country are partnering with their Admissions Office to gain access to the annual accepted students list of their university. Chapters are sending out a scholarship opportunity through their office to all incoming students. They may get the lists themselves and call perspective students over the summer to offer a scholarship or to help give tours around campus before school begins. Fraternities were designed to be good hosts for their campuses, so this can be a perfect fit! The object is to make students feel like they have a place to go if they need support, not just to recruit more people into your organization.

2) High Schools

• Guidance Counselors: Chapters ask their members to return to their old high schools to visit their guidance counselors to ask for a list of students that plan on attending their University. They don’t do this because they want to “recruit” people into their chapter, but because they want to help students from their hometowns get oriented to campus. Many chapters send out a scholarship application to the students or offer them a chance to visit campus a bit early to show them around.
• Presentations: Other chapters have been known to give presentations to the group of students that plan on attending their University so that they know about the school before they attend. Many of them get involved in their school’s student ambassador program and get paid to do it!

3) Orientation

• OA’s/RA’s: Being involved in the orientation staff or residence hall staff gives you the chance to welcome students to campus. You will be the first face that they put to the university and most likely make a ton of new friends in the process.
• Volunteering at events: Orientation week typically has a ton of events throughout the first few weeks of school. All new students typically have to go to them. Ask your orientation office (well ahead of time) if they could use any help at any of the events. Its very easy to make friends while passing out T-shirts or giving tours to new students. Again this gives you the chance to be the first person they associate with the University, and give you a chance to meet a ton of new students in the process.

Just adding one or two of these ideas into your summer recruitment strategy should help you bring in even better results with recruitment this Fall! Interested in checking out even more summer recruitment ideas? Check out a recent blog by Vince Fabra, or read our Summer Recruitment Collection.

Fraternity Gets Creative; Recruits 70 Men in 25 Days

This spring, something extraordinary happened at Georgia College!

The average size of a college fraternity in the United States is approximately 45 members.  On average, those members use 52 weeks to recruit and initiate fewer than 20 new members into their chapter.

In March 2016, two men — Bo Hunter and Zach Vasseur — were sent to GC by Alpha Tau Omega’s national fraternity on a mission: to recruit the school’s highest quality non-Greek men and start a new chapter of ATO.  They were given one month!

Approximately 2500 undergraduate men represent 45% of the Georgia College student body. There were already six fraternities on campus (average size of 65 members).  ATO wanted to become the 7th.  ATO partnered with the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Fraternity & Sorority Life to determine that there may be interest on campus from non-Greek men to start a new fraternity.  On March 11th, just 25 days after arriving on campus, Bo & Zach announced that Alpha Tau Omega had 70 accepted bids!

I had an opportunity to interview Zach and his supervisor, RJ Taylor.  (Transcript below)  The recruitment results are exceptional, but I am most impressed with how they did it.

The professionalism of ATO’s team and deep partnership with the school provide a shining example of a new era of fraternity recruitment; an overhauled business model; a system and philosophy that may become the new normal.  Stacey Milner, Assistant Director for Fraternity and Sorority Life, told me ATO executed the textbook example of how a fraternity should partner with a host institution.  And, they were rewarded with 70 new members who she verified “are amazing guys, having an amazing experience.”

Warning:  if you’re looking for “event ideas” or techniques to “get your name out there” then you’ll be wildly disappointed.  You also won’t read about Rush Week calendars, off-campus parties, cool t-shirts, yard signs, frat castles, over-produced rush videos, giveaway swag, or booze.  Just the opposite!  ATO’s success is another example of the evolving professionalization of fraternity recruitment.

There is a fraternity-done-right story happening around the country that has gotten almost no press coverage even though it is happening on hundreds of college campuses every year.  Select fraternity expansion teams and undergraduate chapters are choosing a relationship-focused, values-based, Dynamic Recruitment system that counters frat-star culture and public expectations of “going Greek.”  The results are often exceptional in both quantity and quality – just like ATO at GC.  Results that exceed what anyone thought might be possible.  These groups represent the future of fraternity.  They are the business model to replicate.

Here’s what Zach & RJ had to say about Alpha Tau Omega’s success at Georgia College.

Phired Up: Two men recruited 70 new members in less than 1 month.  That’s impressive.
ATO:  Thanks.  We’re proud of Bo and Zach.  They did a great job of executing ATO’s recruitment system.

Phired Up:  Some people may read those numbers and question the quality of your new members or the selectivity of ATO.
ATO: We gave bids to 70 men and initiated all 70 of them.  We interviewed and turned down 82 men who we didn’t think were ready for ATO.  The new ATO group has a 3.29 GPA compared to the 3.05 all-fraternity GPA.  We are proud of every single man in our group.  They each exceeded our values-based selection criteria.

Phired Up: Good answer.
ATO:  Thanks.

ATO:  We got close to these guys.  They’re friends – brothers.  They really are some of the best men on campus.  Our men represent leaders across all parts of campus.  Student org officers, student government Chief of Staff, President of business fraternity, guys from Campus Outreach, Bible Study leaders, Intramural Reps….

Phired Up:  People reading this will want to know how you did it.  The details. Tactics.  ATO has a strong expansion recruitment system, but what made this project so explosive in such a short amount of time?
ATO:  (smiling) There was definitely some luck involved.  The school was uncommonly supportive.  We did lots of prep work and worked long days while we were on campus.

Phired Up:  What does “uncommonly supportive” mean?
ATO:  From the very first conversation we were in a real partnership with the school.  We shared the same goal.  Campus officials and even the IFC went out of their way to support us.  The communication between our staff and the school was constant.  Everyone was transparent.  There was so much trust and mutual respect.  I think we all [school, ATO, IFC, new members, alumni] worked together so well that we felt like we succeeded together as a team.

Phired Up:  Will you share some of those tactics … the stuff you did different at GC that really worked?
ATO:  Sure.

Below are 10 recruitment tactics ATO did at GC that few recruitment teams are doing well – or not at all.  They credit each of these with making a significant impact toward the results achieved:

1.    INSTAGRAM – We planned on using Facebook and Twitter.  At the last minute Zach threw together an Instagram account just to see what would happen.  It blew up!

2.    UNIVERSITY EMAIL – The campus administration was so supportive!  Especially Stacey Hurt-Milner.  The school emailed every incoming freshman with information about ATO.  34 guys showed up to our first interest meeting during the pre-site visit.

3.    CHAPTERBUILDER – ATO uses recruitment technology called ChapterBuilder. However, this time we didn’t wait until the end of recruitment to invite all the new members into the system and train them.  Instead, we invited about 15 of the guys who expressed early interest to use the technology with us.  They went crazy with it and recruited 20+ of their friends using the tool.

4.    SHAMROCK WEEK – The guys we recruited during the 1st week got involved right away and met a lot of sorority women.  They won Kappa Delta sorority’s Shamrock Week before they were even a recognized group.  That got people’s attention and built their confidence.

5.    PRE-SITE VISIT – Our mantra is that ‘day one on campus is never day one of recruitment.’  We visited GC a few months before we started recruiting.  That’s when we met the 34 guys from the campus generated email.  We also built relationships with campus administrators, faculty, student leaders, sorority presidents, etc.

6.    INTRAMURALS – We learned during the pre-site visit that up to 85% of GC students participate in IM’s.  So we did, too.  It paid off.

7.    TAYLOR DEER – A recruitment specialist from Phired Up visited the project to coach the ATO team for a few days and help us refine our process.  Taylor is the real deal.

8.    CHUNKING – We never talked to a student without asking for referrals of quality Non-Greek men.  Chunking is an art form.  It takes practice.  Our team got really good at it.

9.    DEVOTIONAL – ATO is unique in that our top 3 officer positions are President, Vice-President, then Chaplain.  ATO is the first fraternity founded on Christian values.  The “ATO Devotional” is a book written by ATO’s for ATO’s talking about the bigger issues of life.  We carried that book everywhere we went.  Literally.  It was a constant conversation piece.

10.    SERVICE/OUTREACH – ATO is not a “frat.” One way we demonstrate that is putting service at the heart of our recruitment.  We partnered with the GC Give Center to establish a partnership of giving between ATO and school to do community outreach.

Phired Up:  You didn’t mention any rush events or a rush calendar.
ATO:  Nah.  If you mean traditional “big events,” we didn’t do that.  We’ve found that large rush events send the wrong message, often attract the wrong guys, take too much time and money, and deliver too little return of quality members.

Phired Up:  Alcohol?
ATO:  If you’re asking us to have a beer with you after this interview, sure.  If you’re asking if we used alcohol during recruitment, absolutely not!  That would have undermined everything we were trying to build.

Phired Up:  What did a typical day of recruitment look like?
ATO:  There was no “typical” day.  Hang on a sec.  Here’s an example from Zach & Bo’s calendar.

7:30am wake up
9:00am arrive on campus (Einstein Bagel in Student Union)
9:30am – 4:30pm coffee meetings (typically 20+ meetings, 15-30 minutes each)
5:00pm dinner on campus
5:30pm be present on campus (slack line, IM sports, campus events, chill, etc)
7:00pm ATO information session
8:30pm arrive home, follow up calls, texts, & emails
10:00pm administrative work. Plan next day together.
11:00pm talk to friends/family, read news, etc
12:00am sleep

Phired Up:  That’s intense.
ATO:  It’s worth it.

Phired Up:  Congratulations on your success at Georgia College & State University.
ATO:  Thanks!

Bravo to Alpha Tau Omega for doing recruitment right.  Thank you for sharing the Georgia College story.

While nearly every national fraternity in the country is enjoying unprecedented membership growth, some – like ATO – are using this moment in time to elevate the caliber of men they are recruiting and putting new, sustainable business systems in place that may make success stories like this the new normal.  Now, that would be extraordinary.

Interview Date:  May 12, 2016
Interviewer:  Josh Orendi, Josh@PhiredUp.com / Josh@TechniPhi.com
Interviewing:
Zach Vasseur, Senior Leadership Consultant, zvasseur@ato.org
RJ Taylor, Director of Growth, rtaylor@ato.org

Other Dynamic Recruitment Spotlight Articles:

• Sigma Nu TCU Recruits 112 Men
• 81 New Members in 5 Weeks! Phi Sigma Kappa Shatters Recruitment Record
• How Alcohol (or the lack thereof) is Helping One Fraternity Grow Fast
• Meet the Fastest Growing Fraternity in the Nation: Alpha Sigma Phi 60% Growth Rate Per Year!
• New #1, Alabama Takes Over as Nations Largest Greek Community
• 19 to 90 in 18 Months? (Alpha Gamma Rho, LSU)
• Sigma Tau Gamma Expansion Recruits 62 Men at Purdue University
• How ChapterBuilder is Changing Chapter Recruitment (Sigma Pi Fraternity).

Are You A Recruitment Gambler?

By Taylor Deer

In Phired Up’s Recruitment Diagnostic Survey, we asked an important question: Does someone in your organization have a conversation to address concerns with all potential candidates prior to inviting them to join? Of the 1300 students who answered the question, 43.3% of students said “No” or “Somewhat”.

That’s pretty crazy. To me, that means that 43.3% of chapters are handing someone a bid, closing their eyes, crossing their fingers, and hoping that people accept their invitations to join. A week later we find out through the grapevine they joined another chapter, or decided they didn’t want to join at all. Why do we do this?

I tried looking at it from a student’s perspective. He’s thinking about joining a fraternity, he had a great time at a few events. He met a few brothers, and they seemed pretty cool. At the end of the week the brothers give him an invitation to join and say “give it a few days to think about it, give it back to a brother once you sign it”. He takes that invitation, heads back to his dorm room, sits down, and reality hits him about the decision he is about to make. Scenes creep in about all the hazing he’s heard about, he worries his parents might not be supportive, and he remembers this is his first year away from home, at a school that he has barely had even a semester at. He gets cold feet and ghosts you.

Little does he know that you felt the same way before you joined. You had the same reservations, and yet you found out that after joining your chapter, you had a great new member process.  Your parents love how the fraternity gave you direction and helped you adapt to your new surroundings. In fact, joining the chapter is the only reason you stayed at the school.

That student might have missed the chance of a lifetime. You know that, but he never had a chance to talk it through with someone. You gambled by hoping he didn’t have concerns, and you lost.

Every time you don’t have an intentional conversation with a student about the concerns they have about joining your organization, you are rolling the dice and hoping that it lands on “no concerns”. You’re expecting that your future members are willing to dive head first into lifelong membership regardless of the real hesitations they have.

If you really cared about someone joining, would you really leave it up to chance whether they join or not? No? Then we need to get a bit more serious about the way we approach giving invitations to join.

Here are a few ways that you have intentional conversations with people who want to join your organization:

1) Sit them down, one on one

• Set up some time away from the chaos of recruitment.
• Find a place that perfect to have a comfortable and relaxed conversations with them.

2) Ask them this question:

• Hypothetically, if I were to offer you a chance to join our organization, what would your hesitations be before joining?
• Listen to their answer.

3) Come prepared

• Think of all the reasons people don’t join fraternities. (Money, time, hazing, drinking, parents, etc…)
• Write talking points about each hesitation that would help them make the right decision.

4) Be a problem finder, not a problem solver

• After you listen to their answer, DO NOT jump into used car salesmen mode (answering right away with the sexiest answer you have).
• Ask follow up questions to find where the root of their hesitations lie.
• Address their hesitation(s) only when you are convinced that you have found what they are really concerned about. You will learn quickly that “I don’t know if this is for me” turns into “well, my parents don’t want me to join.”

5) Get to the true purpose

• Say things like “This is a big decision, we want to help you make sure that you are making the right decision for you, not for us.”
• Or “We really care about you, I don’t want to make sure you have the full picture before you make a decision.”

6) Train all of your members how to have these conversations

• These conversations are great for early in the process to show students that you are watching out for their best interests.
• These conversations are great for late in the process when you have your core joiners already established and want bring the relationship with them to a deeper level.