hardworkimage

Five Ways to Get a Quick Recruitment Boost

Recruitment season is upon us, and many chapters across the country are busy preparing to welcome their latest new member classes! Our recruitment trainers are crisscrossing the country helping to deliver programs that will empower students to achieve their recruitment goals this fall. We are in the business of helping you grow and be better, stronger organizations. We hope we get to bump into you on campus this fall, but if not- we wanted to remind you that there is so much free (or low cost) stuff out there to help you recruit (and retain) to your potential new members. Make the most of this fall and consider the five tips below:

1. Gain Some More Knowledge. Have you heard the phrase that you’re never too old to learn something new? That is so true when it comes to preparing for recruitment! Whether you’re a senior who’s got a few years under your belt, or a sophomore experiencing fall recruitment as a chapter member for the first time, you should never stop seeking out knowledge when it comes to recruitment. When was the last time you asked an alumnus of your organization for advice about recruitment? What about getting ideas from your fraternity/sorority advisor or graduate assistant, or even from chapter leaders from other chapters who you admire? Did you spend time this summer reading any great booksblogs, or checking out free resources? Don’t worry, because there is still time! You can always gain knowledge to help grow your chapter, and to help grow your recruitment skills.

2. Brush Up on Social Excellence. Speaking of recruitment skills, having a little brush up on Social Excellence will only help you and the PNMs you’re meeting feel more comfortable during recruitment. If you’re unfamiliar with Social Excellence, we’ve got a ton of information and resources to share with you. The most essential, key pillars of Social Excellence boil down to Curiosity, Generosity, Authenticity, and Vulnerability. When you focus on bringing those four pillars of Social Excellence into your daily interactions with your brothers/sisters, classmates, faculty/staff, and PNMs, you’ll feel more connected to the campus community around you and more at ease navigating the first few stressful weeks of school this fall.

3. Adopt Helpful Technology. There are a ton of ways to help keep track of your recruitment team, your PNMs, and your follow-up communication efforts. Spreadsheets are an outdated way to keep track of PNMs, so many chapters are making the switch to ChapterBuilder. ChapterBuilder was created by Phired Up’s sister company, TechniPhi, and is a year-round recruitment tool with a ton of great features for keeping your PNMs organized, your recruitment team and advisors involved, and tracking recruitment analytics. There’s a free version you can sign up for right now! If you’re doing formal recruitment and need help saving some time with voting, you can help recycle those old paper ballots by adopting MyVote. Through an iOS app or your mobile browser, MyVote will help your chapter members quickly cast votes for PNMs between recruitment rounds using your exact voting criteria, and saves a ton of time counting ballots. By adopting some great recruitment technology, you can ease some stress and earn back tons of time to help make your recruitment efforts even more successful!

4. Maintain Regular Communication. One of the ways recruitment leaders get so overwhelmed right away with recruitment is that they don’t establish and maintain regular communication efforts with PNMs. It can be overwhelming to handle a big influx of emails, texts, phone calls, Snapchats, Facebook Messages, and Instagram comments. Like we mentioned above, ChapterBuilder can help ease some of that burden. We also recommend that you consider having a few different people on your recruitment team whom you can delegate some of your communication efforts to. Remember that recruitment is a chapter-wide responsibility! You do not have to carry the burden of communicating with everyone on your own. Feeling comfortable delegating some of your communication responsibility will help you stay on top of all of the other emails coming in from your professors, clubs and organizations, jobs, and your family and friends.

5. Create Strategic Marketing. Have you given much thought to the story of your chapter or your campus’ fraternity/sorority community? What’s the most compelling reason you give to PNMs to join – besides having “the tightest brotherhood” or “the strongest sisterhood” on campus? Every recruitment leader should be able to pinpoint a few specific, compelling, and powerful things that set their chapter apart from the others on campus. Communicating that information effectively can be tough, but there are some resources that can help. We recommend checking out a free e-book created by our sister company, Innova Marketing. It helps fraternities and sororities understand the importance of building a fraternity/sorority marketing strategy that aims to get results, and provides a how-to guide to get started.