Quality Control

by Matt Mattson

qualityAbout this time of year a lot of fraternity/sorority members are getting concerned about not only getting a high quantity of members, but more importantly… high QUALITY members.  Of course we at Phired Up believe that you don’t have to choose one or the other.  There are a LOT of students on your campus that are both very high quality and that would be interested in your organization if your recruited them in the right way.  But let’s focus on quality for a moment.

There are three factors in recruitment that directly impact the quality of your new member class.

1. Quantity Drives Quality.  Fraternities and sororities are membership organizations.  Membership organizations are made of… MEMBERS.  Therefore the quality of your organization is directly correlated to the quality of its members.  The best way to determine the quality of an organization is to look at how selective they are.  Harvard rejects over 93% of its applicants.  The community college down the road accepts 100% of its applicants.  Both are valuable institutions, but it isn’t hard to argue that Harvard, the more selective of the two, provides a higher QUALITY educational experience. 

The first factor impacting the QUALITY of your members has to do with how selective you can be.  If you choose 20 new members out of 40 relationships, not bad.  If you choose 20 new members out of 400 relationships, you’re measurably 10 times higher quality.  The more people you have to choose from, the more selective you can be.  Quantity Drives Quality.

2. To attract high quality people, do high quality things.  This seems obvious, but is often ignored.  This time of year sees many Greek organizations hosting events… many of those events look just like the events every other group on campus is hosting.  And hardly any of those events are surprising, impressive, outstanding, remarkable, or even slightly interesting.  Josh Orendi always says that if all you do for recruitment is barbecues and poker nights, you’ll only recruit fat gamblers.  He’s got it right…  If you want to attract high quality people, do high quality things.  Need some ideas?  Try a diverse mix of small activities (fraternity ideassorority ideas) to recruit a diverse mix of high performers.  Consider leaving the big top at home all together.

3. Values Based Selection Process.  The third way to impact the quality of your membership this semester is to be certain to choose your members based on more than a gut feeling.  Selecting members based on measurable, objective, pre-determined criteria is the most powerful way to ensure that you’re choosing only the best of the best for your group.  Here is a blog about a Values-Based Selection Process.  Here is another blog about the concept.  Here is another blog, this one is about a research project we’re conducting in an attempt to refine membership selection processes even further.

So, be bold… choose only the highest quality members.  These three focus areas will help guide you to ensuring only high quality people get invited to be your brothers or sisters this semester.  Look for more than just “Good Guys” and “Nice Girls.”  Push your chapter to only accept the highest caliber men and women to wear your letters.