pup.img (4)

See The Word ‘Recruitment’ Through Fresh Eyes

By Matt Mattson

This blog was inspired by a Live Digital Training session that is available to watch in full for free here.

Here’s a completely hypothetical situation. Imagine with me, would you… Imagine that the news is suddenly full of stories of a worldwide zombie apocalypse. Again… completely hypothetical… but imagine that it is a worldwide pandemic of Zombiism… They’re calling the disease that is infecting people, ZOMBID-19… Imagine that schools are closed and businesses are closed and restaurants and bars are closed… Imagine that everyone is quarantined… Imagine all the toilet paper has all been hoarded… Can you picture it?

A cure is urgently needed.

Good news. It’s your job to figure out the solution.  Your job is vital. The President of The United States… President Kardashian (Khloe)… has asked you to organize a group of the world’s best medical professionals to find a cure. Your job is to attract, select, and secure the best doctors, nurses, researchers, and scientists in the world to come up with a cure.

Now here’s the question… How would you do it?

a) Would you a: Set up a table in a busy park with the letters “DR.Z” carved in wood real big next to the table hoping the most qualified candidates will find you and be interested in taking a risk to join without really knowing what they’re getting into.

b) Charge $150 for someone to have the chance to be considered, then put anyone who shows up through four days of fun but intense very short interviews and make sure as many of them get matched to an opportunity as possible.

c) Just host some fun medical “hangouts” (advertised on IG) for a while, letting any interested candidates know that you’ll have the “tightest group of zombie doctors around” and maybe have a nice dinner out for anyone who shows serious interest.

d) None of the above.

I think I know your answer. NONE OF THE ABOVE!

If your job was to “RECRUIT” the best people in the world for a particular cause… and that cause was important to the world, what would you do? NONE OF THE ABOVE!

If your job is to attract, select, and secure the best people in the world for a particular cause… and that cause was important to the world… and that cause was to carry out the mission, vision, and values of your fraternal organization, what would you do? NONE OF THE ABOVE!

Every time you start to make your plan to grow your organization this year, look up at the officers that have come before you and your alumni giving you advice, and make your plans based on NONE OF THE ABOVE!!!!

The methods of the past to grow fraternities and sororities don’t make sense in today’s world.

And this takes us to the word “RECRUITMENT.” I need you to look at this word through the fresh eyes that you have. Don’t wear the fogged up glasses of members of the past. See the word through fresh eyes!

Maybe you’re a part of an organization that doesn’t even like to use the word, “RECRUITMENT.” I get it. That’s because you think about recrutiment ideas of the past. I don’t blame you. You’re smart enough to understand that those ideas don’t fit into today’s world, into today’s culture, into the real lives of today’s students.

I’d like to invite you to see the idea of recruitment in its most simple, core, basic, bare bones meaning… From this point forward, when you see the word recruitment, here’s what it should mean to you… THE METHODS BY WHICH YOUR ORGANIZATIONS ATTRACTS, SELECTS, AND SECURES THE RIGHT MEMBERS FOR YOUR GROUP. That’s all. And it might be time for those methods to be re-imagined.

You… the ones reading this… you are the creators. You are the architects of a new version of sorority and fraternity. Your are the engineers of GreekLife2.0. You are not stuck in tradition or history. You are visionaries. You are idealists with your feet planted firmly in reality. You are ready to do the hard work and change things. Let’s flip some tables! Let’s transform our organizations. IF RIGHT NOW ISN’T THE RIGHT TIME TO CREATE THE FUTURE, I DON’T KNOW WHEN IS.

Today’s students crave a fraternity & sorority experience for the modern era. This modern era requires FRESH EYES! This modern era requires an understanding of today’s students and their college environments… which are dramatically different from those of the past. This modern era requires a re-definition of the very processes by which we exist.

Now, let’s go back to the completely unimaginable hypothetical scenario with the zombies and the doctors. How would you go about attracting, selecting, and securing the RIGHT doctors to accomplish your cause.

I believe you would do three simple things.

  1. You would get as many potential candidates in your pool as possible so that you could be sure to select the RIGHT doctors for this mission.
  2. You would learn about and build trust with as many of those candidates as possible so that you were sure you were getting the right doctors, and so that you could convince them to join this high stakes mission.
  3. You would select and secure the best of the best, the right talent to help you accomplish the mission at hand.

It should be no surprise that I want you to do the same three things when you build your chapter’s growth plan for this upcoming school year. No matter how you grow… formal recruitment; a discretionary process of interviews, informationals, and intake; or an informal and casual recruitment process, digital recruitment or face-to-face… THIS APPLIES TO YOU.

So look at recruitment through fresh eyes.

With fresh eyes you’ll see that there are three major things you have to do in recruitment…

  1. Put a lot of people into your “recruitment process.” 
  2. Create experiences within your “recruitment process” that result in authentic connection and trust.
  3. Put a filter in your “recruitment process” that keeps the wrong people out of your organization, and allows only the right people in.

Watch the video linked at the top of this post for a deeper dive into these concepts. And visit www.phiredup.com/free for tons of free resources on how to practically do all of this.