Your Guide to Being the IFC Vice President of Recruitment

by Matt Mattson and Kenny White

Congratulations!

You’ve taken on the role of IFC Vice President of Recruitment (or some title like that). That’s awesome. This is a big job. And truth be told, most people who end up in this position have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into. We wanted to provide a simple guide to help you understand your job.

Before we dive into our guidance, please check out this complete manual for your position from the NIC here. The NIC has done a great job of detailing your position. We have a great partnership with the NIC, and sometimes they ask us to help guys in your position understand this job in a clear and simple way. So take this blog and add it to that NIC manual to set yourself up for success.

And one more thing before we dive into the job description. Have you done these 5 things?

1. Set up a personal one-on-one meeting with your Greek Advisor to figure out a regular plan for collaboration and planning together. This person is your new best friend! They can help you make plans, reserve space, gain access to data, build partnerships, think strategically, navigate politics, and more.

2. Familiarize yourself with your recruitment technology. Your council likely has a ChapterBuilder or CampusDirector account that you need to be an expert at using.

3. Identify your goals for the year. Recruitment isn’t just about “getting more members” (though that’s a perfectly good objective). The way you build and manage your IFC recruitment system can impact the quality of members in your community, the culture of the community, and the level of inclusivity and equity in the community. Write down and share publicly how you’ll measure your success over the course of your term.

4. Check in with the NIC. Some of the best support for IFC officers can be found at the NIC’s website.

5. Assess Your Current Growth System. Too often people with your job take a “tactics-first” approach to what is really a complex and interwoven system. This free assessment is a really smart place to start as you think about your growth system.

WHAT IS YOUR JOB?

The job of an IFC VP Recruitment includes five key tasks.

• Build Pipelines to More of the Right PNMs

• Collect Data on PNMs

• Create Opportunities for Human Connection

• Collaborate to Manage the Story of Fraternity

• Provide Growth Education to Chapters

Build Pipelines

The most important value-add the IFC can provide back to its member chapters is… leads. Funneling names and contact information of potential new members (PNMs) to chapter recruitment teams is your most tangible, measurable, and important task.

Put simply… give your chapters people to recruit.

Of course this isn’t solely your responsibility. Every chapter should take responsibility for its own pipelines of prospective members. But if the IFC can feed leads to its chapters, the chapters will respect the IFC more, the chapters will have a higher likelihood of finding the right members for them, competition can be decreased (because of a larger pool of potential members), and every other aspect of recruitment gets easier.

So, what does this actually look like? Here are five important tactics (we have ideas for a lot more) for executing this part of your job.

• Make it really easy for potential members to indicate interest in fraternities and for chapter recruitment teams to see their contact info. Make sure there is an always-available “Sign Up” or “I’m Interested” link on your website and social media platforms that connects to a form. You can use ChapterBuilder or CampusDirector to make this easier.

• Collaborate with your IFC VP of Public Relations to execute multiple “Inbound Marketing” campaigns. We want to get contact information more than we give facts about ourselves.

• Organize a calling campaign (in partnership with the university) to incoming students (or a texting campaign).

• Put together a “Street Team” and lead them into action with names-driving work.

• Work with the university to ensure leads-generating presence at summer orientation events for incoming students.

Collect Data on PNMs

Providing leads to your chapters is great. Providing qualified leads to your chapters is even better! The more information your chapters have about potential new members, the easier it will be for them to build relationships with them, to consider their qualifications for membership in their chapter, and to determine whether or not any given PNM is in alignment with the chapter’s values and expectations. Data will also allow us to better understand what our major pipelines are and where we need to target our efforts to continue to seek out the highest caliber students on campus. Having information on how students learn about us, what other organizations they represent, their interests, etc. can allow us to specifically create a leads generation plan that will maximize our efforts on reaching student populations that we haven’t been able to reach before.

The information you can collect on potential members and feed to chapters is an incredibly important way to improve the overall quality of your fraternity community. Whether you use CampusDirector, ChapterBuilder, Google Forms, or the classic pen and paper to collect information about potential members, you can infuse better questions into your registration process to learn more about a potential member and teach them about membership. Please read this for specific examples.

Create Opportunities for Human Connection

Recruitment is a relationship business. Nobody will join a flier, a social media post, a video, or an IFC table. People join people and one of the most important parts of your job is to create opportunities for human connection between members and non-members.

An important principle to keep in mind with everything you do in this role is to… always cultivate connection. You (and the IFC) won’t recruit people into chapters. You won’t close the deal. But if you’re constantly looking to create opportunities for members and non-members to engage with one another in authentic ways to deepen trust, you’re doing your job!

Use your “street team” to do informational interviews, small activities, and events with potential members. Plan “serve first” experiences for non-members — in other words plan events or activities that serve non-members (i.e. instead of an “All-Greek BBQ” which is obviously for Greeks, have a “First Year Cookout” which is for first year students.) Plan webinars about college success for incoming and current students. Provide open study tables, present educational programs that would benefit non-affiliated men, hold regular informational events about fraternity life, survey non-Greek students and engage them in focus groups about their perceptions of fraternity life, etc. Be creative in your planning, just be sure every opportunity for connection is aimed at creating authentic connection and trust between members and non-members. Your job is to connect people, not to just promote organizations.

You might be on a campus that has a formal or structured IFC recruitment process. Here are a handful of resources that are must-reads for you. But remember, organizing a week (or so) of structured recruitment is absolutely not your only job. Recruitment is a verb, not a noun. It is something your community should consistently do, not a series of events on a calendar.

• How To Do a Structured IFC Recruitment Process

• Maximizing Formal IFC Recruitment

• Transforming IFC Recruitment Orientation

Special Note: Are you trying to figure out how to manage a virtual recruitment experience? All of our best resources on virtual recruitment can be found here.

Collaborate To Manage The Story of Fraternity

The reputation of fraternities on your campus has a direct impact on your ability to succeed. An important part of your job is to collaborate with other IFC officers (i.e. President, VP Public Relations, etc.) to proactively promote a positive story of fraternity to your community.

Schedule a series of meetings with your IFC VP of Public Relations to review the following resources related to creating, communicating, and managing the “story” of fraternity on your campus. In fact, text the person in this role right now and set up a meeting together. If we don’t tell our story, someone else will.

• Non-Greek Market Research Results

• Four Marketing Insights

• Guide To Being A P.R. Chair

• Is Fraternity Worth The Cost?

• We Are More

• What You Are; Not What You’re Not

OK, we have a lot more we’d love to share with you. Our team at Phired Up and TechniPhi is literally a big group of people who have dedicated their careers to helping people in your job. We’ve been doing this work, studying recruitment, visiting and partnering with campuses like yours (we’ve almost certainly done work with your campus), for nearly two decades. We want to help. There’s never a charge for you to call or email and ask questions. We’re ready to support you.

Provide Growth Education To Chapters

Training chapter leaders and chapter members on the skills, mindsets, systems, and nuance of marketing, recruitment, and retention is a vital part of your job. Your are the organizer of education and the facilitator of chapters building their recruitment plans.

Phired Up is ready to help. We are the only group on Earth that is 100% focused on helping fraternities grow. We have professional educators, digital classrooms, experienced strategists, free videos, and tons of resources to help you. Just email info@phiredup.com to get something arranged. Each year we work with campuses just like yours to help IFC men know how to have a great recruitment. We might already have a partnership with your IFC or your campus. Just email us to find out.

Yes! YOU should absolutely host training and planning sessions for your chapters. Yes! YOU should absolutely show our videos to your chapters’ recruitment chairs. Yes! YOU should absolutely help chapters build a recruitment plan so they know the answers to these five questions…

1. How will you drive names onto your Names List (meet more non-Greek men)?

2. How will you build trust-filled relationships with your potential members?

3. How will you ensure you select only the right members for your chapter?

4. How will you pre-close potential members and close the deal?

5. How will you ensure everything you do reflects the values of your organization?

Note: You probably want to make sure you and as many fraternity members on your campus as possible are “Certified Recruiters.” This is a designation that you can earn by completing a short and engaging educational experience found at that link.