Recruitment Checkpoints: How to Adjust Strategies in Real-Time

The most successful recruitment happens when chapters regularly pause to assess their progress and adjust strategies accordingly. Too often, organizations set recruitment goals but don’t check their effectiveness until it’s too late. This “set it and forget it” approach leaves little room for the critical adjustments that could be the difference between hitting or missing recruitment targets.

Why Checkpoints Matter

Recruitment checkpoints are predetermined moments or milestones where your chapter intentionally pauses to:

• Review current recruitment data

• Assess progress toward goals

• Identify bottlenecks or challenges

• Make strategic adjustments before continuing

Think of these checkpoints like a GPS that recalculates your route when you’ve made a wrong turn. Without them, you might end up miles from your destination before realizing you’re off course.

Establishing Effective Checkpoints

The Seven Indicators of Growth framework provides a perfect structure for organizing your recruitment checkpoints:

1. Growth Coaching: Schedule regular check-ins with advisors, headquarters staff, or campus professionals. Ask yourself: “Are we leveraging all available support resources?” or “Are there any other sources of information we can reference in order to best move forward to achieve our goals?”

2. Growth Technology: Assess your chapter’s use of recruitment tools. Is everyone consistently utilizing the right tool for the right job (ie Chapter Builder, Campus Director, Companion App)? Are potential members/leads moving through your recruitment funnel as expected and are you properly tracking it?

3. Growth Education: Evaluate your chapter’s understanding of dynamic recruitment principles to best apply to your growth strategy. For examples, do members understand how to be socially excellent, move leads through DCBA, cancel the #frattext, or have meaningful conversations to connect?

4. Growth Data: Analyze where potential members get stuck in your recruitment process – aka the bottleneck. Is it difficult moving them from “name on a list” to “acquaintance” or from “hot prospect” to “bid accepted”? This step is one of the most important because these findings can inform how you proceed to most of the other six indicators.

5. Marketing Strategy: Review whether your messaging resonates with your target audience. Are you telling authentic stories that connect emotionally rather than just listing organization achievements?

6. PNM Education: Are you actively educating potential members about what membership truly entails? Remember that misaligned expectations lead to poor retention.

7. Onboarding & Retention: Assess how well your recruitment strategy connects to your new member experience. Are you recruiting people who will thrive in your organization?

When reflecting on the indicators, work with your respective leaders to develop specific, quantifiable responses to these questions. That way, everybody is on board with what “excellence” looks like, knows which checkpoint they own, and know when you’re on/off track.

Making Data-Driven Adjustments

The most critical aspect of recruitment checkpoints isn’t just reviewing the data—it’s making meaningful adjustments based on what you discover:

• If you have plenty of names but few meaningful connections, shift focus from quantity to deepening relationships (quantity drives quality)

• If potential members seem to be confused or uneducated about the process or membership itself, speak out on addressing common misconceptions and get people informed sooner rather than later

• If your lowest retention rate previously was prefs to Bid Day or A to A+, consider what could be a more compelling “joining story” to push more leads through that stage

When to Schedule Checkpoints

Rather than one massive evaluation at the end, establish checkpoints at strategic intervals:

Early Checkpoint (25% through your recruitment timeline)

• Review initial data collection (previous year’s or semester’s recruitment/intake numbers)

• Clearly inform and engage members’ for what’s expected of them and what role they play in each checkpoint

• Make preliminary adjustments to outreach strategies

Mid-Point Checkpoint (50% through your recruitment timeline)

• Evaluate funnel progression (how is your names list coming along?)

• Review quality of conversations and connections (are people effectively moving from D to C and C to B?)

• Adjust event structures or marketing if needed (identify gaps and readjust to fill in)

Pre-Final Push Checkpoint (75% through your recruitment timeline)

• Complete comprehensive review of potential member tracking

• Identify any gaps in your recruitment funnel (are people moving from B to A and A to A+?)

• Make targeted adjustments to close strong (are you “closing” well aka have a strong bid acceptance rate that’s close to your target?)

Wrap up

Remember: people don’t join organizations; they join people. The most sophisticated recruitment strategy will fall flat without genuine human connection. Recruitment checkpoints help ensure your tactics are working to facilitate these meaningful relationships so you can marry tactics/tech with human connection and social excellence.

The difference between good and great chapters often comes down to this willingness to evaluate honestly and pivot quickly. Which will you be?

 Written by Elena Pastore, Growth Consultant