Archive for September, 2008

Mid-Semester Recruiting… Don't Overthink It

Friday, September 26th, 2008

by Matt Mattson

About this time in the semester for fraternity/sorority recruitment chairs in chapters all over the country, it seems like time to take a deep breath. Formal recruitment is over. Your job is over. Sit back and relax the rest of the semester. Right? Of course not.

All good chapters know that recruitment must continue. If you're not actually recruiting, at the very least, you're working every day to build your social network and/or your Names List. But the burnout factor starts to creep in for recruitment chairs because so many of them put their heart and soul into the first few weeks of the semester.

So, in order to continually do mid-semester recruiting… don't overthink it. We’d recommend a key tactic for mid-semester recruiting: turn your “chapter events” into recruitment opportunities.

Here's an example I ran across this week…

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon Chapter at the University of Wyoming will be doing an event this week called “Capture the Object.” The event was originally planned as a brotherhood event that would conveniently allow the guys to socialize with several sororities on campus. Here's how it works (if I understood correctly)… The guys hide some random object in their house, take a picture of it, then send it to the sororities. The sororities then have all week to infiltrate the house and find the secret hidden object. The sororities, of course, do the same thing with some random object in their house, and the guys try to find it. Sounds like a pretty simple fraternity/sorority event, right… Yeah, you're right. Not much to it. Except this year the guys realized that it was a good idea to invite their list of potential members to small activities, and they realized that this was a perfect small activity to which they could invite a potential member to join them. So the guys turned a highlight social/brotherhood event into what will probably be the best recruitment activity they've done. All these potential members will get to just hang out with small groups of the SAE guys, plus they’ll get to meet a lot of the women in the Greek community, and have a good time doing it. Simple. Classic. Smart.

Your chapter probably has 15 different brotherhood, service, philanthropy, social, or other events that it has planned this semester. INVITE POTENTIAL MEMBERS TO JOIN YOU! Fraternities and sororities both traditionally only recruit at “recruitment” functions, and those functions typically give a fake, contrived, cheesy impression of the chapter. If you actually invite prospects to things your chapter actually does, wouldn't they get a better sense of who you really are?

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How do you describe your organization?

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

by Matt Mattson 

“We are a group of men who are involved on campus, have a high respect for women, know how to have fun, and does our best at balancing everything college has to throw to us. We have a dedication to each other, our school, and community. We are the future and current mentors for all quality men coming in and out of DePaul University!”

What would you guess that paragraph is meant to describe? Many non-Greek folks might not guess that it is a college fraternity. 

I saw this description on a recent invitation to join the Facebook group for the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity (Skulls) at DePaul University. It really struck me as an honest, hopeful, and attractive description of their organization. I've met with these guys before, and I know that they try to exemplify that description.

Here's another excerpt that I liked…

———Whats in it for me?———
Phi Kappa Sigma takes basically everything you value (Friendship, social life, education, opportunities, growth, etc) and takes it to a new level. You will create, strengthen, and deepen friendships with brothers. The amount of people you could potentially meet grows exponentially… You will have a whole fraternity here to help support you in your education. Need help with math? We got your covered. Need scholarships? We can help you too! Every opportunity you've thought of and even the ones you haven't thought of will be placed before you. Once you join Phi Kappa Sigma, you not only have your brothers and school support… but you have the support of every Phi Kap in the world. This all is only a fraction of the things you can receive by joining Phi Kappa Sigma. The question is… what do you value and are you ready to embrace that on a new level?

The chapter realized the importance of pairing the needs and values of potential members with the benefits of membership in the fraternity when they described the organization. I'm a big believer that fraternities and sororities, when done right, are the only opportunity on a college campus that actually meets all the major needs of young men and women attending college. The big obstacle is helping others understand what fraternities and sororities have to offer.

So, how would you describe your organization?

  • What needs does your organization fulfill in the lives of its members?
  • How does your organization support the individual values of its members?
  • What makes your organization different from other groups on campus?
  • What are the features of membership? What are the benefits of membership? What personal stories can you tell to illustrate the benefits of membership?
  • In 30 seconds or less, how would you answer the question… “So, what's your organization all about?” How can you answer that question in a way that actually pairs the needs/values of the potential member with the benefits of membership in your organization
  • Do all of your members have answers to these questions prepared?

 

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10 Recruitment Tips for Fraternity/Sorority Professionals

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Are you surviving recruitment? For many fraternity/sorority professionals that we get to see around this time of year, their hair is frazzled, their eyes are droopy, and their wits are on the last end. Yes, it is fall recruitment time again. This is the time of year when most fraternity/sorority professionals feel overwhelmed, overworked, and so totally over recruitment.

However, campus and inter/national HQ fraternity/sorority professionals can have a huge impact on recruitment practices year after year, and can help dramatically improve the quantity of quality members a Greek community attracts. 

Here are Phired Up's "Top 10 Recruitment Tips for Greek Professionals."

1. Coach your students to the success they're hoping for by focusing on measurable outcomes. Peter Drucker said, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." How can we apply to that to fraternity/sorority recruitment? Consider focusing on the following measureable pieces of the recruitment experience. A) Instead of asking how many people a chapter hopes to recruit, ask how many people they'll commit to adding to their Names List today. B) Instead of asking what they "feel about a potential member," ask them what measurable, objective, values-based criteria they'll be using to select members (and ask to see it). C) Instead of asking, "How's recruitment going?" Ask, "Can you show me how many people you added to your Names List this week, and how many people did you get off of your Names List this week?"

2. Wear earplugs during sorority chants and skits. This is for your own good. Keep the earplugs small so they won't know you're wearing them, but make sure to wear them any time a sorority is outside of their house chanting or singing, and especially when you find yourself inside a sorority house while a skit or song is being performed. Smile and say, "that was great!" Then get out of there.

3. Get actual feedback from the "best and brightest non-Greek students" on campus. Gather a focus group or do some phone or E-mail interviews with ten of the best and brightest student leaders on campus (that aren't Greek). Ask them the following questions. "Why aren't you Greek?" "What are the words that come to mind when you think of fraternity/sorority recruitment on this campus?" "If you were suddenly put in charge of the fraternity/sorority community, what would be the first three things you'd change?" You get the idea.

4. Sleep at least once every three days. Often campus Greek life professionals and headquarters folks who are doing recruitment, expansion, or extension, forget to sleep and eat. While you can survive for over a week without eating (we wouldn't recommend it), you really should sleep every few days at least to make sure you're coherent when you're talking with students. This is a good way to lead by example.

5. Challenge chapters to teach recruitment during new member education. It is always a fun exercise for us to ask an audience full of fraternity/sorority students to raise their hand if they were taught to recruit during new member education. Of course, none of them raise their hands. They know the Greek alphabet, the origins of the Union and Miami Triads, and the favorite breath mints of their founders, but they do not know how to recruit ‐ because it isn't something that is taught. Challenge them to include recruitment as part of their new member ed curricula. This is easily done by encouraging them to require the reading of Good Guys or I Heart Recruitment along with their organization's new member ed manual (wink wink).

6. Close your eyes every time you see a fraternity recruitment t-shirt.  This is called plausible deniability. There is a good chance those t-shirts have a joke on the back that, a) you're too old to understand, and b) would embarrass a sailor. Just keep your eyes closed, don't ask, and shake your head disapprovingly once in a while. 

7. Model good recruitment by maintaining a Names List of your own. What if you actually kept a running database of non-Greek students that you know on campus and their contact information? This a great way to have a handy list of people to refer to the best fraternities and sororities on campus, but it is also a handy list to have as resources for campus programming, opinions, potential collaborations, etc. Model the way by being socially networked into campus (the way our chapters should be too!)

8. Blink while using ICS (or other recruitment data management providers) to avoid CIE Disorder. CIE Disorder is known better as Chronic ICS Eyes. Blinking often while doing recruitment data entry is the best known way to avoid this painful ailment.

9. Utilize the 20 Resources that are out there to help you!  We've shared these with you before" here they are: http://www.phiredup.com/files/admin/20_Resources_for_AFA_2007.pdf

10. Do Experiential Recruitment Education. We've written about this in recent blog posts here and here. There are creative ways that you can teach recruitment education using the tried and true S.O.S. method. Show, Observe, Shape. This means constantly modeling or role playing the behaviors you wish to have mirrored. Once you Show the proper behaviors and techniques, you then Observe the members in similar situations. Reinforce positive behaviors and constructively correct errors as you Shape new patterns of behavior.

As important as student development is, our chapters would be nowhere without someone focusing first on organizational results. The best measurement of those results is the quantity of quality members our communities attract. Let's push them forward by re-thinking our role in recruitment.
 

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Announcement: NIC & Phired Up Officially Partner

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

For Immediate Release

Contact: Josh Orendi, CEO (317) 908-3643 or Josh@PhiredUp.com

NIC & Phired Up Officially Partner

INDIANAPOLIS — Phired Up Productions and the North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) are proud to announce an official partnership to advance the fraternal movement together.

Through this partnership, campuses can expect a significant expansion in the education of undergraduates regarding the importance of, and benefits derived from, NIC Standards. Phired Up will incorporate and teach the NIC Standards through its programming, includings its campus programs, field staff training, national fraternity-specific programs, and regional conferences.

Phired Up programming will be recommended by the NIC to advance the recruitment education needs of campus IFCs. The two organizations also will pair IMPACT and Phired Up programming and will combine the promotion of the expanded offerings on the NIC website and NIC resources list.

With a common commitment to values-based, year-rond recruitment, both the NIC and Phired Up define the long-term partnership goals as the advancement of campus-based Interfraternity Councils, as well as the Standards set forth by the North-American Interfraternity Conference.

The NIC serves to advocate the needs of its member fraternities through enrichment of the fraternity experience; advancement and growth of the fraternity community; and enhancement of the educational mission of the host institutions. The NIC is also committed to enhancing the benefits of fraternity membership. Today, the NIC has 72 member organizations with approximately 5,500 chapters located on 800+ campuses in the United States and Canada with approximately 350,000 undergraduate members. The NIC is led by a Board of Directors comprised of nine volunteers from member fraternities. The headquarters and professional staff are located in Indianapolis, Indiana.

# # #

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Experiential Education Part 2

Monday, September 8th, 2008

by Matt Mattson

We've been having a blast with our experimentation with true experiential recruitment education techniques. Recently, I vistied the Phi Kappa Theta Chapter at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY and spent the day preparing them for a rockstar recruitment effor this fall. We spent a fair amount of time doing traditional recruitment training (in a meeting room), but we decided that it might be fun to not just talk about recruitment… but to actually learn while DOING RECRUITMENT.

So, we headed out on campus, away from our training room, and our objective was to have a little fun while actually putting the members in the challenging position of meeting strangers (so that they’d actually have a chance to recruit them). We did this in the form of a 60 minute photo scavenger hunt.

I picked 5 captains who got to choose their best recruiting teams (like picking teams in backyard football — nobody wants to be the last picked!). Each team was then charged with heading out onto campus to fulfill the scavenger hunt challenge.

The challenges were pretty benign and simple — all of the challenges had a certain amount of points (from 2-15 pts.) assigned to them. But the trick was that the teams could earn bonus points by getting the names and contact information of non-Greek students. In fact, if they were able to get the name and contact information of RA's on campus (Resident Assistants who could give them referrals), then those were worth 40 points each.

So, the teams headed out onto campus for a 60 minute blitz of interacting with non-Greek students, taking pictures with them, and if they were smart, getting their names and contact information for bonus points.

All the teams then reconvened after the 1 hour was up, and added up their points. Now, by just fulfilling the challenges alone (no bonus points), the teams could earn a potential 186 points…

The winning team won with… 1004 points!!!

That team, along with most of the others, understood that it was to their advantage to just meet as many non-Greek men as they possibly could (and get their contact information). That team came back with over 30 names and contact information of non-Greek men. Add to that the 30 or so other contacts that the other team found, and the chapter added 60 names to its Names List in a short 60 minutes… that's a pretty good result, I think.

It was amazing the lessons that the chapter learned about a) the value of competition, b) the value of courage, c) the importance of having something to talk about, d) how easy it is to get names and contact information, e) the importance of making recruitment more fun than work.

By the way, the winning team got to skip out on their next kitchen cleaning duties… smart.

We didn't stop there with our experiential education exercises. I wanted to see if they were willing to take it a step further. We talk about the importance of not only getting names onto a names list, but also inviting people from their names list to small activities. So, as all 40 or so chapter participants sat in the training room, I asked if anyone had the courage to step up and make an actual follow-up call to an actual prospect!

The picture on the left is of a guy who immediately demonstrated that he is a “horse” by standing up in front of the entire chapter, putting his cell phone on speaker, and calling a guy he had just met during the scavenger hunt to invite him to a small activity (bowling) with him and a few other brothers…. the prospect said he’d be there.

I was really impressed with this chapter. This is a group that didn't just invest in recruitment training… didn't just nod their head in agreement with the ideas… but when they were pushed to actually deliver recruitment actions, they stepped up and did it.

Josh said in a previous blog post, “If we want to teach swimming, we don't do that in the classroom do we? It's time to jump in the pool!” This is our challenge to all of you… When you're teaching recruitment or any other fraternity/sorority operational activity, let's push ourselves to jump in the pool and utilize good experiential education techniques. 

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Experiential Recruitment Education Part 1

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

By Josh Orendi

Do the ways we traditionally teach our members to run their organizations actually work? Are we actually affecting behavior? Are we getting results? Can we do better?

Not too long ago a blog post from Seth Godin, author of several of our favorite books, inspired us to think critically about the way we educate our audiences. A number of factors have played into our inspiration besides that blog post, but it should get some credit (because it asked this same essential question to a wider audience). Since then we've been trying quietly to challenge our fraternity, sorority, and student organization industry to do the same. When we spent this summer at dozens of fraternity/sorority conferences, our minds kept churning"

In an age of instant communication, flying people on airplanes to meet from around the country for the purpose of transferring information is outdated, inefficient, and some might add … insulting. Information can be shared in a variety of user-friendly formats with the click of a button at no cost to the recipient. Why on earth are we making attendees sit through curriculum that is primarily designed to tell them what we think they need to know? As many have said before, “telling is not teaching.” To take the point further, how do we know what they need to know? Anyone that's been in the field for more than 6 months will tell you there's lots of conference excitement that goes home with an attendee but very little evidence of lasting motivation or sustained change.

Instead of focusing on information transfer, let's actually listen to those evaluations we all collect at the end of every gathering. Attendees at conferences value the free time they spend together, meeting new people, reconnecting with friends, enjoying a new city, informal learning environments, etc. Let's look beyond the evaluations to a more accurate measure of attendee priorities. What parts of the conference are they skipping or leaving early? What parts of the conference are they paying extra to attend? What are attendees choosing to do in their free time together? What parts of the formal/informal conference draws the most participation? 

Heart-to-heart time! If we're forcing them to pay for the conference, then forcing them to send representation, then forcing them to attend sessions, then getting upset when they “don't make the most of the experience” (read: leaving early to find a bar in the city) … why the hell are we surprised?

As we take an honest look in the conference planning mirror, let's admit that we all create a line up of speakers, education sessions, banquets, awards, and ceremony, because … well … that's the way we've always done it. Urg! 

I've got an idea! What if we rewarded their attendance by giving them the things they value most with more powerful take away lessons that they would actually apply when they got home? What if we went a step further to eliminate the fat from the experience? What if we redefined the purpose of our conference and the model for measuring its effectiveness (e.g. “satisfaction” does not equal success)? Then, we can stop telling them stuff and simply make information transfer available on-demand for the attendee. They can get the information when they need the material and/or when they're ready to learn it (think online education, video, PDF, newsletter formats, website, etc). Going forward, the conference could be a “context” expanding experience rather than a “content” filled event.

Yeah, yeah, yeah … but how?

One answer = experiential education. I'm thinking full emersion stuff. Think The Apprentice, think Amazing Race, think ramped up role plays, think extreme learning environments, think on-site training, etc. If we want to teach swimming, we don't do that in the classroom do we? It's time to jump in the pool! Let's DO recruitment instead of talking about it. Let's DO risk management in the environment being questioned. Let's DO academic support programming rather than letting anyone get away with “talking” about starting study tables this semester. Whoooo! This stuff gets me pumped!

*What if we took the 30 people in the MGCA recruitment breakout and trained them to each work a vendor booth in the main lobby for 30 minutes before the banquet starts?

*What if a wealthy Trustee brought in his business checkbook for a small group of new chapter treasurers to balance at this summer's convention? What if each attendee brought his chapter's books to be audited by fellow chapter treasurers?

*What if the chapter service chairmen from schools near the conference location were the ones that organized the Service Plunge?

*What if we were actually on our cell phones calling prospects during the recruitment training rather than talking about it?

*What if we were on campus gathering names of non-Greeks, instead of talking about it?

*What if, instead of talking about what the "best and brightest" students on campus think about fraternities and sororities, we brought them into the room and asked them ‐ in front of our members?

Phired Up is championing a whole movement away from traditional education toward an investment in COACHING and full emersion EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION. You don't need us to begin making these changes in your conferences and programming, but you're welcome to draw ideas and inspiration from the work we're doing. We're pushing ourselves and our clients to think more critically and more creatively before offering another program. Give them a transformational experience they’ll never forget, and they’ll seek out the information on their own that we used to waste all of our time telling them was important. 

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