Recruitment

[Kartik Singla]

FIRST of all congratulations to everyone involved in FRC as another successful year for FIRST concludes.

I am a grade 12 student, graduating this year. This is our second season in FIRST and anyone involved in our team loves the experience. However, our team comprises mostly of graduating students, which may result in us not having a team for next year. I'd like our school to continue participating in FIRST. Thus,
1) what would be the best ways to recruit students for next year?
1a) what would be the best ways to ensure participation from each student so that no student feels neglected or discouraged?
2) How do we create an awareness with in the school that the competition is not just for techy kids but something for everyone?
3)How do we get more mentors involved? (especially for the business team)
4)How do we approach the big companies?
5)What other significant post season activities can be done to make things simpler for next years team?
6)any other suggestions, concerns or ideas that you might have for our fairly fresh team with not a lot of tech interested school students?

Thank you for reading this post and I would greatly appriciate any comment or suggestion

-Kartik
Marketing Team Captain
Team 1385
Waterloo Robotics

[kevin.li.rit]

1) Hold a demonstration during lunch or during a club fair and have people put down their name if they are interested. Let them play with the bot if they want too. Have poster displaying some information and benifits such as scholarships and that it looks great on your college apps.

1a)Put the students in sub teams so they know their role and when building time starts make sure everyone has a task.

2)Emphasize to your potential teammates that no experience of any kind is required to join and if they are willing to learn they will be taught the skills. Also tell them that this competition is very fun and very intense.

3)Find some tech companies and try and get some of their engineers to voulenteer.

4)Some companies have grants you can apply for. You can probably contact a companies PR person to request sponsorship or setup a demonstration to recruit voulenteers. We usually do a few demonstrations at our sponsors places of work.

5)Go to as many off season competitions as you can and at these competitions let the people who aren't normally in charge run the show and your regulars step back. We usually have our graduating seniors do pretty much nothing at these events. Also for Preseason hold workshops for skills needed for FIRST, wiring, programming, pneumatics, torque vs. speed and etc.

[sanddrag]

FIRST of all congratulations to everyone involved in FRC as another successful year for FIRST concludes. Whoa Whoa hold on a minute! We have not even competed yet! What is this "concludes" business? Also, we still have all the off season games of Triple Play.

Okay, carry on with the thread. :)

[DarkJedi613]

1) Younger friends, siblings, hold meeting - play videos and show what its all about, make your team known in your school! Next year I know that we're getting a lot of siblings from graduating members.
1a) Just make sure everyone has a job to do and if you see someone being left out, draw them in.
2) Just say theres a job for everyone.
3) Parents! Bring some engineers to a competition - then they'll be hooked.
4) Ask for interviews.
5) Developing a swerve drive. ;) Wait no, thats our summer project...perhaps developing lines of communication to members of the school. Try to keep the team together and have some meetings. Brainstorm about what can be better next year. Bring the robot places so people can see - generate interest in the community.
6) Keep at it and the team'll grow! :)

[Termite233]

1) last year we held an all-day demo at our school because the drivers had just graduated (so they could miss classes). It got about 50 kids signed up. maybe 10 of them stuck with the team, but it still proved to work.

2) do as many fundraisers during the summer so that fundraising during the year isn't so harsh.

3) as stated: go to off-season competitions

4) have your parents talk to their friends if they have kids who would be elligible to be on your team. Maybe they can get them interested. They might even want to talk to you about how un FIRST really is.

5) Talk to your friends who might be underclassmen. If you keep mentioning Robotics, maybe they'll get the message and sign up. :D

As for getting mentors and other people invovled...
you can ask your parents to come if they are engineers or if they know any that would work too. Make sure they understand the game before the event starts so they aren't completely lost (which results in being bored).
when you try to get sponsors, introduce yourself as someone from your team. You might want to wear your uniform to show pride. Tell them the deal. Theyll listen. Tell them how you spread the word of science and technology.

[mathking]

1) what would be the best ways to recruit students for next year?

As a previous poster said, demonstrations at lunch can help a lot. Students will be interested when they see the robot. Going to a middle school or junior high feeder for your high school can also be beneficial. We also had success here going to classes to recruit. If you have any business or marketing classes that can be a great place to look for help and to reinforce the idea that FIRST is not just about building a robot. Same thing with web design or programming classes. I am certainly making it a point next year to try to recruit a couple of excellent writers to our team. If you have any idustrial arts classes obviously visit them. In many states, there are Joint Vocational Schools which are associated with multiple high schools. These can also be an excellent source of team members.

1a) what would be the best ways to ensure participation from each student so that no student feels neglected or discouraged?

Create a team organizational structure which includes component design teams for various robot systems, a web design team, a marketing team, an animation team, a Chairman's Award team, a fundraising team, etc. People may well be on multiple teams. If you do this, everyone will have an idea of where they fit in the team structure. Even something as simple as putting someone in charge of posting their sub-team's progress reports can make people feel their contribution is valued.

2) How do we create an awareness with in the school that the competition is not just for techy kids but something for everyone?

As was said before, visiting classes is a good way to do this. This year I recruited in our accounting class to get help with business aspects of the program. When you present in classes or at lunch, point out all of the non or less technical stuff involved. Point out that running a FIRST team is sort of like running a business. (More like running a non-profit organization.)

3)How do we get more mentors involved? (especially for the business team)

This is trickier. It depends on who is mentoring you now. If you are simply in need of engineers, try contacting companies in your area who have engineers. There is a good chance that seeing a robot will be enough to convince a few that mentoring would be fun. I would also enlist the help of your teachers and administrators here. They will have contacts in the community. In fact, if your school district has a Communications or Public Relations office, they may be able to help you here.

4)How do we approach the big companies?

What I said above about the Communications/PR office for your district is crucial. I would also enlist the aid of parents. What we have found to be successful is to create a brochure and a cover letter. Spend time with multiple people's input to make this look good. If there are parents or community member's with consulting skills, enlist their help. Get a marketing teacher to help. The point is to come up with a good brochure and good cover letter. Then do some mock interviews with the team members who will do the approaching of businesses. When all is ready...

You still need to know who and how to make contact. Parents are a vital first step. They can have contacts through work. Check with the school administration too. A probably underutilized resource are your state legislator's and other elected officials. Legislator's (state and local) in particular are very tied to the community. Approach one or more of them and ask for help in making business contacts. Politicians have to raise money if they want to get elected. So they know who has money and who is willing to give. This can be a big help. Furthermore, if a group of students with a project like this asks for help, someone is at least going to listen to you. They may not help, but they will listen. If your school has a state rep, state senator and city council members, there is a good chance someone will be able to offer advice and perhaps contacts.

5)What other significant post season activities can be done to make things simpler for next years team?

Set up your team structure during the off-season. It is also a good idea to have some activities during the summer or fall. Last year we graduated half our team and then doubled in size, so we had a lot of new people. We did a couple of simple engineering projects as team builders and to get an idea of which new people might be good on which teams.

As was said by another poster, fundraise during the off season as much as possible. Have team members search for grants for which you would be eligible to apply. Make your contacts with local businesses. Come up with a marketing plan. Work on your team web site. Try to get together for some fun activities just to build camaraderie.

6)any other suggestions, concerns or ideas that you might have for our fairly fresh team with not a lot of tech interested school students?

Try to find one or two students who are coming back and who are willing to take on a leadership role. Build an email and/or phone contact list. Try to get every returning team member to find one or two new people for the team.

[Vivelation]

1) We usually have some sort of demonstration on the main quad at lunch, either a test of the products of a design challenge, or driving a previous robot around and showing what it can do. We also rely on word of mouth (members telling friends to join) and we put up flyers around school urging people to apply.

1a) To get everyone's creative brain fluids flowing, we have occasional design challenges, where the team is split up into several small groups, so people have more chances to spit out ideas. For brainstorming and robot ideas during build, we do the small group thing again, and ask each group to come up with a certain number of designs or strategies. When we're actually building, if there are any jobs to do (chances are, there are), and there's someone who has nothing to do, they have something to do! Yay! We also encourage people to sign up in the area they want to concentrate on, like programming.

2) Um... see #1. Also, on our applications, we get people to use their imagination in a seemingly impossible situation. Word of mouth is also really good in this case.

3) Not too sure about this one... We have a couple mentors, one of whom is our team advisor, but they're usually involved with mechanical stuff.

4) Giving presentations is always nice. Especially if you have a robot with you. One that doesn't attack any of your potential sponsors. Parents can help in this area as well, as they might know some more companies that you'll have missed. Plus, they can help you with what to say when tantalizing the businesses with your shiny 'bot.

5) You can always use post-season time for offseason competitions (test out new drivers and pit crew, maybe?) and if a large chunk of your team happens to be graduating, try to get some more shop (or programming, animation, etc.) experience into the rest of the members.

6) Advertise. A lot. Get your team out there. One way to get more students at your school to notice you is designate a day where you all wear your team uniform. Of course, having everyone on your team dye their hair your color doesn't hurt either, as people will wonder what's going on. If you hold a demonstration, definitely point out that it's more than techy stuff; an example could be Chairman's, since it's more based on outreach than technological things.

Good luck!

[Kartik Singla]

Thanks for the input guys. All the advice is A++++ !!!!