Now That school is in
 

For most high schools, school is starting soon or has started. When do you veterans start recruiting new members? What do you do to recruit students? Share some of your recruiting tips here.

Re: Now That school is in
 

well S.P.A.M. goes to the open houses and puts up a display table at all the schools. Flyers are placed up and annoucements are given for the first meeting. A lot of it seems to be word of mouth. Friends of friends join and those in middle school w/ the invovlment of FLL gets kids in.

Good luck w/ getting members everyone!

Re: Now That school is in
 

Gah!!! Unfortunately I don't get my kids back until Sept 6th, but we will start recruiting hard core directly following that date. FUNDRAISING!!!!

And as for tips, I've got nothing. I'm counting on the kids who had a good time last year telling their friends.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We started the recuit new members in June, at the end of the school year, contacting just members of the team that we know expressed interested during the build season/competition season. We stopped in the summer. Then we are opening our recuitment program to incoming freshman (and new students to our school) with a program and demostration to get their attention at our school's freshman oriantation last Thursday. Also, new this year my team will be mentoring a LEGO League team at the middle school in town, this will provide many recruitments in future years.

Good Luck with your own recruitment!

Re: Now That school is in
 

Our students showed off the robot at the freshmen orientation yesterday and tried to get some of those students interested. Most of our involvement comes through word-of-mouth, I believe. We typically have very few 4-year seniors -- most had friends who had a good time and so they joined, too. We put the robot in pep rallies, parades, and any other time we can get people to see it. Students see the robot and want to know more, so they come to the informational meeting(s) that we hold prior to the season starting. Sometimes these students join, but sometimes they don't, normally because of time conflicts and the time commitment that this program has.

I can really only report what I knew as a student and what I see happening now as a mentor -- I'm on the engineering side, not the school district, which does most of the school stuff.

Our students start school on September 6, so they haven't had the opportunity to really take the robot to the school and show it off or anything.

Re: Now That school is in
 

696 already got 6 new students (5 of whom are female) in June. They will be taking two freshmen once school starts in another week or so. :)

Re: Now That school is in
 

I made a few posters, that we will try to get approval for, to hang in the hallways of the school. Other than that, a number of the science teachers, guidance counselors, and fellow teammates direct kids our way at the beginning of the school year. The tech-ed teachers are all mentors and start the school year armed with blank application forms for their new classes. You can see some of the flyers here , here , and here.

Re: Now That school is in
 

Use good video. Use clips of students using the chop saw, mill or welder. Students love to see and make sparks. Bad video will hurt more than help. Let the kids pick the music and you approve but have an open mind. Our season video is on the Chief somewhere but I don't now how to link to it. If you don't have kids that can do this for you you need them. They will pull their weight and fit well in animation. Ryan Dognaux never much touched a robot but was a crucial member of our team for four years. I also ask certain students to apply or have our team find kids for me to talk to. They know that student that builds that killer volcano in the science fair. I also look for a good cross section of students. I look for popular students, quiet students, loud students, artsy students, athletes, nerds for lack of a better term ( I hate that tag). I think you need all of these to have a successful team. Be careful of basketball players and wrestlers they will have to much time committed to their coach and demanding more would be rough on them if their coach is running a good program. Swimmers I can sometimes work with. Band kids to me make the best robotics kids, they know what it is like to travel and they are generally creative. Their parents also know how to set up and run booster program. Since this is a donation run activity look for sons and daughters of influential people in the community. This is what we do and it works for us but probably not every one. Thats all I can type at one sitting.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We do 3 main things for recruitment:

1. Postcards are sent out to all families of Kokomo High School kids. These postcards briefly tell the benefits of the program and announce a call-out meeting.

2. We drive the robot around the commons area during lunch. Current team members and mentors do this together.

3. We have a call-out meeting for everyone who is interested in the team (students and adults). Our meeting is tomorrow night (Wednesday, 8/31) at the KHS cafeteria. Visitors are welcome.

Andy B.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We usually use word-of-mouth. Students talk to the other students and try to recruit them. Most of the people in the school are reached this way. (We're a small school, so probably more like all of the students are asked.) We also send out applications and flyers and such to those that are old enough.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We also do the open house deal, letting prospective students take a good look at the robot and ask current team members unlimited questions (we've pulled in some of our new members through past open houses). To add, we just get our name out there by means of fundraisers, posters, and PA announcements - people usually end up asking what robotics is.

Also, since 573 is involved with the OCCRA season, we invite students and teachers alike to our pre-game tailgates and competitions. This has helped us out in recruitment, as well.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We recruit the new team before summer vacation, so that the students can be active over the summer. We've already got our students! Does anyone else do it this way?

Re: Now That school is in
 

Last year we tried to recruit in the beginning of the year. However we had grand ideas which fell through the ice rather quickly. We ended up finalizing our team within 10 days of the build season. There was a rush to the start to get them authorized to use machinery. We made but just. I think we know what we want to do before we get recruits and I hope that we get them before River Rage and ya know take em to a competition before the season so they understand the experience that results after spending 6 weeks of the year building the machine.

Re: Now That school is in
 

school hasn't started for us, it sucks.

we dont really TRY to recruit people wut just put up flyers and people just tell others to come, and some how we get alot of people.

Re: Now That school is in
 

Our process really starts just before then end of the school year. The Park has a "Club Night" or open house for all the current 8th graders who will be at the High Schools for next year. Each club and team (there are over 40)gets a table to set up a display (We drive the robot around) and the 8th graders can walk around to the different tables and can signing up on sheets and fill out post cards that the schools mail out mid summer with the date of the first meeting on them. Now in the fall we will put up fliers in all three schools with the meeting date and time. This year we are also planning on having the Student Television Station (STS) run a promo video in the mornings.

As for the first meeting we hold it at the school (since we normally meet at Visteon), at that meeting we go give a team history show some video so over season break downs basically try to give them a good idea of how we operates and how FUN it is. Then we in the next weeks we move the meeting back to Visteon and start to get them integrated into their different committees based on what they are interested in.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We held our first meeting for recruiting people 2 weeks ago. School has been in for like 3 weeks.
We put in announcements on the morning and evening announcements. We also brought our robots to openhouse, WildcatDaze ( a thing you go to in the beginning of the year to look at all the clubs there are), and a freshmen magnt picnic (before school starts).
We grew by like 17 or 18 members. We would have most likely grown by a lot more if we publicized our club on the announcements better.

Re: Now That school is in
 

My school has a day called club day, where all the clubs and groups in the school get a table in the quad at brunch and lunch, and the freshmen walk around and find out info, and sign up for whichever club they want to join. Our team usually will drive around a robot or two, mainly to attract attention for the table.

Re: Now That school is in
 

*Set up a booth and demo's the robot on school registration day
*had an orientation meeting after school for new members. We put up posters around the school and made a commercial that was run on the school morning news advertising the meeting.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We hold meetings of the veteran team members to try and establish projects for the first part of the year, as well as Senior goals, and finish up things that we need done before the callout.

We have a callout and school presentations throughout September, as well as team interviews. By this way, we really have a good idea of who's going to stick around and who's not quite that interested.

As a PRish type person, I will say honestly that word of mouth has worked best in just getting people to the callout. Our team has gained a reputation of success in our school system, and that in itself brings people.

Short term goals of fall recruitment:
Doable projects
New member training
Off-season competitions
Regional workshops

Long term goals (as I would see them):
Positive team recruitment image
Firm foundation before school year begins
Cohesive team: upperclassmen MUST reach out to new members

Re: Now That school is in
 

Robotis is labelledas an "Enrichment course" which students sign up to when the pick thier couses.

Plus we display a robot or 2 at the Activities Fair on the Lower Sixth induction day to try and grab a few more students.

Re: Now That school is in
 

At our school we don't get much advertisement for our team. -_-;; So, we try to make a big impression at our club symposium in late september. We rely a lot on the CAD students and so forth, seeing as the teachers that oversee the team are the IT teachers.

This year however, I am determined to hoard a bunch of the CIT (Specialty Center for Information Technology) students into being on the team. We had like 10 people tops building our robot last year, and I was the only programmer. We had 4 kids working on spirit and 7 on animation! I think it's ridiculous that our Center kids aren't encouraged from Orientation to be on the team. Most of them don't even know about FIRST!

Anyway, we try to recruit as many students as we can before Mid-October. That way the rookies can familiarize themselves with the team and the bot, and come January they'll be ready to hit the floor running.

Re: Now That school is in
 

My opinion is that ideally recruiting for this upcoming years team began the moment you formed this previous years team. I've condensed the whole process to what I think are the most important points and time lines:
1) Always be thinking of recruitment even if it's not in an active capacity.
-If your team only presents itself to your school during recruitment periods, it can be difficult to express the depth of FIRST, and your team could be lost in the wash of other teams and clubs.
-Keep the media that your team is published in or develops. This is invaluable to show at presentations and pretty much anywhere. Plus if you're like me, you can't get to sleep until you look at the framed picture of your robot that's next to your bed.
2) Adopt a more longitudinal view of recruitment.
-Lego league teams and team demonstrations as well as a "club day" for 8th graders, like that mentioned above can interest prospective students well before they're in High School. Plus if you volunteer at these (our team doesn't require attendance), you get that neat happy feeling when all the kids faces light up when the robot turns on :D .
3) Recruitment doesn't have to have a set time
-We recruit the majority of our new members at the beginning of the school year, and have a recruitment meeting where we distribute sign up forms early on (9/8/05 this year). We do however have a sign-up period at the end of the year, so students already at the high school (a.k.a. not 8th graders) can sign up and participate in a few extra off-season competitions to get a feel for FIRST. All new members have the opportunity to attend 2-3 off season competitions, as well as Ramp Riot, which we host.
4) If a student shows up at your recruitment meeting, they're interested.
-I haven't seen this with robotics, but I've seen other groups try to sell themselves to me after I voluntarily sat down to listen to them, so this is just a word of caution. If the students show up, you should be ready to inform them instead of convince them. To quote my coach, "It's hard to get 'em in the door. Once they're they see how great it is, but you have to get them there first.".
5) Stay flexible
-Maintaining your flexibility will do worlds for your blood pressure. I do not even pretend to have made a dent on the possibilities to use for recruiting. I have barely listed any concrete steps our team takes to recruit new members. This is mainly because I feel our team works in such a way that to describe recruitment, I'd also need to cover how we plan Ramp Riot, our end of year team celebration, the competition, every aspect of our team. Having said that, I do have more example that I omitted a lot to keep this post to a manageable length.

Michael

P.S. For a more comprehensive coverage of team recruitment, [plug]visit my teams site and request a Team-in-a-Box set[/plug]. Also on that note, if you're interested in contributing material to help us develop an even more holistic outlook of FIRST for our DVD/CD set, PM me, and I can work with you to help coordinate and arrange it so we can put it in the next version.

Re: Now That school is in
 

These are great ideas! Thanks for posting! :)

Re: Now That school is in
 

At my school, our team is mostly technology students. Any flyers or banners about the team are over down in the Technology Department "cave" where nobody goes.

Otherwise, we recruit by word of mouth, we bring the robot in a local parade, and have some morning annoucements in school around October.

We also do a display in one of the glass showcases with pictures, our awards, buttons from other teams, and our banners. The only problem is that we don't put that up until later in the year.

I've always thought it would be a great idea to somehow showcase the entire robot for everyone to see when they walk down the hallway. People that know nothing about FIRST or robotics would see the robot and may become interested. Even if someone is not interested in joining the team, they'll see how cool the robot is.

Re: Now That school is in
 

Here is a great and simple recruitment/awareness idea: practice with your robot in the school hallways or even outside, right after school or on a lunch.

people will always come up and ask questions.

It works for us.

Re: Now That school is in
 

I started to go up to the freshman that I already knew the very first day. And, well, I noticed how a bunch of the other members really were talking to new people. Even some sophmores and juniors came to our first meeting!
Thursday, the first was our first meeting..... there were so many people there!!!!
And there were a lot of girls, which our coach was happy about as well because we've been trying to up the female percentage on the team.
All know is that we have just been going around telling people about the team and hoping that they become interested.

Re: Now That school is in
 

Our recruitment is really year round, but we try to really recruit in April. We do this by participating in the BotBall competition, which is a really great, lego based competition that introduces the younger kids to programming and robot building. We had our first call out metting for the BEST team two weeks ago. The veteran members gave presentations about their particular field. We then told the kids to spread the word around. Our team is really built off of word of mouth. With the word of mouth, the kids really get to hear how great robotics and FIRST is.

Re: Now That school is in
 

We put this flyer up in all three of our schools.

Re: Now That school is in
 

well this year being only my second year in first I'm not to familiar with the recruiting on the team, but i have devised my own plan for recruiting. I basically ask anyone new i meet if there are interested in technology and then i talk about all the great things about robotics. This process has been working well for me, but it may come off as a little strong and weird.