Recruitment

[maglax]

As the summer ticks onward and school becomes closer, many teams are starting to recruit new members. I am sure many teams young and old are not really sure how to grab the attention of the incoming freshmen or how to keep them attending meetings in the off-season. For those of you who have accomplished this or know a trick or two, please feel free to spread your knowledge and stories of success. Those of you who may not have been so lucky, post what you have tried. I hope everyone is having a good, and robot filled summer!

[MechEng83]

We cast a wide net when it comes to recruiting freshmen. The first thing to do is talk with the middle school FLL teams and let them know the "next level" of robots is your team. Secondly, we go to virtually EVERY freshman event at the start of the school year: freshman orientation, freshman registration, freshman frozen yogurt party (evening before school starts), etc. Word of mouth works wonders for recruitment too. We have our team members invite their friends and/or younger siblings, and or younger siblings' friends -- you get the picture.

Usually you'll get more interest initially than you'll have dedicated students, so don't be disappointed if half the new recruits don't stick around. we usually shed about half the students initial interest to build season.

[The other Gabe]

Word of mouth is critical for my team's recruitment of non- freshmen/sophomores, as is the fact that we have a robotics class (using VEX), and a school that supports STEM. We don't usually have many Freshmen since they have to go the the Jr. High (we're getting a new High school soon, and then all 4 grades will be at the same school). But I'm getting off on a tangent. Other than word of mouth, the team recruits through our jr. high FTC team, as well as going to many school events with the robot. We also put up posters and get on the announcements when it gets near our first open meeting.

Originally Posted by MechEng83

Usually you'll get more interest initially than you'll have dedicated students, so don't be disappointed if half the new recruits don't stick around. we usually shed about half the students initial interest to build season.

^^^^^^^^

[tindleroot]

This is a special case that most schools don't have, but our FRC team is a junior-senior only team that is a class during school. We also have 3 FTC teams in our school that function as an after-school club for freshman and sophomores. Due mostly to word-of-mouth and the middle school FLL teams in our area, the FTC teams get a lot of students and most of them stay with the team throughout the year (all of the serious students stay). Since the FTC teams and FRC team use the same shop area, the underclassmen get to see FRC firsthand and that inspires many of them to sign up for the class as they come to their junior year.

My class was basically the first generation to go through 2 years of FTC at our school, and our FRC program seems to be growing now that the FTC generations are becoming upperclassmen. Not to mention, our team seems to be doing better* in FRC now that we have FTC experience

*5 banners in 2 years and seeding in the top 8 at championships.

[Brian Maher]

We make an appearance, with our robot, at our school's annual club fair in September. We talk to as many students as possible and hand out flyers talking about what we do, emphasizing that there many of technical and non technical activities to work on, and that anyone can help us succeed. We added this emphasis with our recruitment last year, and it helped us recruit more people and diversify our team and its skillset.
We also show off our trophies and blue banner. People want to be part of groups that win things.

[GeeTwo]

Any serious recruiting program (whether for an FRC team, a church, or a branch of the military) has three basic elements:

1. Informational
2. Advertisement
3. Personal

The informational piece is just that - make sure that as many people as possible within your recruiting sphere (in this case, a school) know that the team exists, and when and where it meets, and how to find a contact person. Don't leave anyone a valid excuse that "I didn't know that you existed." or "I didn't know how to get in touch."

Advertising is a bit more flamboyant. Let as many people as possible know why they should want to join. Do cool stuff, like toss shirts into the stands at a football game with your air cannon, or demo the robot during halftime at the basketball game or a pep rally or other assembly. Often, advertising and information are part of the same event/poster/announcement, so you may want to combine these two efforts. Just make sure that when and if the advertising grabs them, they have enough information to act on it.

Third, and most important, is the personal appeal. Advertising and Information alone will only bring in those who already think that doing robotics would be cool. Stopping there give short shrift to what is probably the most important word in the name of FIRST - inspiration. Identify people who are not moved by the advertising, but who might benefit from the FIRST experience. This could be an athlete who is smart enough to be an engineer or business leader but whose personal horizons are limited. It could be someone who likes to work on cars and machines, but never thought of it as more than a hobby. It could be someone in the process of becoming a business leader who needs an opportunity to grow leadership skills. It could be someone who is scared to be seen as good in math and science (more commonly girls than boys here) who can find a place where math and science are not only acceptable, but honored. Find a way to invite these people! There is no blueprint for this invitation, or perhaps there are hundreds. The personal appeal is best done by an inviting person who knows the invited person, well, personally [redundancy intentional].

To support these personal appeals (as well as the few brought in by advertising), each team must have a process to bring people into the team. Our team has developed an "open door" policy for the period between the end-of-season banquet (~May) and tryouts for the team (~Nov). This means that for half of the year, prospective team members are welcome to come "give it a spin" without commitment. If your window to bring in team members is much narrower, then getting the info as to when, where, and how to join part of step 1 is crucial.

[Jon Stratis]

We've had some great success with our summer camp. We hold it every year, and advertise it in a newsletter that goes to the families of incoming freshmen (I think its sent out May/June-ish). Camp just started this week, and we have have 6 freshmen. For what I think is the third year in a row we even have an either grader as well!

The camp is designed to be fun and to pull everyone into what FIRST is all about. The get to build stuff, show it off, and overall everyone seems to really enjoy it every year. And when it comes to recruitment... well, if we can get them to come to camp, they usually stick around with the team once we start up in the fall

[BenGuy]

We have signs up all over the school giving the time and date of the first meeting, starting a few weeks before that day. The veterans get there early that day to set up all of the working robots, and whenever anyone new comes in the door, we ask a simple question "who wants to drive and who wants to shoot?" After an evening of fun playing with the old robots, most of them are hooked and continue to come back week after week.

[maglax]

Bump cause bumping is fun!

[Darkseer54]

Did you try writing "I am John V-Neun" on a backpack and walking around with it? Apparently that works well. (source)

[Owen Busler]

My team ran into an interesting problem last year. We went to every freshmen science class and gave a little 4 minute speech. This yielded outstanding results. Over 100 kids showed up to our "hey are you interested in robotics?" meeting after school in September. After that about 60 showed up to our build site for "freshmen orientation to robotics" Now, on an average night we would have 20 or so kids in our work space, maybe 40 at max if some outreach people are also working. But at one time we had close to 80 people in our workshop and it was crowded.

When you have that many people in a small space it becomes dangerous to use tools, which we weren't doing that first day. But once we started to have build meetings in October, there was an extreme excess of kids. With limited space, and people to train freshmen, there were quite a few people just sitting around doing nothing. By late November, it became more of a social gathering rather than a build meeting. Eventually some of the kids who just sat around stopped coming but i felt bad because it was just impossible to accommodate everyone.

This year we are thinking of doing a little less recruitment so we get kids who really want to do it. Now this is kinda against FIRST ideas because our goal is to inspire new people, but we cant possible support a 100 person team.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Owen Busler

This year we are thinking of doing a little less recruitment so we get kids who really want to do it. Now this is kinda against FIRST ideas because our goal is to inspire new people, but we cant possible support a 100 person team.

Part of running a team is recognising your limitations. That's how some teams produce consistently good robots - they build within their limitations. It's also why some teams will fail horribly one year - they set their goals too high and couldn't meet them in the limited time we have.

So, it's ok to put your recruitment at an appropriate level for what you can support - there's nothing wrong with having a smaller team where everyone has something to do, when the alternative is a larger team with half the members playing games on their phones out of boredom.

The key in this situation, perhaps, is to identify those limitations (space? Number of tools? Number of mentors? Ratio of experienced vs inexperienced members?), and work on a long term plan to address them. The plan could take many shapes - finding a larger place to build, fundraising to buy more tools, demos at local companies to help recruit new mentors, growing the program a little each year until you max out the interest in 3-4 years, spinning off an FTC team or two for underclassmen as a sort of JV program... Take a look at what's stopping you from including everyone you know you could have, and build a 5-year plan around fixing it. I know, it's a little more long-term than we're used to thinking, but having a long term plan is something that can help your team keep moving forward year after year.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Owen Busler

My team ran into an interesting problem last year....at one time we had close to 80 people in our workshop and it was crowded.

...

This year we are thinking of doing a little less recruitment...

We had a similar "problem" last year, too. We held "tryouts". We came up with a number of tests of ability to cut a straight line, do a bit of math (geometry, torque, pressure problems), modify a simple program, even write a checklist and build a tower out of bricks. We structured the tests to look like tests of skill, but we selected based on attitude. The level of focus on the team was much better than in previous years, as we got rid of people who would not focus, got frustrated too easily, or (worst of all) distracted others.