Recruiting mentors

[philso]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

I always thought it would be interesting to have a psychologist work up a profile of the most common personality traits of long time mentors. Then, armed with this list of traits you could seek out people with those traits. (This may be a bit unethical, knowing ahead of time that you may be causing someone to become addicted to FIRST.)

I think some of us are involved as mentors "because we wish we had something like this available to us when we were teenagers" and a time machine is not available. Perhaps some of us are trying to relive our childhood

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Wherever you're recruiting, never take "but I don't know anything about robotics" for an answer. Counter with something like "but you do know about [electrical systems/building things/organizing a business/managing a project/whatever skills the prospect has], and we need those skills on the team. If you know the person at all, tailor your pitch to their motivators, whether it's competition, teaching, making the world a better place, or building neat stuff. I suspect this is why all of our successful mentor recruitments have been done by someone who already knows the prospect.

Many of the skills needed for FRC can be found in other fields. The OP may be in a rural area so there might not be many "technology companies" that are accessible but FRC is about more than just the technology. One has to learn skills in the areas of leadership, risk analysis/management, project management, creating sound business plans, salesmanship, presentation, etc. These skills can be found in many businesses and organizations that can be found in rural areas. Granted, one may have to drive some distance to find them.