Now That school is in

[santosh]

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.

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.

[Rickertsen2]

*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.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

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

[JVGazeley]

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.

[1086Programmer]

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.

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 .
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.

[koala79]

These are great ideas! Thanks for posting!

[hoag]

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.

[OZ_341]

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.

[vic burg]

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.

[Erics626]

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.

[Joe J.]

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

[wonsi88]

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.