Mentor recruiting help needed

[Pat Arnold]

Originally Posted by ebarker

engineers with children are not particularly accessible, unless their own child is in the program.

Often the most committed, dedicated & reliable mentors are those with kids on the team. If you can recruit the children of engineers (& teachers, technicians, etc.), often those parents become your strongest advocate & resource.

At mentor recruitment events, be sure to invite the adults to bring their appropriately-aged kids along when checking out the FIRST team meeting near them.

[rsisk]

RoboMom nailed it regarding the "bring the robot" angle.

Another good tip is to have something they can get involved in easily and right away.

Something like "We are having an open house at our school and you are all invited to come by and see our workshop where we build the robots".

Also have a calendar of events they can hook up with your team. They can pin it on their wall and have a constant reminder of your team. Should have a picture of your robot and contact information.

Figure out ways to stay in contact with them, maybe have a newsletter they can receive via email, keep it short and interesting.

I think it is tough to make a good connection with one shot. There has to be some sort of take away reminder and a couple of follow ups to make a connection.


Good luck.

[RoboMom]

Along with current students, try to include alumni of the program.

[lynca]

One of major problems with FIRST is finding quality mentors !
I hope more FIRST teams go to companies to make mentor recruitment presentations. However, attempting to recruit mentors in large presentations is a difficult task.

Most potential mentors will be willing to work with their child's school or a nearby school. Introduce the spectrum of FRC, FTC, FLL and make a list of nearby teams.

* Print out a Map of all the nearby FIRST teams (use FIRST map online)
* Sign-up sheet for potential mentors and denote a possible FIRST team match
* Give them a contact # so they can work with a veteran mentor after the meeting

[Molten]

I was watching a show on CNN(I think) and a lawyer mentioned that he always presented his case to his mother before trial. She could tell him his good points and bad points from the average joe's point of view. It was helpful because she has about the same background as the possible jury. And he would adapt his presentation of the case around what she said.

This made me think, perhaps you could get a friend or two from work(could be the ones that are too busy to really mentor) and see what they would need to see to be interested(if they had time). Would they want to see the student's excitement? Would they want to be challenged by a fun design project? Run anything you can think by them and then do the pre-presentation for these people in particular. Most friends can spare 1 hour to listen to an important speech.

Originally Posted by IKE

Ding ding. Leave the selling to sales people. If you are good at selling, you probably could be making more money than as an engineer.

An interesting idea. Involve a sales person. Include them in the group I mentioned above. I know engineers don't like to be sold to, but a sales person simply has a better understanding of what a person is or isn't receptive to. If I try to present an idea, sometimes I do so in a way that really turns off the people I'm presenting it too.(thankfully this is happening less often) They simply have lots of experience in presenting something in this regard more than engineers do. Take advantage of this.

I know there is a rivalry between engineers and businessmen, but for something this important you need all the help you can get. Put down your swords, pick up the mountain dew, and get to work on it.

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by lynca

One of major problems with FIRST is finding quality mentors !

Characterizing it as a 'FIRST' only problem is inaccurate and misses the point. Any similar program will have the same difficulty.

There is a fundamental, entrenched problem that afflicts the engineering community as a whole.

The engineering community doesn't have the ability to communicate to general audiences. There is a plethora of studies that prove the point.

a) they cannot explain to the general population the relevance of engineering.

b) they have difficulty explaining the mentor ship needs to their peers.

and to make it really difficult, engineers are a 'hard sell' type of audience.

They analyze the situation and make their own decisions. The sales technique is different than that used for other personality types.

I know an insurance salesman that refuses to sell to engineers because of the level of analytical detail the potential customer applies to the products.

So it takes a particularly adept type of sales person indeed !!

[ginosoprano09]

The Tigerbytes? no way.

I had never heard about FIRST until I met Juan Damian (alumni of 1775), and that's how our team actually got started. Having spent so much time with Juan, I'm aware of the Tigerbytes' situation.

Juan usually goes to Kansas City during the summer, and knowing him, he would probably be interested in helping you with the presentation(s). I've made several presentations, so if you PM me I can send you materials (powerpoints, brochures, videos, etc.) I've used in the past.

[EricH]

I also forgot about the toe-dipping. I find that it works very well on parents, though. Maybe better than on engineers. You get a parent who has some skill the team needs, say carpentry. You ask them to do one job that has a pretty clearly defined set of parameters, say put together a prototype or build the crate.

At the end of the season, they're probably doing two or three jobs with the team. Now you've got them for a few years. You have a few years to convince them that yes, they want to stay after they don't have a student on the team (easier if you can also grab younger siblings).

[Carol]

Originally Posted by rwood359

I would see if you can attract some about to retire or newly retired engineers. The demands on their time are substantially less. We have several retired mentors on 359. Some of us come in Tuesday and Thursday for 3 or 4 hours from the start of school til build season and every day during build season.

Here are some of the rewards that you can tell them about:
1. It could save their marriage. My wife didn't want me home 24/7 anyway.
2. Learning new things is good for you. I had to learn about robotics, LabVIEW, and how to teach. My doctor said "That's great. You will grow these long things in your brain that will keep the dementia away."
3. THE KIDS! They'll keep you young, they'll make you laugh, and they'll give you great pride. I tell my friends that the robot is the kids product and the kids are the mentors product. And I am very proud of our (FIRST's, not just 359's) product.

We have used this approach as well, including targeting the new empty nesters who suddenly find a lot of time on their hands. In our yearbook we have a quote from one of our engineering mentors "This program makes old, jaded engineers young again!"

[Andrew Schreiber]

I'll jump on the bring a robot bandwagon here, face it, who doesn't love playing with big remote control toys? (Yes I know FRC robots aren't toys but the concept is the same) Most engineers I know are pretty fun loving people and would love nothing more than to poke around and figure out how your robot works. These are the type of people you want mentoring, no one likes a grumpy butt as a mentor, they are harder to be inspired by because you don't perceive what they are doing as enjoyable, why go into a field where you have to WORK at your job?

Don't show some powerpoint presentation with a bunch of figures, engineers get that enough. If you want to use powerpoint make sure it has lots of pictures of people being people at FRC competitions (any really spirited person works) Show some pictures of really exciting games, 2004, 2006, and 2008 would be my picks. Lots of text? No!

One thing you may want to mention is that you get to see a product from design through production in the course of 6 weeks. I know some engineers I spoke with would say they design a part and end up seeing it in a car 4 years later.

Just some quick thoughts.

[CJmango]

Just to drive the point home...

Bring robots and kids. They speak more effectively than anything you can say.

Video of the competition would help too, but it should also include the mentors working with kids. It is also a good idea to invite them on a non-commital visit to meet a team on a more personal level.

[Ivan Helmrich]

This is great, ideas keep rolling in. Probably more than I'll have time to incorporate. Thanks to all.

Aldo, if I can get Juan to come help, I'll definitely do it. He's got the gift of gab and his enthusiasm is infectious. Actually, the Tigrebytes are in pretty good shape for engineering mentors. Due to a large grant from the Kauffman Foundation a few years ago, the Kansas City area has a high density of teams. I know there are many that don't have the kind of support the Tigerbytes have. I'm trying to coax some coworkers to to fill in some of these gaps.

So, I'll have robots, kids, perhaps the aforementioned Juan, cards to hand out with follow-up contact information, invites to visit the Cowtown Throwdown event in November, and I'll try to get together some video and slide show to put on the screen while the students talk about the program. Let's see, what did I miss? Oh yea, I need to get the list of local teams and contacts put together along with a map of team locations. Great stuff!

-Ivan

[Dennis Jenks]

Hi Ivan,

I have had some pretty good success in this department, but it took some time for things to develop. First I’ll give the long term approach that worked for me, then I will follow with what I use for presentations.

The first thing you need to do is to get support from upper management – once you have them on board it makes it much easier to schedule presentations and recruit engineers. Make a list of any VPs and Directors that you think would be supportive then talk to your local RD and have them invited to the regional. Follow this up with a personal invitation from yourself to each of them.

Concurrent with this talk to your local communications manager, part of their job is to support outreach and look for PR opportunities which makes this person your best friend. Try to get them to write articles about your team for the company newsletter. If the company sponsors the team leverage that and make it known that they aren’t simply funding a team convince them that this team is considered a collaborative effort between the school and the company and that how the team functions reflects on the company. In other words start taking steps to try to make them feel like they have some ownership of the team.

If your company has Brown Bag lunch presentations – try to find out who manages that schedule and see if you can give a couple each year. We always have one right after kick off and another some time after the season wraps up. Also see if you can arrange a tour for the team, any time you can get the kids onsite it will be noticed by your fellow employees.

Have a list of all the schools in the area that could use help so that you can match people up with teams that are convenient for them to work with. As others have pointed out, don’t make it an all or nothing type scenario. The first step should be just getting people to come to an event or to stop by a school to see what’s going on. If it’s the right person the program sells itself from there.

Regarding specifics on presentations – if you can bring a robot and team members in definitely do that. I always start with the FIRST Promo video. It gives a great overview of FIRST, and Dean’s comments at the end really underline why it’s important. You can download a copy or contact your local RD and they can probably get you a copy of the FIRST promotional DVD.
http://usfirst.org/community/resourcecenter.aspx?id=652

Another thing I like to do is to play animations or actual footage of matches from at least two or three different years to show just how much the challenge changes each year. Occasionally I will also show one of the National Chairman’s videos to demonstrate that there is much more to this than just building a robot. Once you are through with the videos you can open the floor for questions and you will have plenty to discuss.

Hope that helps,
Dennis