How do I get more recruits for next year?

FIRST General Forum
1

As a freshman on a team of three other freshmen, one sophomore, and a senior who happens to be the captain, my team is going to be kind of small next year. Also, we need to get a new captain because our original one is leaving. First (or should that be FIRST?), we need more members next year. Does anyone have any ideas for recruiting that don’t involve kidnapping?

Also, what are some good qualities for a leader? We have around five people to choose from,and we don’t want to choose wrong. Any ideas?

Thaine

2

Well you could try advertising by showing fellow class mates FIRST. I watched the webcast of world championship and allowed others to see what I am watching during the period when I am allowed to use my laptop. I don’t know if anyone got convinced to join the team but more people know we exist.

3

Thanks, ZonChau.

Unfortunately, my school doesn’t adhere to the notion of student laptops, and any deviation from classwork gives you evil looks from teachers.

Do you have any ideas regarding posters or other such propaganda?

Thaine

4

Well the people here in my school does not pay attention to propaganda. They don’t listen to announcements and they don’t look at posters.

Maybe you could try and arrange a time where you could show off FIRST to the entire school? Like a robot demonstration. I don’t know if you would be allowed to though.

The word of mouth and visuals is really the best way for me. Maybe you guys could organize to sell food during specific times in the year? As you collect money or deliver the food mention the FIRST robotics team to people.

I can not give you a true estimate of effectiveness for recruitment methods. All I know is if you got the passion to make others recognize and be inspired by science and technology you will do it.

5

Its excites kids when they see a fully functional robot. At 8th grade orientations where the upcoming freshman take a look at different after-school activities (or however your school does it), bring in a functional robot for them to watch. It is important to get freshman interested before they reach high-school; Towards the end of the year, bring the robot to the middle-school and show the 8th graders, im sure you can show the 7th graders the robot too.

Another thing we do is go to the freshman science classes for a few minutes and explain what we do. If they want more information, they can come to a meeting and get a feel for what it is.

Feel free to send me a Private Message if you have any questions. Id be glad to answer them. :slight_smile:

6

I think almost everyone forgot about the 2009 bot went it got showed off last year when I was a 8th grader. I recall seeing a lot of kids watching the demonstrations and playing with the playing pieces as BOB dragged the trailer around. Though we got 9 freshmen this year including me :smiley: You have any ideas of how to make kids remember about FIRST robotics over the summer break? :slight_smile:

7

We’ve always had an announcement telling about a recruiting meeting and the meeting is when we give out a lot of team information. Also, every once in a while our team will decide on a day to wear team shirts and flair from a competition. We always get questions when we do that because people can either look at you all day with a question or ask the question and learn. We don’t always put fliers up around school because anything being hung up in the hallways has to go through our athletic director and lets just say he doesn’t believe robotics is a sport. But when we do, its always a very bright green paper that will catch attention.

8

We participate in town parades towards late spring. Last year, our robot drove around firing orbit balls at families on blankets and lawn chairs. After-wards, a good 15 or so toddlers came up with jaw-dropped faces; it was truly inspiring.

We also have town days where the town shows off a bunch of stuff from the area, a Tae Kwon Do area, a clown area, etc. We go there and show towns our robot and spread the interest of FIRST. These happen in late June / Early July, I think.

9

robotics not a sport :yikes:

Oh yeah I forgot about wearing team shirts that attract questions. I don’t get a lot of questions from strangers however maybe because of my appearance.

10

There was another thread about this a few days ago. Here is what I posted on that thread (I know the ideas appeal to a larger team, but twisting them to work with a smaller team may have identical effects):

*"After the 2009 season, 4 of us juniors (now seniors) felt the team (45) was falling apart and wouldn’t last much longer unless things were changed. We made a sheet that we handed out to our steering committee with an almost rebuild of the team. One of the key topics that we emphasized was Recruitment. We noticed that every year, we would lose maybe 6-7 members and only gain 3-4. At the beginning of the 2009 year, I think we had maybe 3 freshmen. With us losing almost 8 seniors. We knew we needed to step up in the recruitment area.

Here is the Recruitment section directly from the original sheet with starred activities ones that I personally know we did. The ones with stars have added comments and notes about what we did in parentheses:

Recruitment
Appeal Interested Students
-Career Center/PLTW
-Organized, willing to try new things, driven
-Not necessarily interested in engineering
-New Mentors?

Scrimmage in Kokomo?

Bring robot to students* (We did multiple demos at the school during lunch and the school’s open house. With it being the lunacy bot (slick wheels), we were able to greatly interact with students at the school. One key point it that with slick wheels, we could let them drive the robot without any worry of damage)

Middle School Demos

Mentor FLL Teams (Required)

Local Scrimage for FLL Teams* (held this but was not able to attend)

Work with Bonavista

Multiple Events Early* (We held many of these ideas early in the school year to give students time to think about joining the team and allow them to ask questions before getting a feeling of commitment)

Emphasize Administration

Convocation?* (We drove the robot around the auditorium during a convocation made to promote joining different events at the school)

Channel 1

Teacher info* (We handed out recruitment posters and team information for teachers to display and hand out. We made emphasis to get these to every math and science teacher in the building)

Call out meeting after school with teachers/students* (Normally, we have a callout meeting at 6p.m., long after students had gone home and had trouble getting back. This was made to let them come in right after school without having to come back. We still held a recruitment meeting after school at 6 for parents to understand what happened on the team. During this recruitment, students present interesting things that happen in FIRST, then we leave the parents and mentors to do their stuff while we do introductions and engineering related activites with the new students. One activity we did was split eveyone up into teams and give them 35 index cards in which we would challenge them to build the tallest tower with only folds and cuts)

Open House for recruitment* (We hold an annual open house every year to let anyone in Kokomo visit and see what the team is doing at our shop. We promote students at the school to visit the open house, as this is one of the main chances for them to see the shop and robots they will work with during the season)

Information Pages on students and adults

Sign-ups for subgroups* (we promoted making a board with subgroups in which students would thumbtack index-cards with their names on a group. We felt this gave them a sense of belonging to a group and promoted working and learning the people they would work with. We also encouraged and let them know they could switch groups at any time)

Football/Basketball/sport Games* (here, we demoed robots, set up our spirit ball (new years ball we drop downtown programmed with school colors), and use a t-shirt cannon to launch t-shirts and plastic footballs into the stands)

Overall, this worked amazingly well. We had 12 new freshmen, with a total population of new members from every grade being almost 15 or 16 students.

Some other things we do are hold an annual new years ball drop, wear shirts around the school, display beautiful FIRST trophies in various places around the school, and get involved with the community. We have also started to try and get middle school students (specifically 8th graders) to come to off season events so they can experience the thrill of a FIRST event without having to make a commitment.

One very important point in recruitment is ALWAYS communication. We started a mass texting list with the students on the team so we could inform them (especially the new members) when meetings were(This is in addition to an always up to date Google Calendar that is linked to the TechnoKats site). This allowed them to show up at the shop and learn the equipment and not get bored. We also had students show up for “invention sessions.” One of our newer mentors started this after his first year with the team. This allowed students to tackle projects they wanted to do so they may stay active with the team, which again, goes back to allowing new students to learn the shop and who to go to if they need help. Some of the projects included a cim powered bike and a trailer for a medical facility in Africa. This is a great way to get members involved early.

Hope this helps"*

11

What we found that works is making people really experiance the thrill of FIRST and telling them about it later. We would bring our robot into our school and just have people drive it around the gym and such. Sometimes I take a few people to competitions to show them how it feels like to be in FIRST.

-I’ve found it hard to convince people verbally that FIRST is more rewarding than some other activities, but when they actully get to try some of the things they learn FIRST in their own way and they want to stay as long as possible.

-So recap, let students drive your robot, bring students to off-season FIRST events or even Kick-off if you are still introuble right before the season starts, and lastly promote your team like crazy throughout your school. Something I started talking about with the Frogs is just playing those FIRST videos that they play to start every Season event. I think if we play those during school we can turn some heads :P.

Good luck! Oh, and for a team leadership role. When someones a leader you will know it. And just remeber that the leader of the team does not have to be experienced in Robotics. The leader is someone who can push the team in the right direction and be a good spokesman to other teams.

12

I have to also stress to people “You don’t have to be smart.” It is the stereotype that was built over the years that you have to be smart to make cool stuff. After my freshman year I saw how practically anyone could be involved as long as they can comply with the team’s B- or higher rule and be willing to spend some time learning.

I was thinking about what you guys do Frog Force. I noticed at my Freshmen day (day only freshmen come to highschool) that robotics was never mentioned or seen. I haven’t thought about letting people drive it so thanks for the idea there :smiley: We probably should put up our mock-up goal in the background and let people give a shot at driving.

I wonder what would happen if someone ran around in a costume yelling about the robotics team :stuck_out_tongue:

13

The most effective method I’ve seen at our school is actually just forcing your friends into it :P. We already have 5 new people recruited which should balance out for the graduating seniors, not to mention the incoming freshmen

14

You will find plenty more information here and here.

:slight_smile:

15

The real trick is to get the people who are joining your team to WANT to join. Once they WANT to join, your team can start on the amazing things. Most of the things mentioned above are good ways to accomplish the first sentence I said, and don’t be afraid to think something different through and go on with it.

16

I’d say some things to look for in a leader are:
-Dedication and extreme involvement. It helps them to be informed and make decisions.
-Some level of confidence is necessary
-Be able to know when to cut your losses if encountering a problem too great. Some designs you just have to know when to pull the plug and move on.
-open-minded to all sorts of designs, ideas, and suggestions.
-a good knowledge of physics, math, and general robotics knowledge also always helps.
-good people skills, you want someone that represents your team in a positive light.

These are just some of the things I thought of I’m sure there’s plenty more.

17

Thanks a lot!

I’ll try to see if I can get the robot’s chains fixed so it is safe for anyone to drive it, right now, the chains are really loose and pop out of the sprocket every ten minutes. Probably my fault (I drove a little too aggressively as midfield at 10,00 Lakes. Oops :slight_smile: )

We do a ‘pepfest’ about a week before school dances, so I could try to have the robot at one of those, even though they only last 15 minutes.

I could try to have the science teachers to tell people about FIRST, but they only seem to do announcements for school dances.

I am thinking of putting up a booth during lunch hour, with the “FIRST: The Sport of the Mind” video looping on a projector with fliers and occasional robot runs. Think that would help?

My school actually seems to respond to fliers, so does anyone have any ideas for posters and handouts?

Thanks

Thaine

18

Maybe for a poster show a picture of the robot and it say, “do you want to build this? join the school’s robotics team - no experience required” Or make it seem like a help wanted ad?

19

Genius. That’s why people are so scared of joining, they think they have to have experience. Thanks, I didn’t think of that.

As for robot demonstrations, I think I can get the wheel mountings fixed pretty soon. Our chains were stretching like crazy, anyone else get that at 10,000 Lakes?

Oh, speaking of 10,00 Lakes, thanks a ton to the team that put half-links in our chain, I forgot the number.

Where is the best place for live demonstrations with audience participation? Preferably so that the administration wouldn’t mind, and not forced, like a school assembly. I get the vibe like “Why the heck are we watching this?” whenever there is a demonstration for a team or other organization at assemblies. Like a booth outside the school after school?

Thaine

20

Our team’s robot gets to show off in the foyer outside the school cafeteria. It’s a big area with plenty of room to move around without endangering innocent bystanders…much.