For most high schools, school is starting soon or has started. When do you veterans start recruiting new members? What do you do to recruit students? Share some of your recruiting tips here.
well S.P.A.M. goes to the open houses and puts up a display table at all the schools. Flyers are placed up and annoucements are given for the first meeting. A lot of it seems to be word of mouth. Friends of friends join and those in middle school w/ the invovlment of FLL gets kids in.
Good luck w/ getting members everyone!
Gah!!! Unfortunately I don’t get my kids back until Sept 6th, but we will start recruiting hard core directly following that date. FUNDRAISING!!!
And as for tips, I’ve got nothing. I’m counting on the kids who had a good time last year telling their friends.
We started the recuit new members in June, at the end of the school year, contacting just members of the team that we know expressed interested during the build season/competition season. We stopped in the summer. Then we are opening our recuitment program to incoming freshman (and new students to our school) with a program and demostration to get their attention at our school’s freshman oriantation last Thursday. Also, new this year my team will be mentoring a LEGO League team at the middle school in town, this will provide many recruitments in future years.
Good Luck with your own recruitment!
Our students showed off the robot at the freshmen orientation yesterday and tried to get some of those students interested. Most of our involvement comes through word-of-mouth, I believe. We typically have very few 4-year seniors – most had friends who had a good time and so they joined, too. We put the robot in pep rallies, parades, and any other time we can get people to see it. Students see the robot and want to know more, so they come to the informational meeting(s) that we hold prior to the season starting. Sometimes these students join, but sometimes they don’t, normally because of time conflicts and the time commitment that this program has.
I can really only report what I knew as a student and what I see happening now as a mentor – I’m on the engineering side, not the school district, which does most of the school stuff.
Our students start school on September 6, so they haven’t had the opportunity to really take the robot to the school and show it off or anything.
696 already got 6 new students (5 of whom are female) in June. They will be taking two freshmen once school starts in another week or so. 
I made a few posters, that we will try to get approval for, to hang in the hallways of the school. Other than that, a number of the science teachers, guidance counselors, and fellow teammates direct kids our way at the beginning of the school year. The tech-ed teachers are all mentors and start the school year armed with blank application forms for their new classes. You can see some of the flyers here , here , and here.
Use good video. Use clips of students using the chop saw, mill or welder. Students love to see and make sparks. Bad video will hurt more than help. Let the kids pick the music and you approve but have an open mind. Our season video is on the Chief somewhere but I don’t now how to link to it. If you don’t have kids that can do this for you you need them. They will pull their weight and fit well in animation. Ryan Dognaux never much touched a robot but was a crucial member of our team for four years. I also ask certain students to apply or have our team find kids for me to talk to. They know that student that builds that killer volcano in the science fair. I also look for a good cross section of students. I look for popular students, quiet students, loud students, artsy students, athletes, nerds for lack of a better term ( I hate that tag). I think you need all of these to have a successful team. Be careful of basketball players and wrestlers they will have to much time committed to their coach and demanding more would be rough on them if their coach is running a good program. Swimmers I can sometimes work with. Band kids to me make the best robotics kids, they know what it is like to travel and they are generally creative. Their parents also know how to set up and run booster program. Since this is a donation run activity look for sons and daughters of influential people in the community. This is what we do and it works for us but probably not every one. Thats all I can type at one sitting.
We do 3 main things for recruitment:
-
Postcards are sent out to all families of Kokomo High School kids. These postcards briefly tell the benefits of the program and announce a call-out meeting.
-
We drive the robot around the commons area during lunch. Current team members and mentors do this together.
-
We have a call-out meeting for everyone who is interested in the team (students and adults). Our meeting is tomorrow night (Wednesday, 8/31) at the KHS cafeteria. Visitors are welcome.
Andy B.
We usually use word-of-mouth. Students talk to the other students and try to recruit them. Most of the people in the school are reached this way. (We’re a small school, so probably more like all of the students are asked.) We also send out applications and flyers and such to those that are old enough.
We also do the open house deal, letting prospective students take a good look at the robot and ask current team members unlimited questions (we’ve pulled in some of our new members through past open houses). To add, we just get our name out there by means of fundraisers, posters, and PA announcements - people usually end up asking what robotics is.
Also, since 573 is involved with the OCCRA season, we invite students and teachers alike to our pre-game tailgates and competitions. This has helped us out in recruitment, as well.
We recruit the new team before summer vacation, so that the students can be active over the summer. We’ve already got our students! Does anyone else do it this way?
Last year we tried to recruit in the beginning of the year. However we had grand ideas which fell through the ice rather quickly. We ended up finalizing our team within 10 days of the build season. There was a rush to the start to get them authorized to use machinery. We made but just. I think we know what we want to do before we get recruits and I hope that we get them before River Rage and ya know take em to a competition before the season so they understand the experience that results after spending 6 weeks of the year building the machine.
school hasn’t started for us, it sucks.
we dont really TRY to recruit people wut just put up flyers and people just tell others to come, and some how we get alot of people.
Our process really starts just before then end of the school year. The Park has a “Club Night” or open house for all the current 8th graders who will be at the High Schools for next year. Each club and team (there are over 40)gets a table to set up a display (We drive the robot around) and the 8th graders can walk around to the different tables and can signing up on sheets and fill out post cards that the schools mail out mid summer with the date of the first meeting on them. Now in the fall we will put up fliers in all three schools with the meeting date and time. This year we are also planning on having the Student Television Station (STS) run a promo video in the mornings.
As for the first meeting we hold it at the school (since we normally meet at Visteon), at that meeting we go give a team history show some video so over season break downs basically try to give them a good idea of how we operates and how FUN it is. Then we in the next weeks we move the meeting back to Visteon and start to get them integrated into their different committees based on what they are interested in.
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.
*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.
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
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.