Recruiting-Getting people who are interested in ROBOTICS

Competition Team Organization
1

With it now being the off-season and there being a lot of talk about recruiting I was wondering

How do you know the kids that will do things from the kids that don’t do anything when recruiting? Is there any way to tell?
Our team might have to pick and choose between who we can take next year and i was just wondering if there’s a way to tell kids who are in it for the trip versus kids who are in it for FIRST…

anyone?

2

you dont really know with new members. If they show up to all the meetings interested with whats gonna happen… i’d say you are safe with them. But then again i never thought FIRST was anything special until i started the build of my freshman year.

But, What drives people away is: (i just came up with these off the top of my head)

  1. Throwing fund raisers in their face the 2nd meeting
  2. Putting up some really complex design and having 2 seniors bicker back and forth about where a pnuematic piston belongs
  3. Giving everyone a team shirt and forcing them to wear it to school.
3

Give those who apply a “trial membership.” Hold activities during the first month or two of school and see who shows up, and of those who show up who does what. Just through observation, you can get a pretty good idea of who will be active during the season, and who will become part of the infamous “core team.” Attendance (frequency), excuses, activity, etc, are quantitative points that can be used.

There are a few things to remember, though. Not everyone is good at fundraising. Therefore, they may allow that to deter them from participating in fundraising activities. So, its a good idea to remind new members that they can just show up and a place will be found for them. More generally, each new member joins the team for a different reason (be it for animation, robot build, promotions, chairmans, etc), so they may only feel the need to participate when the activity is related to their field of interest. Sometimes this is due to the fact that at other activities, they have nothing to do or nothing that interests them. Again, they need to know that this is not an excuse, heh.

I would push for an application process of some sort (you know, an essay or something), but I don’t like those for the following reasons:

  1. Anyone can fill out an application.
  2. Paradoxical to my first reason, if the application we were given during my freshman year of high school counted, then I would not be in FIRST today.
    Of course, if you are looking for more objective methods, then I’ll leave that to someone else to suggest.

Be careful when executing whatever selection process you come up with. If done improperly, then you can lose good students and students who really need the program, and can be left with students who contribute almost nothing. This program is about inspiration, so its not all about selecting the cream of the crop and putting them to work; its also about selecting those on the edge and bringing them back, giving them a vehicle to find themselves, what they want to do, and how they want to do it :).

4

We do that even before the 1st meeting. It’s in the contract new members sign. It says while their grade is based on attendance, they will still be expected to significantly contribute to the team’s extensive fundraising efforts.

FIRST is not a free ride; it takes hard work, which brings pride. That is the point.

5

every year we require all team members to have 10 documented hours of community service (cybersonics require 40, but we felt this was too steep. we are a small team as it is). this helped to get rid of most of the “dead wood” who just came to hang out. as far as getting the kids to notice the team in the first place, driving a robot around in plain sight tends to get attention, we do it often! :stuck_out_tongue: