First I have to start off this blog post by admitting that I love those Aha! moments. It is one of my favorite things about working with students is teaching them something and seeing the light bulb come on. I also love that for some reason the Aha! moments come at the most random times!
Mine came last night as I was driving across town to meet friends for dinner. I have a tendency to think and drive, especially on my drive into and out of work. I swear that's when things come together for me! As I was driving I was reflecting on some conversations regarding expansion that I've had in the past few weeks. I've talked to a handful of people who have given me some great insight into how to improve the way we do expansion. I've listened, I've taken notes, but for some reason something still wasn't clicking. Then as I'm jamming to the radio last night I realize Aha! Expansion is simply recruitment! In my years working with Greeks I've taught recruitment principles countless times, as have others in the office, but for some reason we weren't practicing what we preached! I'm excited to start making that move.
We have been treating expansion as rush, not recruitment. The reason that the term changed, is because rush doesn't work. Sitting in my office waiting for people to contact me isn't successful. Sure I get e-mails about starting chapters, but we've been expecting them to come to us and be interested in us and it rarely turns into anything because we don't take the time to sell to them. Recruitment is about actively pursuing the opportunities and selling what you are instead of playing the waiting game. We teach collegians to know what kind of men they are looking for and to make that list of values, criteria, or expectations. Our list however isn't specific, I don't know that we really know what type of institutions we are looking for. We teach collegians to build relationships all year round, to become friends and to increase the potential pool! Yet for expansion, if a campus says they aren't open at this time we give up and move on instead of building and maintaining a relationship for when there is a chance of success. I can come up with a lot more examples, but I think you all get the idea!
I'm confident that the recruitment tactics I've been teaching will serve expansion well. I am excited to practice what I preach and show all you recruitment naysayers why recruiting works and rush doesn't, even outside of collegiate fraternity recruitment. (I'm also confident I can prove it works without a lot of money either!)
And feel free to share your Aha! moments now that I've told you how much I love them :) I can't be the only one who thinks and drives right?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great post!
ReplyDelete