World of Warcraft Recruitment: How to Get Good Results

1. Introduction

Recruitment is one of the most important duties of guild leaders or officers. At the same time it is also an area where a lot of guilds go wrong. Often guilds go about the task of recruitment the wrong way. Or you might have thought that recruitment is something that happens automatically and suddenly find yourself out of active members. In this guide we will look at the most important aspects to consider when recruiting for a guild. How do you properly advertise your guild? How do you get good results?

The first step toward successful guild recruitment is to set your goals, in detail. Regardless whether you're just starting out or just want to kickstart your recruitment, you should spend some time writing a guild charter. Explain what makes your guild special among all the other guilds on the server. Here's a list of questions you should answer in your charter:

• What lootsystem do you use?
  


• What are your raid times? How many evenings do you raid every week?
  


• Do you have a minimum amount of hours you want people to raid every week?
  


• Are there gear requirements for prospective applicants?
  


• Is there an age limit?
  


• Is there a code of conduct for guild members?
  

2. Public relations

Writing a charter for your guild serves a double purpose. First of all it will provide you an opportunity to think about what you really expect from the game, from your guild. What do you expect from your members and what are you willing to do to reach those goals.

Secondly the charter will provide you with the perfect foundation for a good guild website. Often your website will be the first (and all too often the last) thing people will look at when considering your guild. Time working on your website is always time well spent. A good website does not just list your progress and provide your members with a forum to chat during work hours. If done right, it should provide potential recruits with invaluable information about your guild.

The most important aspect of recruitment lies in how you make other players perceive you and your guild. To mold your guild and attract the right people to help you on your path, you have to project the correct image to the public. A good guild reputation is your most valuable asset. The charter is the first step toward this. Making everybody aware of your goals in the beginning will help you avoid a lot of grief later on. One of the most common underlying reasons to guilds failing is the failure to communicate your guild's ideology properly.

This is also the reason why guilds often require their members to follow a certain code of conduct. Your members are your guild's face to the public. Try to prevent your members from behaving inappropriately toward other players, be it ingame or on forums. One thoughtless comment by one of your members can ruin weeks of hard work you put into building the guilds reputation. Being polite and helpful toward outsiders demands very little effort on your part and it's an easy way to build a good reputation on your server.

Recruitment officers

Picking the right kind of people as recruitment officers can have a major impact on your guilds recruitment. In most guilds the job of recruitment officer is limited to screening applications on your guild forum. That is a mistake. Replying to applications on your forums should only be a small part of what your recruitment officer does. A recruitment officer is basically your public relations officer. The most important thing your recruitment officers can do is to run heroic instances with people outside your guild. This accomplishes two goals of recruitment:

• Socializing with people outside the guild will go a long way to avoid the elitist reputation often associated with raiding guilds.
  


• Five man instances are the perfect environment to identify prospective applicants.
  

Poaching

Members and officers who actively seek groups with players outside the guild are your best tool for healthy recruitment. However, when try to avoid to be seen as a poacher. Poaching is the act of specifically trying to recruit people who are already guilded.

Now, technically, there is nothing wrong in a moral sense with this practice. It's comparable to standard headhunting practices in the business world. If a rival guild has a talented member which you think you might persuade to join your guild, then by all means, try to recruit him/her. If the player decides to leave his old guild then he wasn't a good match for his old guild anyway.

You may want to keep in mind tho that the other guild and the players in it might not see it that way. Most guilds are fiercely protective of their members. This is only natural, since your recruitment activities may directly interfere with their ability to pursue their own goals. Because of this they call your active recruiting poaching, trying to portray you as a thief. Of couse, most guilds have double standards in this regard. If they do it, its active recruitment or inviting friends to their guild. Still, it is in your best interest to avoid being branded as poacher guild.

It's not worth to poach any player outright if that means you will antagonize yourself to other potential recuits in that guild or even the whole server. Befriend them and when there is an opportunity, try to induce doubt in their current guild. Let them know that they are the sort of person that you think fits into your guild. Just be available and desirable.

Selecting recruits

It can often be difficult to find recruits that fit your guilds requirements. Make use of online resources. Check recruitment forums. Specialized websites, such as recruit-gamers.com can help you finding players that meet your basic gear requirements and playtimes, be it on your server or willing to transfer from another server. That being said, make sure the players also are a good match for your guild in other aspects. Don't just look at their equipment and playing hours. Take a few minutes to talk to them about their personal goals. See if their goals mesh with the guild's goals. Look at their reputation on their server. Recruiting somebody with a bad attitude will do more harm than good, no matter how good their skills and/or playtimes might appear.

Recruitment Check-list:

• Build your reputation
  


• Select recruitment officers
  


• Set high standards for recruits
  


• Interview prospects
  

When do you stop?

So when do you stop recruiting? Let's say you have enough members to do raid instances (10 or 25, depending on your goals). Does this mean your recruitment officer can take a break? Well, if your members are all hardcore raiders, he could, but I would advise against it. Sure, people like to have their guaranteed raid spot. Sure, you might get great progress raiding with the minimal numbers required. But it is a fact that people sometimes quit playing. When that happens, you want to be prepared. The size of your raid force should depend on how active/dependable your members are, but it should always exceed the minimal number required. As a rule of thumb i would suggest the following:

• Hardcore raiding guilds: 30-45 players
  


• Casual raiding guilds: 50-65 players
  

Resources:

Official WoW Guild Recruitment Forums
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=wow-guild-recruitment
Most guilds submit recruitment posts on the official forum. The downside is that your post will quickly disappear in the back pages if you don't keep bumping your post to the top.

Recruit-Gamers
http://www.recruit-gamers.com/
Offers an alternative to the official forum. Submit your guild's recruitment status to a searchable database. Or if you want to actively look for new members, search the database for potential recruits.

Warcraft Realms Character History
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/charhistory.php
Check up on your applicant's guild history.