Recruitment

Recruitment is arguably one of the two biggest challenges HOBY faces as an organization (next to perhaps only fundraising).  It comes with it's own incentive based goals, and in many ways can set the structure for everything else we do.

For the last two years, and in all likelihood this year, our goal for recruitment has been to get 201 sophomores to the seminar in May.  Two years ago, we met this goal "unofficially" by at least getting that many students to sign up, but were disappointed when about 10 percent of those students didn't actually show.  Last year, the number who signed up was much closer to the number who showed, however, in some ways, this is arguably no better for us.

In every element we plan from dormitories on the campus, to facilitation groups, to busses for transportation the size of the group can have a dramatic impact.  It is no wonder that this is even true in fundraising:  for every student registered, we get a small piece of their registration fee, and there are financial incentives to add to that should we meet our recruitment goal.  Unfortunately however, we do not set our goal all by ourselves. It is determined in conjunction with HOBY International and in large part is actually set for us.

The challenges of the recruitment task can be many.  First, making phone calls, and to some degree even sending emails during the day is difficult.  Most of our volunteers have serious day jobs that prevent them from participating in such a task.  How are we to get a hold of the schools if we cannot call them during their working hours?  Second, it is surprising every year as we face either new school staffs, or simply existing ones, who have not yet latched onto the HOBY message and still are not enthusiastic about sending a student.  They complain about how no student is interested in signing up or that they are unsure what they are getting for their investment.  What they fail to realize is that in all likelihood, those members of the sophomore class have never heard of HOBY, and so they have no incentive to sign up, or write an essay, or attempt to get involved.  If the school plays no role in promoting HOBY as something positive for a student's future, what student would sign up blindly?  Every year I must convince schools to do this hard work as I cannot be in the school to do it myself.  These challenges speak nothing to the students and then families who then do sign up, only for us to make sure the registered participant completes their forms and does show up in May.

This year, we are currently without an official Director of Registration, and are certainly looking.  However, as much as anything, what is needed is a  few bodies to make just a few phone calls.  If every volunteer we work with during the year took on just 5 schools to call, this would mean we'd be working on calling around 300 schools.  It doesn't take much -- just a bit of commitment.

I'd love to have a few more people to help me with recruitment.   Imagine the difference you'd be making to get that one student to attend in May and the "life-changing" experience they would encounter.