Revelation is Recruiting!

I’m going to take advantage of all this traffic from wow.com, come to see the magic of the zeppelins, and plug my guild, which is currently recruiting. First of all, here’s a link to our recruitment thread, which has all the basic information you need to know about us. We are focused on progression but on a casual schedule. We raid 25-mans only 3 times a week and make the most out of that time. If you’re a very skilled player who just can’t dedicate 20 hours a week to raiding, we’re the guild for you.

With that done, I’ll turn this into a real post about recruiting. It’s difficult. It’s frustrating. It seems like whenever you browse the official guild recruitment forums the only LFGuild posts are from classes you’re full on. Have 5 mages? You’ll only see mages. So what can you do in this situation?

Make sure your recruitment thread/shpiel reflects your guild’s personality

Recently I’ve been working on an assignment for school developing a media kit for a magazine. A media kit is basically something you sent to potential advertisers to sell them on your magazine/product. Your recruitment thread is no different. You need to describe why you’re different from every other guild that you’re competing with. This means that if you are, say, a hardcore guild with all hard modes completed (like other hardcore guilds) you should discuss what sets you apart.

Don’t just say that your DPS is awesome and your tanks are well-geared or that your healers could solo heal Onyxia without a tank. Talk about your raiding atmosphere, guild chat, quirky things about your guild, that sort of thing.

What do you offer recruits?

A fair loot system? Free repairs? Brunch on weekends? Beyond your progression level, each guild has something to offer its recruits, even if it’s just a functioning guild bank. Tell people about this stuff; it will help people make a choice between your guild and another like it.

What classes you’re looking for and what positions are available

You should, of course, put a list of what classes you’re recruiting. But be more detailed than that. What positions are available? Core raid spot (like an MT) or a DPS who might get benched now and again? Don’t get into the situation of pissing off a recruit who transferred under the false pretences of having a full-time raid spot. Bad press about your guild is very near a death sentence since a lot of recruiting is done by word of mouth.

P.S. Revelation is recruiting! We want you! Here’s that link again.

Recruiting, Officer or Not

Whether you’re an officer, a GM or just an every day raider, you can help with recruiting. Part of this means finding out what classes you’re looking for and trolling the official WoW forums (along with other channels, such as WoWRaid and LookingforGuild) for LFG posts. If you’re not too invested in spending more than 5-10 minutes a day on recruiting, here are a few things you should do:

• Look at the pages 1-3 of the official Guild Recruitment Forum (note, the link is for the alliance forum)
• Post a response, generally copy/pasting whatever is in your recruitment thread on your realm forum and adding in a short, personal note to show that you read the post
• Bump your guild’s recruitment threads (realm forum and others)

When you’re trolling the official forums…

• Make sure you read applicant’s posts thoroughly (unless the spelling and typing is so atrocious it makes you want to barf)
• Get the relevant details: e.g. what kind of guild the poster is looking for (hardcore, casual), make sure your raid times mesh (are they looking for early morning, but you raid late evening?) and make a quick assessment of whether you think their personality would fit with your guild
• Post! Don’t be afraid to post in many different threads. Just try not to post in the same threads that someone else in your guild has already posted in.

Not the best way to go

Want to put a bit more effort in?

If you’re not satisfied doing the bare minimum of recruitment-related activities, there’s always more work to be done!

• Make profiles for your guild on sites like LookingforGuild
  
• Check recruiting forums more often and go past page 3
• Look at how your guild is recruiting and troubleshoot – is there something you feel is lacking or simply could be more efficient?
• Run PuG raids such as VoA and Ulduar25 (either start them or join existing runs) and start dialogues with unguilded raiders who stand out from the crowd (I joined an excellent guild back in BC by running a bunch of heroics with some people and then applying to their guild)

One other thing you can do (that I recently did) is to look at your application form. What questions are you asking applicants and is there a good reason to be asking each one? Start a dialogue with the rest of your guild (officers might have a reason to be using certain questions that you don’t know about) and trim the fat off your application. Some things to look out for:

• Yes/no questions – you want to provoke long responses from those stand-out applicants who are willing to put the effort in
• Questions that will likely provoke dishonesty (for example, “How do you deal with disagreements?” – applicants will never answer that they are likely to ragequit if they disagree with something, so you won’t learn anything useful from this question)
• Questions that are likely to get the same answer from any applicant to a raiding guild (such as “What are your goals in World of Warcraft?” If your guild is primarily a raiding guild, 99% of the time the answer will be “to raid” or some variation thereof)

What kind of questions does your guild put on its application? I’d love to hear about any eccentric/uncommon ones.

How to Get Me (Or Anyone) to Respond to Your LFG Post

So recently I’ve been trolling the WoW Guild Recruitment Forum and posting recruitment messages.  In case you ever find yourself posting there (or anywhere else) looking for a guild, here are a few guidelines to getting noticed and getting a post.

Your title should be simple and informative. Something like “Exp. Glad Prot War/Arms War LF Top 500.” (A real post) So from this title I can glean that this warrior is dual specced, experienced (so he says) and achieved a Gladiator title in arena. He also states he is looking for a top 500 guild, which tells me what kind of guild he’s looking for and his attitude towards raiding (anyone looking for a top guild is probably fairly hardcore).

Make complete sentences and use punctuation. If your post is a big mash of words with no real structure, sense, etc. then it’s unlikely you’ll hear from me or anyone else. It’s not that I really care about grammar on a day to day basis in guild chat, but what matters is how you’re willing to present yourself. Basically, it shows that you put two seconds of effort into your post and doesn’t encourage a response on my part.

Be clear and detailed about what kind of guild you’re looking for. The more specific you are, the better chance you’ll get a response from a guild that fits you. You might get less posts overall, but they’ll be ones that work for you. For instance, if you don’t specify your time zone, desired raiding schedule, etc. you will end up getting a lot of responses from guilds with raid times that don’t work for you. This also includes describing what level of progression you want responding guilds to be at.

Describe what you can give to guilds and what your role/spec in a raid is and provide a parse. If you explain a little bit about your spec and how you typically play in raids, it will show not only that you know what you’re doing but that you pay attention to your spec. Guilds want raiders who are not only interested in raiding but also playing their character as well as they can.

Don’t whine. If your post sounds whiny or complainy, I’m immediately going to click the back button. Don’t gripe about your previous guild or about how your current guild isn’t putting you on the raid roster. If your guild disbanded due to drama or whatever other reason, there’s no need to go into gory details. Simply say that you are looking for a new guild – explain further if asked (you’ll usually see a related question on any guild applications).

Apply alone. While you can’t always do this (if you have friends or a significant other you want to raid with), your chances of getting in to a guild will probably be higher if you’re applying by yourself. The main reason for this is that people who apply together often do other things together, such as leaving for a new guild, taking vacation, and missing raids. While I’m absolutely not saying that people who apply in groups do this more than single applicants, having multiple raiders disappear at the same time is not a good thing for any guild.

Extras that help you:

• Posting on your main
• Linking your armory
• Logging out in proper gear (healing/tank/DPS)
• Showing some personality
• Willingness to transfer servers

P.S. My guild is recruiting, so if you’re looking for a guild check out our recruitment thread here. (Note: it’s a little out of date, we actually have killed Yogg and we’re also looking for a Hunter.)