Cohort Recruiting Results

[NIN]

Just a quick hit & run here.

We've talked about Pipelining in the past (here is a good example: http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=19754.0  That thread got me into my current predicament! LOL) here on CAP-Talk, with mixed results.

In the interim, of course, I've taken on a new role, done some other things, and started talking about so-called "cohort recruiting" versus "pipelining."   (example: http://www.capmembers.com/media/cms/RO01__Cohort_recruiting_2015_0CB571F5B29A4.pptx)

Last night was "Week Zero" for Basic Cadet Training, that is, the 1st week after our twice-annual Open House.  Next week is "Week One - Inprocessing" where we take everybody's forms & checks, measure them for uniforms, meet the membership board and the commander verifies documentation.

Three parents (so far) have done the online application process.

But this was our BCT formation last night:

(I will save you the counting: 21. And there are three not in this shot)

[TheSkyHornet]

I wish we had that many new cadets at one time...

Interesting idea. Perhaps this is adaptable....

*thinks intently*

[THRAWN]

Tell the one in the orange shirt and red shorts to breathe. He looks like a Prussian general.

This program and system works.

[TheSkyHornet]

I can only guess what happened moments after this picture was taken....





But really, I'd like to have a talk with my C/CC and training sergeant to get some ideas floating around on how to beef up the training process, especially for the new indocs

[NIN]

I wish we had that many new cadets at one time...

Interesting idea. Perhaps this is adaptable....

*thinks intently*

Its not adaptable. You just do it.

Here, let me do the thinking for you:

Step 1: Look long and hard at your unit calendar and figure out the best time to start a BCT cycle.
- If Great Start works for you, then figure 5-7 weeks including inprocessing.  Pick a start date that doesn't overlap too much.  Schedule a unit Open House a week or two before that.
- If you have a working BCT program that is 6-8 weeks long, then factor in "inprocessing night" (which can still be a training night), figure out your start date, and schedule a unit Open House a week or two before that.
- Communicate that Open House night to all.

Step 2: Start Advertising (Facebook, web page, local papers, etc).  Create 8.5 x 11 flyers, print a couple hundred and distribute them to your cadets. (note: If you don't have 25+ cadets, then print 100.. don't get crazy all at once).  While advertising, have a mechanism for people to get in touch with you when they see your advertising copy.  Phone, email, FB, etc. Whatever it is:  keep track of the people who contact you, and GET BACK TO THEM ASAP.  Pay $40 for some facebook advertising.  Get a cadet to fix your web page. (no lie, GI: had an interested pilot who had been researching CAP contact me about 4 days before our open house. He'd looked at three squadrons, and the other two didn't look like they did anything. He said "Your website is actually active and has info on it, so I picked you guys!" Then he said "And then this Facebook ad popped up and totally sealed the deal!"  #WINNING!)

Step 3: Stop taking "walk-ins" until your Open House. This is easier than it looks, but people totally lose their minds over doing this because we desperately cling to anybody who walks in the door interested in CAP like Jack and Rose to an errant piece of the Titanic.  Stop doing that. You're not that desperate.  Give a walk-in the nickle tour, talk about CAP, and then give them a flyer for the upcoming open house, get their contact info for follow up, and say "If you want to join, come on the 17th of September to our Open House.."   Like its not an option to do otherwise.

Step 4: Run a cool Open House event.  Setup some displays (simulator, ES display, etc). Have a quick slide presentation, like maybe 20-25 minutes TOPS. "This is CAP, this is where we've been, this is what we do, here's how you join."  Start five minutes after your advertised start time, post the colors, introduce yourself,  do your Powerpoint (that you practiced, RIGHT?), have your c/CC or a senior cadet do what the BSA calls the "Call to join" (Short version: "here's why CAP is so darn cool, this is why I do it, and you wanna be cool like me, right?"), do some quick Q&A, then let moms, dads and their offspring walk around, look at your recruiting displays, yank and bank on the simulator, munch on cookies (did I mention you better have food) and pick up a membership packet.

(SIDE NOTE: membership packet. Two pocket color folder. Inside you can have a brochure, a letter from the commander saying "hey, we're really glad you want to join us!," a sheet that explains the inprocessing night, one that says "Here, fill this out and bring it on inprocessing night with money" [we do $38 for dues and $55 for 'doo-dads' like nametags, patches, belts, BDU cap, etc].  Contact information for "For more information" people like your Deputy for Cadets or your Ops O.  Its pretty much "OK, you gave mom & dad the full court press, they're gonna take this home, read it, have more questions, etc...")

Keep in mind: the time between that presentation & the time they walk out your door is "1 meter recruiting" time.  This is the time you use to get them within conversational distance of your membership, cleverly camouflaged as "punch and cookies time." Cadets recruit cadets, seniors recruit seniors.  That Powerpoint presentation isn't recruiting them, your members are.  The goal is to get them interested enough to want to take home one of the 30 packets you made up.

Step 5: Have something for them (cadet or senior) to do the next week. New member introduction. Onboarding, whatever you want to call it.  If they're cadets, the BCT better have a strong showing to "Set the stage"

This past Thursday was ours. We had a whole mob of moms & dad's observing. The BCT NCOs (we have three, but often its just two) introduced themselves to the new cadets and started in on expectations, what they need to wear, bring, when they need to do it, who they need to call if they're not going to, etc.

Meanwhile, we (the commander, myself) sneak over and separate moms & dads from their kids.

(When we had a classroom in the Armory, years ago, I remember when we first started doing cohort style recruiting I'd poke my head in to the BCT room at the beginning of Week Zero to see how it was going. There would be a dozen smiling faces in the front of the room, and then all the moms and dads crammed in the back of the room.  It became standard: Give the BCT guys about 15 minutes with both cadets & parents, and then I'd go rescue the parents, pull them out of that stuffy classroom and do a little "OK, so now you're here" Q&A. Then I'd tell moms or dads "Hey, look, they're gonna be here till 9pm.  Why don't you go get a coffee or run over to the mall or, you know, just go chill out..."  and parents would look at me like "I can do that? Really?" and then "SEE YA at 9!!")

Step 6: conduct a formal "Inprocessing" night.  In the past, after too many times of "This cadet's name is not Janes Mailwerdfeldgrebble" (because mom's penmanship stinks), and way, way before we had online apps, we had an Access database and a squadron form for data entry.  The database took that info and overprinted the CAPF 15 & CAPF 12. Print two incredibly legible copies, "sign here, sign here, sign here.. and we'll take your checks.." and then they're in their inprocessing packet with a checklist.  Other stations were logistics issue (issue BDUs, if we have them, measure them for their blues chit), membership board, membership photo and lastly meet with the commander for final packet verification and collection.

By the end of the night, we had everybody's sizes, most had BDUs pieces, I had a stack of CAPF 15s (and 12s) to go into their file or into the envelope to go to National, and we could order all the nametags and such.  (our Access database actually generated a legit Bookstore order form for the unit's gigantic initial membership order to be sent off to the Bookstore with a unit check.  "599K - Nameplate.  NAME: SMITHERS  1  $4.99" "599K - Nameplate.  NAME: JONES  1  $4.99" etc)

This next week is our inprocessing night. Today we just use the PDF of the forms and save it with the data, and LG goes online with the list we create and orders all the nametapes & nametags from Vanguard.  And we have some parents who have already done the "online" application.   But they still get sized for uniforms, sat down for an ID photo, appear before the membership board and meet the commander. (I suspect that with 24 prospective cadets this week, next week we'll have 18-20, a 20-25% "melt")

During inprocessing the cadets who are done are doing some kinds of short "station training," like learning rank ID or how to salute, something that does not require the whole flight.

Step 7. PROFIT! (oh, wait)  Send off their stuff to NHQ the very next day (if you have to).

And, remember, if you're truly doing cohort recruiting, if someone shows up on inprocessing night saying "I want to join!" the correct answer is "Oh, yeah, sorry, we're already tracking a whole new training flight. You're too late.  But, we're doing this again in the spring, so please, give me your phone # and your email and we will drop you a quick line about 4 weeks before our next Open House."

THIS IS THE TOUGH PART.  Nobody ever wants to say "no."

But if you don't, you're not doing cohort recruiting. You're doing trickle-in.

Which means you're not doing one night of inprocessing. You're doing more than one night.

Thats way too much like work (I am lazy..)

Also, if a prospective cadet shows up on inprocessing night for the first time, they haven't been to the requisite three meetings. I guarantee you that if you let them join that night, they are NOT going to be there at the end of basic training.

Thats about it.

Rinse and repeat.

My unit has had 50-75 cadets per night attending meetings for the last 10+ years like this.

[TheSkyHornet]

I pretty much agree with just about everything up there. I think there's ways to plan this out on paper and make it work.

The hard part is getting the Recruiting Officer and CC onboard with this concept. Right now, because we are smaller, they really favor the walk-ins rather than going the step-by-step training route.

This causes a really big difficulty when it comes to getting new cadets up to speed because you have a group of intermediates/experts and one or two novice cadets from the walk-in. Then they're in for a month, and you get another new one in next month. It's a continual cycle of having that small group of misfits really. But that's why I really like the structured BCT idea. It's so much more organized, as an indoc class, than to have the walk-ins try to catch up.

We have the positions already set up for the BCT type format. It's just a matter of getting the others convinced to switch to this style. I'll have to present it carefully.

[Tim Day]

Our training flight looks like that, or a little larger, and we take walk-ins. We adapt the Great Start curriculum to a rolling 8-week cycle and place cadets in the cycle where they fit best. I believe the value of Great Start is an organized schedule and focused mentoring for new cadets - not in whether their opportunity to apply has been delayed.

[THRAWN]

I pretty much agree with just about everything up there. I think there's ways to plan this out on paper and make it work.

The hard part is getting the Recruiting Officer and CC onboard with this concept. Right now, because we are smaller, they really favor the walk-ins rather than going the step-by-step training route.

This causes a really big difficulty when it comes to getting new cadets up to speed because you have a group of intermediates/experts and one or two novice cadets from the walk-in. Then they're in for a month, and you get another new one in next month. It's a continual cycle of having that small group of misfits really. But that's why I really like the structured BCT idea. It's so much more organized, as an indoc class, than to have the walk-ins try to catch up.

We have the positions already set up for the BCT type format. It's just a matter of getting the others convinced to switch to this style. I'll have to present it carefully.

And that is exactly why you'll have 20 cadets on the books and 5 showing to meetings. The NHQ Recruiting Sith Lord just told you in clear steps how to make this work. I did it when I was a squadron commander and when I was at group, my subordinate squadrons all did it. It works. Don't overthink it. Walk ins are not recruiting. They are fishing.

[TheSkyHornet]

I pretty much agree with just about everything up there. I think there's ways to plan this out on paper and make it work.

The hard part is getting the Recruiting Officer and CC onboard with this concept. Right now, because we are smaller, they really favor the walk-ins rather than going the step-by-step training route.

This causes a really big difficulty when it comes to getting new cadets up to speed because you have a group of intermediates/experts and one or two novice cadets from the walk-in. Then they're in for a month, and you get another new one in next month. It's a continual cycle of having that small group of misfits really. But that's why I really like the structured BCT idea. It's so much more organized, as an indoc class, than to have the walk-ins try to catch up.

We have the positions already set up for the BCT type format. It's just a matter of getting the others convinced to switch to this style. I'll have to present it carefully.

And that is exactly why you'll have 20 cadets on the books and 5 showing to meetings. The NHQ Recruiting Sith Lord just told you in clear steps how to make this work. I did it when I was a squadron commander and when I was at group, my subordinate squadrons all did it. It works. Don't overthink it. Walk ins are not recruiting. They are fishing.

As said, I completely agree with this style. Getting the boss to go along with it is an issue, though.

Let me throw out an example---
We had a 25-year-old who was interested in becoming a senior member, but didn't know a whole lot. The Recruiting Officer and I agreed that I could help him answer some questions he had about getting into CAP aviation and getting him to understand the cadet programs side of things since he offered an interest in that area. As the Cadet Activities/Leadership Officer, I scheduled a time for him and I sit and talk in-person when he was at the airport doing his flight training for his Private. I cleared it with the CC to have some private sit-down time with him so we could talk without a bunch of people sitting around the table like when I showed up and got fed a ton of information all at once. So, we're sitting for maybe 5 minutes or so, and she walks in, sits down, and starts rambling on about everything she has to offer, and I'm sure my opinions of the situation were very visual.

Our CC is not someone who is very adaptive to changes and is not always open to letting the suggested idea run its course as intended without getting in on the action, and often, derailing the process. It's just like the times I've dealt with of "We have a parade coming up, so let's get the cadets to practice their formation marching...but let's do something else instead because I don't think it's that big of a deal to take an extra 15 minutes for this..."

I'd love to throw out a list of things that need improvement, and work double overtime to plan for change and get it implemented, but at the end of the day, I know I don't have the pull to make it happen because we have some people in our squadron who may recognize a problem but won't go the extra step to fix it. I really think it comes from the lack of ability to analyze and plan, then establish operational control of a situation. It's incredibly frustrating.

I just shot this idea over to our Recruiting Officer to see if this is something we can at least get rolling for cadet programs and see if it will work for our squadron. I can't go further on my own without some clearance from higher up. I'm offering myself for the initial planning since I'm the CP person, but it's not something I can initiate on my own just because I think it will work better than the current system.

[Tim Day]

I pretty much agree with just about everything up there. I think there's ways to plan this out on paper and make it work.

The hard part is getting the Recruiting Officer and CC onboard with this concept. Right now, because we are smaller, they really favor the walk-ins rather than going the step-by-step training route.

This causes a really big difficulty when it comes to getting new cadets up to speed because you have a group of intermediates/experts and one or two novice cadets from the walk-in. Then they're in for a month, and you get another new one in next month. It's a continual cycle of having that small group of misfits really. But that's why I really like the structured BCT idea. It's so much more organized, as an indoc class, than to have the walk-ins try to catch up.

We have the positions already set up for the BCT type format. It's just a matter of getting the others convinced to switch to this style. I'll have to present it carefully.

As you've seen, I have a slightly different perspective on this issue. I don't think there's anything magic about a recruiting a cohort all at once. You can provide the more structured training and focused mentorship to walk-ins. You can recruit a cohort and still fail to provide these critical onboarding needs.

Calling or even thinking about your one or two novice cadets misfits sets the wrong tone. Call them "Great Start" cadets and assign a "Great Start" flight sergeant, flight commander, and supporting staff as needed. For two cadets, you may only need a "Great Start" element leader.

Have the Great Start leadership work through the syllabus with these cadets. Having a continual inflow of new cadets is an excellent leadership training opportunity for your cadet NCOs.

[NC Hokie]

I pretty much agree with just about everything up there. I think there's ways to plan this out on paper and make it work.

The hard part is getting the Recruiting Officer and CC onboard with this concept. Right now, because we are smaller, they really favor the walk-ins rather than going the step-by-step training route.

This causes a really big difficulty when it comes to getting new cadets up to speed because you have a group of intermediates/experts and one or two novice cadets from the walk-in. Then they're in for a month, and you get another new one in next month. It's a continual cycle of having that small group of misfits really. But that's why I really like the structured BCT idea. It's so much more organized, as an indoc class, than to have the walk-ins try to catch up.

We have the positions already set up for the BCT type format. It's just a matter of getting the others convinced to switch to this style. I'll have to present it carefully.

As you've seen, I have a slightly different perspective on this issue. I don't think there's anything magic about a recruiting a cohort all at once. You can provide the more structured training and focused mentorship to walk-ins. You can recruit a cohort and still fail to provide these critical onboarding needs.

Calling or even thinking about your one or two novice cadets misfits sets the wrong tone. Call them "Great Start" cadets and assign a "Great Start" flight sergeant, flight commander, and supporting staff as needed. For two cadets, you may only need a "Great Start" element leader.

Have the Great Start leadership work through the syllabus with these cadets. Having a continual inflow of new cadets is an excellent leadership training opportunity for your cadet NCOs.

A squadron with 150 members (yes, I looked) is in a much better position to run things the way you describe than the average squadron.  It's nothing for you guys to keep Great Start running all year long (in fact, it gives extra opportunities for cadet and senior member leadership to *DO* something meaningful), but small squadrons don't have that luxury.  A six to eight week cycle once or twice a year is much more manageable when you need an "all hands on deck" effort to pull it off.

[NC Hokie]

Its not adaptable. You just do it.

Here, let me do the thinking for you:

<SNIP>

You really need post this (along with that nifty PDF from your first post in this thread - but don't forget to remove the extra slides from the end) to the R&R blog.

And then send that URL to all commanders and R&R officers nationwide.

Really!

[TheSkyHornet]

Its not adaptable. You just do it.

Here, let me do the thinking for you:

<SNIP>

You really need post this (along with that nifty PDF from your first post in this thread - but don't forget to remove the extra slides from the end) to the R&R blog.

And then send that URL to all commanders and R&R officers nationwide.

Really!

I wholeheartedly agree. I'd really like to see it as an official reference.

I'm working on a Word document of this right now for early planning purposes. It will give me something to present higher up. Having the backing of NHQ would really help, and while Darin is the man for that, it's not something that many squadron commanders would instantly acknowledge. A lot of commanders at the squadron level, especially those that aren't constantly interacting with their superiors or other units, don't seem to get a lot of external ideas floating their way; hence, you see these squadron that are so flatlined in their recruitment, which is where I believe we are at in our squadron.

I also agree that the Great Start does not work well at the smaller scale because we don't have the resources to have a cadet assigned to every new person that comes in. I would much rather take two people out of a flight and attach them to teach an ongoing class where everyone is on the same page rather than take two people out of a flight and send them in two different directions only for the trainees to be on unequal levels and join a flight with totally different knowledge levels on what they're doing. I witnessed a squadron do that two weeks ago. They had four or five newer cadets in a flight with four or so intermediate level cadets mixed in with a few well-experienced cadets, and you could see the inherent lack of training. The flight commander couldn't manage the formation because he had so many people who weren't up to par yet. They could probably have benefited from a more structured recruiting effort.

I may suggest that we have a trial run of a fully-structured training program with our current cadets so we can see it in action for a few weeks, and then have a full trial run with a new class if we can recruit 10 or so new people. We had an open house event with activities where we had maybe 40 kids show up, and only 2 of them ended up joining. It was a great public affairs event but didn't work out so well on the recruiting side. Time to try something else.

[NIN]

BTW, the link to the Cohort Recruiting presentation has been fixed to eliminate the three "extra" slides (I sometimes move slides around in the editing process and keep them "after the last slide" in case I need them.  Forgot to delete them when I sent the presentation to HQ for posting)

Also, Colonel Day mentioned earlier that his unit does things a little different from the cohort method and gets good results.

I meant to preface what I said originally with the idea that in all cases (cohort, trickle-in, whatever means), do what works best for your unit and your particular situation.  There is no mandate (from HQ) to ascribe to one method or another.  Merely ideas of different ways to attract, recruit, onboard/inprocess and train. 

A former commander and mentor of mine used to say "If you're doing things the way you've always done them, chances are you'll get the results you always got." 

Many times, people come to me (we have a very active unit, and the largest in the state) and say "OMG, NIN, you guys are awesome. How can we be awesome like you?"

And I'll give them some pointers, some things to try, some things to adjust, some things to do differently.

At the end of the day, however, they usually wind up doing the same thing they were doing and have been doing, and then complain bitterly that things haven't changed.

If you don't like the way your unit is running, recruiting, training, whatever, then start thinking outside the box. Make minor changes. Look for inefficiencies and improvements.  We didn't start doing cohort on a whim overnight, it took us a year of "Lets try this.. Hmmm, one half of that worked great, the other part didn't.. lets try this..."  to fine tune and we're STILL fine tuning.

Important thing to do is to build some predictability, repeatability and stability into what you're doing.

If every time your unit conducts Great Start or BCT or whatever, and the two or three cadets you assign to be trainers are running around for two weeks going "we need to come up with some lesson plans!" then you're not making things repeatable.     90+% of what we're training there (BCT, Great Start, even senior member Level I) hasn't changed in 20 or more years!  CAP was still created in 1941, and the position of attention is the same as it was WIWAC.  Why aren't those lesson plans printed out and in a document protector so that *anybody* from C/SSgt Snuffy to Lt Col OldGuy can pick up the training binder and execute a lesson without having to reinvent the wheel every single time?

Make it work for you unit, and it will work for you.

[TheSkyHornet]

We talked about this yesterday as a group. Our Recruiting Officer (soon-to-be-CC) is totally onboard, as are the Cadet CC and rest of the cadet staff. Current CC agrees with the idea of restructuring the cadet command to make it easier to conduct training, but she's still in with the trickle-in idea as an "immediate pickup." Recruiter and I agreed that if we have to hold off until February when he takes over, if CC won't agree to it, so be it. Either way we'll get it set up beforehand. If we have something presentable to show on-paper, that could be an incentive to get her convinced before the change of command, but it is what it is for now.

A lot of work ahead to get this rolling. I'm already working on the plan for it, so it just needs to get pieced together and some subject matter expert opinions, but I think this is definitely going to be a huge plus for us down the road.

[Tim Day]

I pretty much agree with just about everything up there. I think there's ways to plan this out on paper and make it work.

The hard part is getting the Recruiting Officer and CC onboard with this concept. Right now, because we are smaller, they really favor the walk-ins rather than going the step-by-step training route.

This causes a really big difficulty when it comes to getting new cadets up to speed because you have a group of intermediates/experts and one or two novice cadets from the walk-in. Then they're in for a month, and you get another new one in next month. It's a continual cycle of having that small group of misfits really. But that's why I really like the structured BCT idea. It's so much more organized, as an indoc class, than to have the walk-ins try to catch up.

We have the positions already set up for the BCT type format. It's just a matter of getting the others convinced to switch to this style. I'll have to present it carefully.

As you've seen, I have a slightly different perspective on this issue. I don't think there's anything magic about a recruiting a cohort all at once. You can provide the more structured training and focused mentorship to walk-ins. You can recruit a cohort and still fail to provide these critical onboarding needs.

Calling or even thinking about your one or two novice cadets misfits sets the wrong tone. Call them "Great Start" cadets and assign a "Great Start" flight sergeant, flight commander, and supporting staff as needed. For two cadets, you may only need a "Great Start" element leader.

Have the Great Start leadership work through the syllabus with these cadets. Having a continual inflow of new cadets is an excellent leadership training opportunity for your cadet NCOs.

A squadron with 150 members (yes, I looked) is in a much better position to run things the way you describe than the average squadron.  It's nothing for you guys to keep Great Start running all year long (in fact, it gives extra opportunities for cadet and senior member leadership to *DO* something meaningful), but small squadrons don't have that luxury.  A six to eight week cycle once or twice a year is much more manageable when you need an "all hands on deck" effort to pull it off.

Concur.

[NCRblues]

So, the local unit I help out from time to time wants to do this, and like the crazy person I am I agreed to help out.

A quick question for you more computator savvy members, has anyone come up with neat recruiting posters? The ones from NHQ are ok but I need more flashy.

I have an idea in my head like the Uncle Sam needs you posters from the wars.

Any ideas or help?

Thanks!

[Jaison009]

Make sure you have a QR code, # for Twitter, FB, Instagram, Pinterest, and whatever comes next on it. Perhaps a cadet in the simulator, O Flight, model rocketry, cyber patriot, etc. Something that speaks to the younger generation. Pictures of cadets in uniform, marching, doing land nav, whatever don't really have the same appeal as WIWAC. The picture of cadets and Halo's Master Chief from another thread might get some attention

So, the local unit I help out from time to time wants to do this, and like the crazy person I am I agreed to help out.

A quick question for you more computator savvy members, has anyone come up with neat recruiting posters? The ones from NHQ are ok but I need more flashy.

I have an idea in my head like the Uncle Sam needs you posters from the wars.

Any ideas or help?

Thanks!

[TheSkyHornet]

So, the local unit I help out from time to time wants to do this, and like the crazy person I am I agreed to help out.

A quick question for you more computator savvy members, has anyone come up with neat recruiting posters? The ones from NHQ are ok but I need more flashy.

I have an idea in my head like the Uncle Sam needs you posters from the wars.

Any ideas or help?

Thanks!

Curious to know---
Are you going to be doing the recruiting side of this or organizing the training side?

Our PAO is great at getting people to show up, so I think he'll be handling the recruitment while I do more of the structuring. Interested to know how other efforts are coming along underway with their attempts (or past attempts)

[NIN]

Not to shamelessly push my own stuff (but, really, it works)

https://sites.google.com/a/nhwg.cap.gov/recruiting/

Under Downloadable Files
and Flyers

You'll find a file you can modify, an example file, and a document about "how to modify"

They're all in Word.

You *may* have to monkey with fonts a little to make it look sharp.