Cohort Recruiting Results

[NIN]

IIRC, the original uses two fonts which may not be on your system

Eras Bold, I think, or SemiBold I changed to Interstate Black a while back, more readily available font.
and Hattenschweiler

[TheSkyHornet]

Hey, Nin

What's your requirement for cadets to attend/participate in your BCT program, say, for example, if they miss a meeting or two? Do they have to come to every session?

That was something another CC brought up to me earlier this week, saying he's considered implementing a program like that but doesn't know how to address people who don't show up once or twice and start to fall behind. A secondary issue is telling prospective cadets and parents "no, you can't join earlier than July 1st because that's the next class start date," but they aren't willing to wait 2 months to join, and go off looking for another squadron or another organization (i.e., Boy Scouts, or whoever).

[NIN]

Hey, Nin

What's your requirement for cadets to attend/participate in your BCT program, say, for example, if they miss a meeting or two? Do they have to come to every session?

That was something another CC brought up to me earlier this week, saying he's considered implementing a program like that but doesn't know how to address people who don't show up once or twice and start to fall behind. A secondary issue is telling prospective cadets and parents "no, you can't join earlier than July 1st because that's the next class start date," but they aren't willing to wait 2 months to join, and go off looking for another squadron or another organization (i.e., Boy Scouts, or whoever).

Well, couple things:

Normal CAP: school, etc comes first, right?  The end result of BCT is "Cadet Passes Curry"  If you can miss a week or two and still pass your Curry, I don't care.

Our BCT is a little longer, like 8 weeks (0 week, 6 training weeks, and graduation week) with a 4 hour Saturday "immersion session" in the middle.

As to people who aren't willing to wait:

This is a difficult thing to wrap your head around, I will freely admit. We've been doing it so long that we're not even apologetic about it, but what we do is make sure to have a solid "follow up channel" built to capture interested cadet's info and follow up with them closer to our recruiting event (seniors we don't cohort as solidly, we used to, but we don't anymore. Personally, I think that's a mistake, but the commander prefers to do it a different way, so I salute, execute and implement the commander's intent regardless of my opinion)

If you have a good follow up mechanism, it *should* be A-OK.

If someone isn't motivated enough about CAP to wait a bit (and honestly, the number of folks we have who show up in the weeks after an Open House to join are pretty limited. But, in the 60-90 days prior to the next one, we start to build a pretty large pool of interested people) to join the next training cycle, well, how interested are they really?

No, I mean that partly joking, but I'm mostly serious.

This is part of the retention aspect of the cohort.  Its not just "My buddies to my left and right are the reason I stay".  No.  The ones who come back when we email/call and actually join are the ones who are truly interested and likely to stick around for the long haul.

If Johnnie comes to you on October 15th and says "Hey, I'm interested to join..." and you say "Hey, great, let me show you around, our next training cycle starts on January 15th, so we'll have you come back then" and then Johnnie doesn't show up, it didn't seem like CAP was all that big of a yank to him one way or another.  But Johnnie who does come back, he's got "CAP on the brain" and these kinds of people are the ones who we want.

Its not like you show up at the recruiter's office and say "Hey, I want to head to Lackland tomorrow, dude. Make it happen!" No.

[TheSkyHornet]

Well, couple things:

Normal CAP: school, etc comes first, right?  The end result of BCT is "Cadet Passes Curry"  If you can miss a week or two and still pass your Curry, I don't care.

Is graduation for you considered getting to the end of the BCT, or perhaps doing a run-through Curry review, if they haven't completed all of the prerequisites (like their Leadership Ch. 1 and Foundations)? What if they don't pass their Curry if other cadets are ready?

Our BCT is a little longer, like 8 weeks (0 week, 6 training weeks, and graduation week) with a 4 hour Saturday "immersion session" in the middle.

What's the immersion session entail? I'm planning for an 8-week course, during regular scheduled meetings. A. Flight does their usual meeting agenda, while T. Flight (Training) does BCT with a couple of instructor cadets. If mid-sessions during off times help for you, I should definitely consider that option. I'm concerned 8 weeks is still not a whole lot of time.

Some of the pushback I'm still getting is surrounding the idea of doing this during regular meeting times. They want to make sure the other cadets leading the BCT training don't get dragged away from their scheduled agenda (i.e., Character Development, Aerospace, etc.). So part of the proposal is to get the BCT guys into the squadron-wide cadet classes but pull them aside for some of the activities and drill to do their own training thing. But that still takes a couple of already-trained cadets away from those activities to work with the BCT class.

As to people who aren't willing to wait:

This is a difficult thing to wrap your head around, I will freely admit. We've been doing it so long that we're not even apologetic about it, but what we do is make sure to have a solid "follow up channel" built to capture interested cadet's info and follow up with them closer to our recruiting event (seniors we don't cohort as solidly, we used to, but we don't anymore. Personally, I think that's a mistake, but the commander prefers to do it a different way, so I salute, execute and implement the commander's intent regardless of my opinion)

If you have a good follow up mechanism, it *should* be A-OK.

That's what I think the other CC was getting at. We've been pretty good with our own squadron about keeping in touch with the parents of prospective cadets, but the problem is that if the parents lose dedication to stay in touch or show up to meetings, we never get a follow-up with the cadets. Now that's a recruiting issue, not so much a training issue. They definitely tie in because recruiting leads to training and vise versa, but my primary focus right now is to get the training program up and running; however, I'd like to share this with our recruiting officer so he can work out the follow-up program for those who may have to wait. I understand not being apologetic, but not everyone feels that way, and that's definitely an area some people aren't comfortable with when it comes to recruiting.

If someone isn't motivated enough about CAP to wait a bit (and honestly, the number of folks we have who show up in the weeks after an Open House to join are pretty limited. But, in the 60-90 days prior to the next one, we start to build a pretty large pool of interested people) to join the next training cycle, well, how interested are they really?

No, I mean that partly joking, but I'm mostly serious.

This is part of the retention aspect of the cohort.  Its not just "My buddies to my left and right are the reason I stay".  No.  The ones who come back when we email/call and actually join are the ones who are truly interested and likely to stick around for the long haul.

Similar to what I just said above, this ties in a lot with the recruiting and retention, which are separate but still go hand-in-hand in a lot of crossing scenarios.

An issue I have is staffing. I just don't have the additional manpower to constantly be dedicated to CAP events, and most people can't seem to do much outside of the weekend scope we generally have. Our meetings are on Sunday (not a fan personally), but that leaves the weekends open while the work weeks get hectic for people. I'm not opposed to having a Saturday open house, or Friday night, or any other night really, if I can get the squadron members, just a handful, to show up and help out.

What are your thoughts on perhaps doing two Open Houses, one just prior to the next class, and one during the previous class? It builds up the pool by maintaining a continuous recruiting effort. But at the same time, that's a lot of extra work. I'm always willing to put in the extra hours, but not everyone else is always willing and/or able. Just wondering where you stand on that.

If Johnnie comes to you on October 15th and says "Hey, I'm interested to join..." and you say "Hey, great, let me show you around, our next training cycle starts on January 15th, so we'll have you come back then" and then Johnnie doesn't show up, it didn't seem like CAP was all that big of a yank to him one way or another.  But Johnnie who does come back, he's got "CAP on the brain" and these kinds of people are the ones who we want.

Its not like you show up at the recruiter's office and say "Hey, I want to head to Lackland tomorrow, dude. Make it happen!" No.

That's usually the recruiter reversing that role.

"Hey, you like Call of Duty? It's essentially the same thing."