Do you do anything different? Do you have any really sucessful recruiting activities? Please share them.
Quote from: BIG Lt on October 28, 2008, 06:01:19 PM
Do you do anything different? Do you have any really sucessful recruiting activities? Please share them.
Different than what?
My Sq. has gone from 3-4 cadets to about 23 in the last 6 months. Most of it has been by word of mouth at school, and a couple of newspaper articles that were done in the local paper. With those cadets, I would say that at least one parent from each kid has either joined or is seriously considering it.
I am also looking for hints on recruiting cadets !!
Open houses are an excellent way to recruit large amounts of cadets. You also need to get your name out there, do Color Guards for events, have people marching in parades, go to local events, especially ones involving aviation, like air shows.
You can also contact local schools and see if they would be receptive to your squadron making a presentation to their students.
A simpler, but still very effective way, to double your membership would be to have your current cadets try to recruit a friend. Have a contest to see who can recruit the most people in a quarter or something like that. Some of the best recruitng I have seen is just word of mouth, person to person.
There is a ton of ways to recruit, but all of them take some effort.
Good Luck. :)
My squadron's cadet membership just about doubled recently from a mix of an open house and word of mouth. My squadron hasn't had any success with doing the, see how many people you can recruit on a quarter, maybe we were going about it wrong though.
You're gonna find this wierd, but the best recruiting is done, when you are NOT recruiting....
Let me explain.
Go out and do some community service. get the PAO to get you and your picture in the paper. Do this about 6 times a year, do community service stuff, VA stuff, anything POSITIVE to get seen. When you are working your projects, have a recruiter ready to answer the questions. Make darn sure your uniforms are in top shape!! Look awesome, and be very knowledgable. Don't answer a question if you don't know the answer. Tell them you will get it. Give them your own personal CAP business card. Make your contact feel like they care, and follow up with them when they don't show for the meeting.
During this process you will be noticed and your numbers will increase.
A good idea is to appoint someone in your squadron to act as a Recruiting Officer. Then, they can set up places and events for recruiting. Things that have worked well for me are booths at homeschooling events, fair-type events, getting publicity by marching in parades. If you talk to stores, most will let you set up a booth as well.
Go to the local high school and middle schools and talk to someone with the student paper and have an article done. The local newspaper was very excited about us and did a front page article. And this is a big newspaper.
I will say though, the key is to have your cadet program staff in place if at all possible first so you dont end up with an influx of cadets with nothing to do.
I recruit via word of mouth, but a good way is to get permissions to wear a CAP uniform to school. A cadet who goes to my high school wore a CAP uniform to remember 9/11, and I wore my encampment T-shirt. About a dozen students came to ask me: "What is that guy wearing?" When I explained the program, about half of them took an intrest.