Cadet Recruiting ... ?

How are your squadrons doing it?
We get a steady 1 or 2 new cadets showing up per month, which about meets replacement of the ones leaving.
Does anyone have some suggestions for best practices or recent experiences recruiting (yes, I read and digested all of the info available on CAP's website.)

How are your squadrons doing it?
We get a steady 1 or 2 new cadets showing up per month, which about meets replacement of the ones leaving.
Does anyone have some suggestions for best practices or recent experiences recruiting (yes, I read and digested all of the info available on CAP's website.)

So.. have you tried doing cohort recruiting?

My unit is bringing in 35-45 cadets a year in two cohorts. Just two.

Facebook Ads with 3-4 cohorts a year has worked well for units in my group.

No.
I just took the cadet program.
There has been no recruiting program.

35+ new cadets/year is fantastic.

So.. have you tried doing cohort recruiting?
My unit is bringing in 35-45 cadets a year in two cohorts. Just two.

Facebook Ads with 3-4 cohorts a year has worked well for units in my group.

Yup:


Thats the current FB ad for my squadron's upcoming open house (thats a sceen grab of the bottom of the ad, not the whole thing). We anticipate 75-100 prospective members for our Spring Open House. We had a similar ad spend last year, had 109 show up.

If you're not doing actual recruiting events, you need to. Trickle in is not the way to go.

Facebook Ads with 3-4 cohorts a year has worked well for units in my group.

Yup:


Thats the current FB ad for my squadron's upcoming open house (thats a sceen grab of the bottom of the ad, not the whole thing). We anticipate 75-100 prospective members for our Spring Open House. We had a similar ad spend last year, had 109 show up.

If you're not doing actual recruiting events, you need to. Trickle in is not the way to go.

Don't have to spend too much on the ads either. Even $25 per campaign will get quite a few eyeballs. The key to is also have a robust Facebook page to show off the stuff that the unit does so members and family share stuff too to their circle of friends. Organic reach can be as valuable as paid reach.

Cohort is the way to go.

There's a video on how to put on a CAP open house. I followed that more or less, and ended up with 30ish prospective cadets and family members showing up. That yielded about 15 new cadets and they brought a couple more in as friends shortly thereafter, so I count them as part of that cohort.

I tried Facebook ads and didn't get anything out of it but that was the first experience I ever had with it.

NIN, any chance we could get a video primer on how to best use the ad capability?  The open house one was excellent.

Cohort is the way to go.

There's a video on how to put on a CAP open house. I followed that more or less, and ended up with 30ish prospective cadets and family members showing up. That yielded about 15 new cadets and they brought a couple more in as friends shortly thereafter, so I count them as part of that cohort.

I tried Facebook ads and didn't get anything out of it but that was the first experience I ever had with it.

NIN, any chance we could get a video primer on how to best use the ad capability?  The open house one was excellent.

Ask and ye shall receive:

(That was just last week!)

Cohort is the way to go.

There's a video on how to put on a CAP open house. I followed that more or less, and ended up with 30ish prospective cadets and family members showing up. That yielded about 15 new cadets and they brought a couple more in as friends shortly thereafter, so I count them as part of that cohort.

I tried Facebook ads and didn't get anything out of it but that was the first experience I ever had with it.

NIN, any chance we could get a video primer on how to best use the ad capability?  The open house one was excellent.

BTW, my experience with the cohort is that it tends to "scale" based on your membership.

If you have 20 cadets, you're not going to get 22 new cadets in the first go-around.  Your unit wouldn't sustain that kind of growth, and the way the per-cadet recruiting percentage works, its just not going to happen. You're going to get like, say, 5 or 6. Then, when you have 25-26 cadets and you do it 6 months later, you get 7 or 8, and so forth.

Eventually, when you have 50 cadets, you're pulling in more like say 15-16 per cohort.

It involved fine-tuning the process each time. Like I said to someone this weekend at Command Council, we didn't go from trickling in 6-8 cadets a year to pulling down 20-22 per cohort overnight. This is something that took a long time to adjust, try new things, figure out what worked and what didn't, etc.  Every time we run one of these we adjust something (hopefully) minor to make it either easier to execute the event, will do something to better inform the potential member, or that will bring in more people to us.

I realized in this current go-around, for example, that our commander letter doesn't need to be customized each time to include the dates of of Week 0, Inprocessing and Graduation nights. Rather, we could keep the same commander letter (well, tightened some) and just have a different sheet that gets inserted into the packet with the sequence & dates on it that is specific to that Open House. That way, if we make up 30 packets and only hand out 20, the remaining 10 packets can be repurposed for the next cohort with the swap of one sheet.

A)  I posted a group photo of our Cadets who happened to be at an event and boosted it. Great response from interested people, but I had three who commented on how all the Cadets were lily white kids.   Think of this when choosing which photos to use.

B) I know this is discussed often. But if your Squadron only does O-Rides a couple times a year ... don't put such an emphasis on the airplanes. Add some photos of robotics, rocketry, etc. in the mix.

C) Every ad needs a Call to Action. Provide a specific link to your website's Contact page that should include a location map to the meeting location, dates/times, email and phone contact info, etc.

Including pics of the cadets working with adults or military members are awesome as well. For a potential recruit who is military-bound, seeing that CAP is an opportunity to work with those folks that they want to become some day is great.

So.. have you tried doing cohort recruiting?

I knew NIN would be along here shortly to say this.  Good stuff. 

So.. have you tried doing cohort recruiting?

I knew NIN would be along here shortly to say this.  Good stuff.

I'm nothing if not predictable, right?

I'm nothing if not predictable, right?

And so are the results from Cohort Recruiting!!

(See what I did there?)

We've switched to cohort/pipeline recruiting, relying on a slightly modified version of Great Start for initial training since we don't have the bandwidth for another Saturday activity. We have 3 scheduled this year and so far the first one has gone well, picking up 8 new cadets in the process. We have two more currently scheduled this year. It's worth a shot if nothing else - we'll see how our remaining cohorts go.

Facebook Ads with 3-4 cohorts a year has worked well for units in my group.

Psh. We had 11 in one training class before we switched the meeting day. 

Definitely go the cohort route. The trickle in method just makes it more difficult for that lone cadet to assimilate and progress, and it puts additional work on the existing cadets without a structured training program.

We run two flights: Alpha and Tango.

Tango Flight operates the Great Start class with a Flight Commander and Flight Sergeant (and we leave a slot open if an additional training instructor is needed). Everything goes from zero-to-hero toward Achievement 1 promotion requirements while providing that general indoc knowledge of CAP and unit SOPs. Our last class was only 5, but it worked out very well as our second run at it. Our third class, which has been revised since the last two (the second was revised from the first---constantly improving it), starts next week.

What I also like about this layout is it provides more opportunity for the existing cadets to take on additional roles to learn to become stronger leaders and instructors, and allows them to demonstrate before their peers through practical experience.

Most importantly, too, I see a huge camaraderie among the graduating class, which is extremely pertinent to the sense of teamwork.

I know this is discussed often. But if your Squadron only does O-Rides a couple times a year ... don't put such an emphasis on the airplanes. Add some photos of robotics, rocketry, etc. in the mix.

Absolutely this.

Market who you are and what you do, not the overall corporate CAP nationwide mission. If you do mostly Emergency Services, you need to advocate that, and explain that to your prospective recruits. If they say, "I'm not really into that sort of stuff; I'd rather do robotics," you may just need to come back and say, "I can put you in touch with another nearby unit that does more of that." If you recruit the cadet that wants to become a pilot, and you don't explain "We don't train you to become a pilot," you'll likely see that cadet fall off the roster after some time. But also keep an open mind. If you get a lot of recruits interested in a certain subject area, and you haven't had much focus in that, consider emphasizing it more in your Cadet Program.

We were a unit that was heavily focused on Color Guard when most of our cadets had never experienced any field training whatsoever, aside from doing simulated line searches in a 50-foot stretch of grass near abandoned airplane hangars. So, we started doing field training, and it spiked a lot of interest. Yes, we saw the cadets who wanted to be military pilots fall back a bit, but we knew in the long run we could teach leadership through a more practical approach through field training and compete more with the "I was a Boy Scout" or "I was thinking of going into the Boy Scouts" crowd while still having that distinction that CAP has a role as the Air Force Auxiliary. We've strongly gotten away from trying to tell everyone about everything CAP offers and stressing what the unit does with the backdrop of "If you do want to experience this down the road, it's out there, but you won't see as much of that here at the local unit."


One hurdle people need to get over is that not every single class will go well, and not every recruiting effort will prove positive. If something doesn't work, change it up and improve. But don't just cut out the effort because you failed once. That's the downfall of a lot of units. "We tried running an open house to recruit a Great Start class. We had 3 people show up." Okay, and? Did you still run the class? No, they cancelled the class because it wasn't worth it. And now you can't tell the next class that you have a system which works, because you didn't do it.


Now, my goal would be to get to where Lt Col Ninness is, but I'll probably be a decrepit old man by the time I see that happen. Still, strive for it.

So nobody bit on my comment on page one mixed in with other comments ... so I'll ask it separately.

Is anyone having luck reaching out to minorities, and if so, what is working?

I'll be quite blunt. I realize its a difficult question, because to specifically 'target' minorities for recruiting efforts could be seen as racist.

You look at 99% of our photos of Cadets nationwide and CAP appears to be 99% white. I realize this varies one place to another, but our marketing materials are lacking.

Minorities visit a meeting and as soon as they come in the door realize they walked into the country club.

Is there a way to deal with this? Or is casting the wide net and taking whoever we catch all we can do?

So nobody bit on my comment on page one mixed in with other comments ... so I'll ask it separately.

Is anyone having luck reaching out to minorities, and if so, what is working?

I'll be quite blunt. I realize its a difficult question, because to specifically 'target' minorities for recruiting efforts could be seen as racist.

You look at 99% of our photos of Cadets nationwide and CAP appears to be 99% white. I realize this varies one place to another, but our marketing materials are lacking.

Minorities visit a meeting and as soon as they come in the door realize they walked into the country club.

Is there a way to deal with this? Or is casting the wide net and taking whoever we catch all we can do?

That's going to be hard to answer.


It all depends on local demographics, income levels, transport, etc, etc, etc.


Our unit has a few female cadets and a few minority cadets. We didn't target them, they found us, and joined. We emphasize to each potential member our Cadet Protection Policies, and that the Cadet Corps is made up of people just like them - interested in doing something fun, without any "tribal" mentality.

One hurdle people need to get over is that not every single class will go well, and not every recruiting effort will prove positive. If something doesn't work, change it up and improve. But don't just cut out the effort because you failed once. That's the downfall of a lot of units. "We tried running an open house to recruit a Great Start class. We had 3 people show up." Okay, and? Did you still run the class? No, they cancelled the class because it wasn't worth it. And now you can't tell the next class that you have a system which works, because you didn't do it.

This. x1000.

In a lot of ways, CAP is about building up systems. Systems and methods that survive personnel changes. Cuz we know that personnel changes not only happen, but they happen frequently and without warning. Devising systemic ways of doing things versus one-off ad hoc methods that rely on the knowledge and expertise of 1-2 people is key.  Having an IT guy who is skilled at Microsoft Access is great, and when he builds you an awesome DB system that is specific to your unit and does everything but serve chow, well, thats super.  But at the end of the day, if that guy gets hit by a bus, is that Access database going to be able to be modified and extended, or are you stuck?  (thats an extreme example)

Too often folks go around and re-invent the wheel.  If you had to put in the same amount of effort conducting every open house 2x a year, you'd tire of it pretty quickly.  But if you build it into a systemic process where you leverage the previous presentation, or all the stuff you already devised and printed last time around for your membership packets, then it becomes an incremental effort each time to improve the process.  I'm a former Army Specialist, meaning I'm inherently lazy and a gigantic shammer.  I wan't the maximum effect for the least amount of effort so I can go back to avoiding my platoon sergeant and drinking coffee (not really, but you get my gist). 

Try it once, evaluate it, iterate it, try it again. Rinse, repeat.

I hear this from units all the time: "We did your open house thing and it didn't work. We're not going to do it again."

Oh, really?  What didn't work? I start asking the "five whys" (and I usually don't get to five.. I only have to go 2-3 deep).

If nobody showed up, their advertising campaign is the likely culprit, usually.

One unit came to me for the flyers I use and I jimmied up a map and a flyer for their event. They told me "This doesn't work" when three people showed up to their Open House. Turns out, they put the PDF of the flyer on their website and called it good. Never printed a thing out, didn't do another thing to advertise. Because the meeting was a 5th meeting night, they told their cadets "You don't have to come to this meeting." You can already imagine how awesome this was, right? "You didn't follow the recipe."

Another unit got 25 or 30 people to show up to their event, but only got 1 or 2 members out of it. "This doesn't work!" they complained.  After asking a couple questions, the problem was that people were showing up to an Open House program that wasn't even the least bit interesting, and the unit had no follow-on program beyond the Open House night. They didn't put their best foot forward when they had a room full, and when anybody showed up the next week to "keep going," the unit acted like "Oh, uh, what do we do with these new guys now?"  I told that unit too: "You didn't follow the recipe."

We didn't get where we are with cohort recruiting all at once, over night, however.  No, not at all. The "cohort" model (previously termed "pipelining," a term I also helped coin) didn't just pop out of my head fully formed in December of 2000 and take off like a rocket. Nope. It gestated in the back of my head (and even had a weirdo genesis 10 years before when I ran a Recruit Training Program for my Group) for awhile, took shape in the late 1990s when my squadron in MI Wing that was dual chartered as an Explorer Post started doing the BSA-mandated "Open House" events, and I thieved 2/3 of the concept from them.  Then when I was a commander again,  noted that we were expending a *ton* of effort and wasting beaucoup man-hours (cadet-hours?) training new cadets one-at-a-time.  That had to stop.

But even then, we didn't fully "cohort" until probably early 2002, a year later!

Now, my goal would be to get to where Lt Col Ninness is, but I'll probably be a decrepit old man by the time I see that happen. Still, strive for it.

Aww, don't sell yourself short. It took us (me) 15 years to get this working to the point where it is, and its *still* evolving and changing. Every time we adjust our presentation slightly, the member packet (takeaway), the training sequence, etc. And thats not even when we have to change things to keep up with changing things in CAP (ie. online application, ABUs vs BDUs, etc). But now you're able to crib from our experience and skip over 3/4 of all that effort and reap the "more finished product."

So nobody bit on my comment on page one mixed in with other comments ... so I'll ask it separately.

Is anyone having luck reaching out to minorities, and if so, what is working?

I'll be quite blunt. I realize its a difficult question, because to specifically 'target' minorities for recruiting efforts could be seen as racist.

You look at 99% of our photos of Cadets nationwide and CAP appears to be 99% white. I realize this varies one place to another, but our marketing materials are lacking.

Minorities visit a meeting and as soon as they come in the door realize they walked into the country club.

Is there a way to deal with this? Or is casting the wide net and taking whoever we catch all we can do?

So yeah, this is the $64,000 question.

As I've said in the past, we have to understand what we are, and who we are, before we go all crazy in an effort to "market to minorities."  Folks say to me all the time that they want to see diversity on our recruiting materials. Yep, got that. Lima charlie.

But when the diversity on our marketing materials doesn't match the ground truth, where are we?  (like someone said to me "If they look at the brochure and go 'hey, wow, look, there's young people and women and Asians and..' and then they show up to their local meeting to discover its 'a bunch of old white guys,' what is that?"   We talk about this all the time: "selling the Civil Air Patrol we have not the one we wish we had.")

That said, I think that we are underserving communities that might bring more cultural diversity.   I also think our programs aren't as "attractive" to young women as they could be, when the percentage of female members is way, way out of whack to the population.    Sure, you want to avoid making changes to the fundamental programs because you don't want to be just pandering to a particular demographic, but at the same time, look at the auxiliary things we can be doing to help out the organization to attract and maintain people in a different demographic.

For example: it used to be a given that Civil Air Patrol was a tremendous bargain in terms of a participatory youth program for young men and women.  Encampment, as part of this,  is still tremendously underpriced for a week of "camp."  But are we attempting to aggressively maintain that value proposition, or have we ceded in some cases for "better barracks" or "a nicer chow hall" or "encampment T-shirts that are reflective.."?  If our value prop (and here I mean strictly "cost") becomes excessively unbalanced, we stop being as attractive to families in lower socio-economic situations. Places were we might actually be tremendously beneficial if we could just gain a toe hold.

I was a lower middle-class kid growing up.  My family was a paycheck to paycheck household, and my dad got laid off a few times in the late 1970s, etc. We lived in a small house, didn't have a lot of disposable income, etc.  When I came into CAP in the early 1980s, the $120 of my parents hard-earned money I spent on blues and fatigues at the clothing sales store was a BigDeal™ (at least, judging by my mom's reaction when I told her what I wrote the check for).  The $45 for encampment was, even assuming inflation, a pretty good deal and my mom always asked my commander if she could get rid of me for two weeks for $90.   I was a kid who well benefitted from CAP, and I know there were kids in lower socio-economic situations than me who were in the program as well.

Now I hear of encampments upwards of $250 and I wonder if we're still maintaining that same value proposition for parents in the lower-middle class who are in the same situation.  Uniforms cost a lot more, activities, etc.  Are units helping fundraise to defray costs? Are they aggressively using group buying power to reduce costs (ie. buying things like insignia or t-shirts and rigger belts in bulk to help reduce costs)?   We have CEAP for encampment now, but did the kid who really needed CEAP even join CAP?  Maybe mom didn't see that its really a win/win for her because we didn't properly explain the ins and outs of costs and all she saw was that it was going to cost her $200 for ABUs, boots and insignia and said "Yeah, sorry, Theo, but mom can't swing that this month. Not and keep food on the table."

There are a LOT of factors in this, not all of which are even remotely racial. I live in New Hampshire, one of the "least diverse" states in the country (behind Maine and Vermont, last I looked). I have three African-American cadets in my squadron and at least one Asian-American cadet, and I frankly hope I can recruit more, because we're trying make this program accessible to everybody, not just the "rich white kids" or even the "rich black kids."  And we do that by making the program as accessible as possible to *everybody*.

Sure you're always gonna have Timmy Siverspoon who's dad went out and bought him brand-new everything right down to the Goretex. And then you're going to have the kid like me who gladly took an issue field jacket from the unit because I wasn't getting a field jacket any other way (my parents bought the liner for me).  If I have boots, I'm going to issue them, but when was the last time you got a tri-wall full of boots from the supply system?  I probably have less than a dozen pairs of boots in supply right now, and those are all size 5 N and size 13WW.  How can I, as a unit commander, or we, as an organization, do more to leverage economies of scale to reduce costs and bring a higher value proposition to interested youth?

I don't want any kid, color or gender be [darned], to have to say "I'd love to do this CAP thing, its right up my alley, but, we can't afford it..."