What does the word “recruitment” mean to you? What does it look, sound and feel like? To many of us, recruitment can be very cut and dry; it is forced, pressured and energy-consuming. Unless you are the Vice President of Recruitment or a Recruitment Advisor for your chapter, chances are you don’t think about recruitment outside of formal recruitment periods in the fall and/or spring. All of this is completely backward.
To straighten out our perceptions of what recruitment is, we need to revert to what Alpha Sigma Alpha’s Recruitment Philosophy contains and then establish a different mentality toward recruiting. By doing this, we can change our expectations of what we should gain from recruitment.
First, address the misconceptions that the responsibility of recruitment lies solely in the hands of the Vice President of Recruitment and that recruitment is strictly formal. One of the beauties of being in a sorority is that you are surrounded by women who come from many different walks of life and are involved in many different majors, clubs, sports and extracurriculars. If each member invited or brought one potential new member (PNM) to a recruitment event, you would get a direct reflection of the chapter population, enriching the chapter culture simultaneously.
The second order of business is identifying and executing the building of relationships. If recruitment’s purpose is to bring in women who exemplify Alpha Sigma Alpha’s values, then the best way to get to know them is through talking and acting. However, it can be difficult to know PNM’s if we don’t practice and include talking and acting in our own lives.
We can build relationships by reverting to Alpha Sigma Alpha’s core values and applying them to recruitment. For example, our value Growth aims to seek continual development. Putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations will help us grow as individuals and build better relationships with those around us. We can challenge ourselves to grow and build relationships by asking a new friend to hang out, texting a crush to grab coffee or offering to help a sister set up for her event.
One more thing about Alpha Sigma Alpha’s recruitment philosophy to point out is the importance of not “selling” the sorority. Secure, meaningful relationships aren’t built from bragging about how many awards your chapter has won, how much money you’ve raised for philanthropy compared to the other sororities on your campus or how cool your socials are, but rather how close the sisters are and how each of you holds such similar values close to your hearts. Certain “brag” worthy achievements could give PNMs an idea of what is important to your chapter (ex: maintaining high GPAs shows a commitment to academics, winning a philanthropy basketball tournament may show how you have many sisters involved in athletics, etc.), but that should not be the sole reason she is interested in joining just as much as it should not be the sole way that the chapter is choosing to recruit.
Now that we’ve altered how we view recruitment, we can discuss what it means to recruit year-round. As a former Vice President of Recruitment, I can firsthand say how the informal recruitment periods may have been more challenging than my campus’s primary recruitment weekend was. Recruitment is the most challenging when the pool of interested PNMs is small, so this is the time for the entire chapter to get involved. Big, thoroughly planned recruitment events can be fun, but sometimes they’re not always the most necessary; this is why continuous open bidding needs to be informal!
If the purpose of recruitment is to bring in women whose values reflect those of Alpha Sigma Alpha, maybe we can lower our walls and start engaging with PNMs in a less stressful environment. “Recruitment” can look like asking a classmate to get lunch with your big sister; it can look like having a movie night with some of your teammates and sisters at your chapter house; it can look like any normal thing you already do with your friends!