Recruiting process

Didn't know where to post this so, here it is! Feel free to move, but I can't post new threads on "Guild Info".

So, recruiting.... I have 2 concerns about recruiting and the process;

- First point is Recruiting rate: I know it is nice to have new people who keep the guild alive and fresh blood for out vampiristic needs    but I have the impression that every week we have 1 or 2 new joiners. I, personally, can't keep up with knowing them! The other day, I was in a pk party, I didn't know a single one of my teammates... I just wonder if we are not recruiting too much at the expense of having the time to get to know our new members! I would recommend to slow it down, kind of freeze recruiting for a bit so we get to know all new joiner and when their are not new joiner anymore, we repoen!

- Second point: recruiting process (& timeframe): I take for example the application of Imba Lion (nothing personal, it's just for the sake of the example). He applied yesterday at 11am and was accepted by trip at... 9pm! less than 12h after application! I know many ppl are online on Sunday and there were 73 views of the topic but only 6 answers (including the approval from Trip and a question from the applicant!). Shouldn't we give more time for the guildies to check the application? Just for a the sake of allowing all a right to speak? We should set up a minimum "yes" requirement or at least a duration (24h, 48h, I don't know!) before accepting someone into the guild!

I'm done :-) I stated my concerns for the sake of the guild. I will always favor quality over quantity and for now, I'm under the impression that we recruit too much and too fast!

Knoma

Yeah, I kinda agree with knoma. I can hardly keep up with all the new people...

Hi Knoma, and thank you for this post (and you have posted it in just the right thread) :-)
I agree on everything, we should never grow too fast, and not so fast that members feel most in guild are strangers. I don't know what a "max" should be per month, but even with such idea, we should always allow friends in, and people we have played with, etc.
Are there any good suggestion to events or activities to get us all together?

But on the other hand we always lack people for everything these days. Even tho we recently did a clean-up and kicked all inactive members. I know the members who arrange tPvP are asking for more pvp'ers, so I have been announcing we search for people with interest in this.
And for our guildmissions, Wednesday almost impossible to gather people and Sunday which is suppose to be our big day we hardly can form 2 groups.

I also like the idea of a time each application should be online before we approve it. 48 hours sounds healthy to me, gives everyone 2 days to log on and reply to it. But I would like more people to reply to our applications. It's always the same that reply, and maybe we should ask more questions?
Should we also change or add questions to our current application form?

Maybe Q's like: what you do you expect from your guild? or What kind of player would you call yourself? (casual, hardcore, social, ...) More details might not be bad?

I think we already have a similar Q:
"Motive for joining us
What do you search for in a guild and why do you have interest in joining Pain Killer?"

But maybe this should be split into 2 Questions.

Motives are rather 'ordinary' imo.
I know that when I apply for a guild, I got a big letter to send.

Thank you both for your answers!

As to Balli's propositions, there are 2 ways to do it;
- Increase the number of questions or change questions
- Decrease the number of questions

My proposition would be to have no questions at all! Just ask the person to introduce himself and explain why we should invite him into our small piece of paradise!   

By giving more freedom in the application format & content, we would get more out of it and guildies would be more motivated to read! leave the applicant's imagination go free! I have to admit I often scroll through the application and go quickly to the "About" part...

Yeah I like that, maybe we should skip the entire question-form and let all freestyle. We just need to make sure to ask them:
If they can join Sunday guildmission (if online)
Can use TS
Respect everyone
Check forum as often as possible
Take initiative and make things going by himself and don't log on and expects to be entertained

Well, normally after applying you say: if you have further questions, be free to ask them!
Then an officer (or even any member who reads the application first) can ask the questions taht are left unanswered from balli's list?

A free application is a great way to get to know the applicant.

Tbh., it's hard to say yes to an application if we don't know if they agree upon our rules, and to make sure we have an officer online at the same time as them in the 48 hours time we have been talking about, might complicate things.
I would suggest we retype our rules in the application (Read before applying) and ask them to freestyle their application but also type that they have read our rules and agree upon them.

But officers always ask people 2 times after the invite. Whenever I invite someone I make sure to inform them about us, and before they are being promoted from new member to old member, they are again asked if they like it with us, asked if they use our forum, our TS, anything they wanna add, etc.

I always have a long chat with potential recruits before i tell them to apply on the site, so i know them pretty well. But that's just me. Mr. Caring, Mr. Care-Bear, Mr. Sensitive, Mr. Bend-You-Over-While-Your-Grandma-Cooks-Me-Chicken

, Mr. Bend-You-Over-While-Your-Grandma-Cooks-Me-Chicken
0.o

i agree 2 with knoma (a bit late but anyway)
also don't now the new players
and will check more applications out from now..

Well, I think current application is nice enough, speaking from personal experience when I did it
You could separate some of the questions, or just leave if we go with freestyle app. a few questions as a quideline what they should include in it.
But I think best thing is to leave application opened longer as you said already, that way even if the person who applied didn’t give very detailed answers people can ask him/her and he can replay later. And if he doesn’t replay it’s his loss 

It would definitely be easier to get a sense of the person and their personality from a freestyle app! And I do think a longer opening () would be beneficial to all. To be fair, don't think I've replied to many applications because they've all seemed a bit samey, but that is probably because of the question/answer format.

Oh, and other problems: We're too nice people We accept like 95% of our applicants.

Well NoWay that's Guild Wars fault. I've been a recruiter in SWTOR and in WoW. In both games I asked for experience, gear, and proof of skills. But you dont need anything in GW2, and frankly we have to base our decisions on how "nice" the person seems, and how much stuff did he write in the application. And so it seems only logical to accept most of the applicants and if they stay inactive or flame out in the chat or what not, we kick them. There's nothing more we can do about it.

Yeah, in fact you're totally right. No skill required in gw2. No attribute points to spend, no epic gear to go after in endgame (no offence, but ascended gear still sucks, I bet I can take somebody full ascended down in my exotics). Only player skills matter, yeah right. Play op build and faceroll keyboard

Maybe we need to add another question: how do you feel about hamsters?

NoWay wrote:

Play op build and faceroll keyboard

Thats how most warriors and thieves do it

Thiefs is just heartseeker spam with a lot of initiative regen traits + signets.
Warriors is just... you know.
Imo ele is the hardest class to play (cause I never took time to get into attunements and don't know any builds about it) and even that is strait forward.
I want more weapon skill variety and more utility variety, give us something to customize our builds.

Maybe next balance patch for ele's, when scepter gets more supportive quality.

NoWay wrote:

Thiefs is just heartseeker spam with a lot of initiative regen traits + signets.

..... ekhm yea sure...
Anyway i would like to see 3 simple rules when it comes to recruting.I've noticed we say "yes!" to almost everyone and i'd like to keep the guild small and well..."proffesional" xD
1)the standard 18+ rule cuz we dont want any kids running around in our guild ^^
2)the only way to see if somone is experienced or not is to either ask him or just look at his AP so for example only folks with 4k+ ap can join the guild that way we can make sure ppl know something about the game and guildmissions so we dont have to explain everything before every guildmisson which takes a lot of time.
3)and last one is to keep the guild at 100ppl and no more so that we may get to know each other better.

Trebax wrote:

2)the only way to see if somone is experienced or not is to either ask him or just look at his AP so for example only folks with 4k+ ap can join the guild that way we can make sure ppl know something about the game and guildmissions so we dont have to explain everything before every guildmisson which takes a lot of time.

Just joking about the thief treb
But well, guess you gonna have to kick me if we have a 4k+ ap limit. And I know a lot of great pvp players (rank 50+) who don't have 4k+ ap points.
Does that make me less experienced? I do follow your reasoning though, don't get me wrong!

NoWay wrote:

know a lot of great pvp players (rank 50+) who don't have 4k+ ap points.

you're right if somone does pvp he probably doesn't have a lot of AP but the main thought is that if somone declares in his application he is a pvp player or wvw or pve player he has to prove somehow that he has some experience in that field for example dude XY says "hey im a good wvw player and i want to join your guild" then he should tell us his wvw rank and so on.Then we can decide whether we invite him or not.

I've been saying that we need to ask about AP ever since I was promoted to officer. But the sex scandal between me and that goat planted doubt into Balli's mind and she stopped listening to me.

That's a great idea treb. And what about, before inviting them in, taking them on a 'field trip'? Like for pvp let him join a pvp group of us, for wvw let him follow one of our commanders, pve do a dungeon or event or so. See what he's made of and if he has experience. Ik we got a trial period after the invite, but maybe we can divide before that already?