Why is Recruiting a Pain?

It just seems that so few people are trustworthy out there. They come in and start begging others for money or materials. I mean I would like to see our guild get larger, but not at the cost of our integrity. Right now, all in our guild are pretty strong core players, whether it be pve, pvp, ab, ff or whatever. Some of us are friends out of game, and some other are just laid back cool people. I guess it is just a hard road to go down when recruiting people. I dont even actively recruit anymore because of some of the horrible people that are out there. Oh well, guess I will just have to get more of my friends hooked on the game and get them in the guild....LMAO. Hey it has worked so far!

When I recruit, I dont spam in town chat. I advertise but I dont cram it down peoples throats. Also sitting in some towns you'll see the "I need a guild" statement. When I interview these people, I let them know we are a mature acting guild and aren't looking for people who simply want handouts right away. Sure I'll help a guildie in a heartbeat, but we give them a 1 month trial before even thinking about adding themn to possible officership down the road. I inform of our guilds orientation as to PvE, PvP, etc. I also ask about their activeness. Thats the part that kills us. In almost every interview I've gotten "daily" as a response from people who are on for a couple days then gone for a month. We have a policy on inactivity also. When interviewing someone, you're almost always going to get the answers they know you want to hear. IMO the 100g recruiting is a gamble. Sometimes you lose, and sometimes you win big. The inactivity is what hurts guilds recruiting the most. Someone comes in, then leaves for a month....then the next recruit comes in and see's the people gone for awhile and they bolt instead of staying to help make it a more active guild without thinking..."hey, that guy'll get booted soon and possibly make way for a more active player." I have no problem when i go recruiting, its the ones that go afg or quit the game without a warning that keeps the new recruits from staying.

Find a way to get people active and you'll get people to stay. Get people to stay, and you'll get a growing guild. Its that simple. Give them more than just a hall and cape, give a raffle, guild hall parties, a guild niche (like guild FoW runs or guild AB's). I've went as far as to offer incentives for guildies to recruit...like 2k if the person they recruited is active during the new recruits 1 month eval(doesnt mean it has to be daily) for sending me or another officer a recruit.

Some good ways you can recruit is post on forums or create your own and hold a recruitment forum there. When you advertise in game and strike up a conversation in whispers, direct them to the website. Those dedicated to join a guild will more than likely take the time to post a decent application/join request on your website rather than the average-joe who just wants in right at that moment. Also with this, you get a better idea of who is behind the character, especially if you suggest on the forums for the applicant to give a little bio about their real-life selves.

I agree with previous posters that you get a higher caliber player from the forums for the most part instead of shouting in town. Though I have had the luck of finding some awesome loyal players that way too. The ones that I don't understand though are the guild hoppers. It's weird to me that someone wants to join a guild and even goes through the effort out here to post and then give the guild a 1 hour chance and leave. People are quirky.

I would love to have more officers but that making everyone an officer doesn't seem like a good idea, first off they can invite people too, and i don't want a bunch of new recruits coming in and me getting pissed off by not even being informed by the person who invited in the first place them because they didn't even bother to even tell me they where recruiting their friends...who turn out to be total jackasses..blah blah...i don't want a negative enviornment in my guild. people who are friendly and paitent will get promoted.

My hat's off to everyone who posted in this thread. I'm an officer in a guild who's trying to figure out how to attract a more "mature-minded" caliber of player to our guild. I don't want to become an elitist, but the younger players are often impatient to get "run" places and so forth. And they want to make all the fad builds, instead of actually developing a character. You all know the stories, so you don't need me to repeat them for you.

Anyway, I've gotten a lot of useful ideas on how to carefully expand our guild just by reading through this thread. My humblest thanks to you all.

Tanith

As a guild leader I can say the best thing for you to do is just have a guild with friends and dont worry about recruiting, people will come on their own, and trust me what you really dont want to do is recruit a bunch of people then have your guild chat flooded with:

can sum1 help me with shing jea quests?
any1 got 2k i can borrow?
yo any1 got tanned hide i need for my 15k armor
anyone farmin?


Ugh it does get on peoples nerves .

Our recruiting is quite passive, but a steady stream anyway. Have gotten some very nice people just from posting in the "Introduce your Guild" thread here on Guru. (Having a sharp website and active forum helps too. )

Occasionally we'll meet someone in a pug, they see the same cape on everyone and they'll ask to join us. That's the best way to recruit, because you know what they are looking for. Cooperation and team effort and all that.