The Fraternity Advisor

In my newsletter last week, I mentioned some strategies about building your list for fraternity recruitment. I am getting a lot of questions asking me to describe in more detail what I am talking about with the list – so I thought I’d share with everyone.

It is going to happen. There is no doubt it is going to happen. You are going to find yourself in a conversation with a guy who is rushing your fraternity, and he is going to ask you why he should join your fraternity. This absolutely will happen at least once a semester and probably many times. You are foolish if you aren’t prepared for this situation.

Treating every recruit the same sounds good, but doesn’t work in real life. That is because all recruits aren’t the same.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but your fraternity knows a couple guys who are recruited every semester that always refuse to join.

Fraternity Recruitment is hard enough. It gets even harder if it is like pulling teeth to get your brothers to participate. If this is prevalent in your fraternity, you need to figure out why.

The brothers in your fraternity will have the right intentions these next few weeks. They will be motivated to find new members and be eager to start they year off on the right foot. This is an exciting time.

Believe it or not, people are good natured and want to help you. However, they can’t help you if they don’t know you need help. Fortunately for you, there is a person out there who is particularly interested in your success, and has the ability to help you in big ways. They just need to be asked.

Selling a potential new member on the fraternity comes down to two things – creating a relationship and making him part of the group. A quick and easy way to jump start this process is by giving him a nickname during recruitment.

Look around at the brothers in your fraternity. Chances are, most of the guys in your fraternity are similar, or have a similar bond. The chapter might be full of jocks, preppies, party animals or academic all-stars. There is a reason for that.

Vilfredo Pareto is an Italian Economist who came up with the 80/20 rule. In short, his theory states that 20 percent of the people are responsible for 80 percent of the results. You can see how this applies to fraternity recruitment.