Augh, recruiting. Augh!
I hate recruiting. It’s too much like job hunting or other related real life chores. There are always a glut of guilds, too, so we all line up and flash our beautiful plumage and hope that we entice the right people. Recruiting makes me daydream about terrible things like one of the larger guilds on our server going belly up, allowing the rest of us to cherrypick from their remains.
And I realize this makes me sound like an old lady talking about walking to school in the snow, but the quality and stability of recruits seems to have decreased over the past year or so. It used to be that I could rely upon someone who transferred realms to at least seriously give it a shot. It cost them $25 to raid with us! Now a good 15% of the time a transfer will show up and then just disappear a week later. Why did you pay $25 to waste your time? Why did you pay to waste my time? A pox upon you!!
I have cranked up the recruitment machine to full speed this week, mostly with responding to “Looking for Guild” posts on the official Alliance Recruitment forum. This gets our name out there, which is great, although it has not escaped my attention that (to my recollection) we have never actually gotten a reliable new member from this forum. Everyone who isn’t a friend of a friend came from other, more niche-specific sites.
Also, while I’m ranting, where did all the mages go? I don’t think I’ve recruited a reliable, butt-kicking mage in at least three years. Fortunately we have a couple, as it stands, but another one would be nice!
Tips for people who are in a new guild:
1) Participate! Not just in raids — talk in gchat, talk with other members of your class, try and put together heroic runs, and so on. Get to know people, and let them get to know you.
2) Be on time for raids! It’s not a real job, but first impressions still count. I have people with years of seniority, and then you. Don’t give me an excuse to bench you in favor of the devil I know.
3) If your guild leader is female, and particularly if she has seemed the sensible type thus far, don’t join the guild and hit on her. A majority of new male recruits send me a “So, how YOU doin’?” whisper within moments of being invited. How am I doing? I’m running a guild. Any other questions, new guy? 
/rant
PS: WTB mage, ret pally, and elemental shaman. We will pay you in puns, epics, and good times, although the dental plan is shoddy.
So.. how are YOU doin'?
If I wasent such a Hord Id apply
"Any other questions, new guy?" haha what a scrub. This reminds of me of one interview we had at work. He was so bad that we were planning to turn him down on the spot. He's not even worht a thank-you-we'll-contact-you hand shake. I guess he sensed he wasn't getting the job… Female colleague of mine went in as the last interviewer. She came out completely flabbergasted… "That guy just asked me what I was doing after work."
Well, I've never had to deal with 'How are YOU doing?', but I'm not female :p
I find recruitment is becoming harder for many guilds.
1. Our server has new guilds trying to get off the ground every other day and this results in millions of small guilds all too small to really get anywhere in 25 man raids.
2. Summer, the foul beast, making human resource problems in guilds even bigger.
3. Players too obsessed with quick wins. They expect to be killing bosses the minute they join even if you told them what the situation is and that you're building the guild and then they get frustrated and leave after a few days. Stop pulling the rug out from under me you bastards.
I'd agree with all of those. I think Blizz really screwed up with Naxx. I can completely appreciate wanting the majority of their customers to have access to all this neat raid content, but the launch of WotLK just trained a number of people into expecting new bosses to fall in an hour. Hard modes and achievements?! Wiping is dumb, let's just go back to Naxx.
I see the small guild phenomenon as well. On the one hand, we were a small guild too, so I can't begrudge anyone trying to start out on their own (although that was four years ago, and things were very different then). On the other hand, sometimes I selfishly think that people should just face reality and join an existing established guild.
I can't say I've ever been a recruiting officer, but it does seem as though the stock of good recruits has sort of dried up. We get a few here or there, but people do indeed seem to randomly disappear after a week or a month, never to show up again. Good luck finding new peeps!
P.S. Thanks for the blogroll love
.
You bet, and grats on starting your own blog!
I thought about it today, and of our last five transfers, 3 of them disappeared within two weeks. If you want to waste $25, just send it to me directly!
You may hate recruiting; but you are good at it. Your posts in the realm forum caught my eye years ago when I wasn't looking for a guild.
Apparently, I was remiss when joining. “So, how YOU doin’?”
Summer doldrums, I think. The recruitment posts in the realm forums imply that most guilds are in the same situation.