Is your AEGEE local the “Master of Recruitment”? Share your best practices with the Network!

It’s September, the new academic year has just started, and this means that the recruitment season has just started too! Several AEGEE locals are making big efforts and organising lots of activities for fresh members and international students who can become potential AEGEE members, many of them starting from mid August already.

Organising such activities requires a big dose of creativity and innovation, as well as PR campaigns on social media, taking care of logistics, and much more. For all those locals that are working hard on recruiting new members, we have a special prize. AEGEE-Europe is now looking for our Master of Recruitment throughout the Network!

Holger Schmitt, Network Director of AEGEE-Europe, is launching this new competition in cooperation with the Network Commission and The AEGEEan. Following the example of The AEGEEan’s Local and Member of the Month awards, he came up with the idea of this recruitment competition. “Many locals have developed a very structured and exhaustive strategy how to recruit members. Now it is the time to highlight your concept, your activities and share it with all AEGEEans”, he stresses. Therefore, The AEGEEan is now looking for successful and innovative recruitment strategies that AEGEE locals have been using from August until October.

According to our Network Director, the recruitment strategies will be used as best-practices in order to develop a toolkit for recruitment strategies which will provide alternative ways of recruitment, which will be divided into categories, depending on the human resources available and the size of the local. Based on his experience as a board member and Network Commissioner, Holger highlights the three steps needed for recruitment:

1- Motivation: Get them interested by telling how awesome AEGEE is and explaining all the opportunities AEGEE has to offer

2- Communication: Give them a flyer, card, invite new members to the next meeting, activity and make sure they are on the mailing-list, Facebook group and they like your Facebook page.

3- Integration: Keep constant contact and give them a small task to fulfill in order to ensure that they will stay and want to contribute

“I would suggest to locals to send their most unique and fun activity description with pictures and combine it with explaining what kind of communication, initiatives and integration steps are used in order to recruit new members”, he explains. Therefore, we would like to know which are your tips and the activities that your AEGEE local carries to recruit new members? Sharing is caring!

Are you interested? Here’s how you can take part, then!

A first open call was sent to our mailing list ANNOUNCE-L, and in order to apply, you should se send a description of your recruitment strategy with nice picture or videos to aegeean@aegee.org containing the following information:

  • Name of the local

  • PR strategy to contact new members

  • Interesting activities/sessions to attract new members

  • Integration activities for new members (e.g. social activities, integration weekend)

  • Cooperation with university or other groups/institutions

  • Communication channels to integrate the new members in the locals activities

  • Use of AEGEE presentations (incl. AEGEE Pitch)

But keep the deadline in mind… you can send us your strategies until 19th October! The selection of the most innovative strategies will be done one week before the Agora, and the award to the Master of Recruitment will be given in Autumn Agora Cagliari.

And not least important… why should you take part?

The AEGEEan gives you no less than three reasons why you should take part in our recruitment competition:

  1. Firstly, your local will gain visibility! All the recruitment strategies will be shared in The AEGEEan’s Facebook page, and we will prepare an article with the five most innovative ones.

  2. Secondly, your contribution will be crucial to the recruitment toolkit that the Network Director will be preparing together with the NetCom. Any creative and innovative ideas will definitely be taken into account, both for bigger and smaller locals, so your idea also counts!

  3. And, last but not least, you will have the opportunity to come up on stage in Cagliari to receive the “Master of Recruitment” award, wouldn’t that be exciting?

So, if your local has been working on recruiting new members for this semester, your effort will definitely pay off if you take part in this competition. We are looking forward to receiving your ideas!

Written by Anna Gumbau (AEGEE-Barcelona) and Svenja van der Tol (AEGEE-Nijmegen)