I'm the GM of a semi-casual raiding guild on a PvE expansion server. We raid about 16 hours a week, 4 hours on 4 days. Well, we should raid 4.5 hours on 4 days, but we start late.

Our server does not have a large population of skilled players; in fact, our server does not have a large population of decent players. Recruiting has been a challenge for us because it is just so difficult to find semi-skilled people who really want to raid. I find myself constantly having to coach lazy people who haven't done their homework into becoming good players (enchants/socketing/basic class theorycraft/not standing around and instead casting more), or being forced to gremove the hopeless ones.

Our recruiting process typically looks like this:

1) Review application
2) Check armory
3) If things look "ok" (talent and gear is properly set up) schedule a vent interview

We don't take them on trial 5 man runs much anymore, because we just don't seem to have the time.

During the vent interview, we generally ask these questions:

1) Ebay question (a question about their class to make sure that their experience is actually what's reflected on their app)
2) Agree to raid times
3) Agree to consumables
4) Agree to council loot

I find that once we get to the point of a vent interview, we rarely turn down the applicant. Only later do we see if they can consistently do their job well. I want to figure that out BEFORE we guild them.

So, how do you screen out the loot train riders and retards?

Do you feel that a “trial run” is necessary, and if so, how do you arrange it and what do you look for in a specific class without a huge commitment of time? (What instance for each class, and what stats do you examine on WWS, Recount, etc.)

What interviewing questions do you ask? Are they flowery questions such as “ok, tell me when you use CoR” to a warlock, or more difficult questions like “Describe for me what happens when you attack a boss from the front” to a rogue (with the expectation that they know about boss parries and reduced swing timers)?

I'm curious to hear what the best practices are for successful guilds, and what people think we should do with our limited talent pool.

Um, I really don't see what's to answer here.

You don't do trial runs, and you''re having consistent problems finding out who knows what they're doing. You only find that out after they've been on a few raids.

Connect the dots - some form of trial period is necessary. Whether you do that in 5-mans, 10-mans, or as a probationary period in 25-mans is entirely up to you. But no, you can't tell whether someone can play their class purely from a verbal interview. That should be blindingly obvious to everyone.

In my experience, I find the only reliable way to find out if someone will truly be a good fit in your guild is to raid with them. We still go through the usual application and interview process that other guilds do, but we have a probationary period once they are in. Make sure you have recount running and parse your log on WWS to get an accurate picture of what your new recruit is doing.

One-time trials helps somewhat, but when we used to do that heavily, we'd find that people were very different in actual raids vs. a 1-time tryout. For example, people don't afk or try to watch movies at the same time in their tryout run, so it's sortof a best-case scenario, but for raiding you're more interested in average-case or worst-case.

In-guild tryout works fairly well, but the downside is that by the time you know whether they're hopeless or can learn, there's usually already some emotional attachment (if you're comfortable with booting anyone though, it would work well). Like maybe 5 raids or so with Recount/WWS/whatever and looking in detail reveals a lot. Sometimes you can turn that around and tell them to improve and how and they do. Other times, they can't follow your directions for improving.

Asking for references I think might help you a bit (I didn't see that mentioned). You can privately ask whether they do good dps, afk a lot, whatever, and you get mostly honest answers.

As far as asking them to prove their knowledge, I suggest going about it differently. Don't ask them simple answer questions, ask them a general question and judge from a more open-ended response. Something like "Suppose you had a friend that re-rolled warlock. They have the basics down and do fair dps, but they're struggling to keep up in raids. How would you go about helping them?"

As far as coaching people we have found WWS to be very valuable.

They might not go through it but you will and then point out area's to improve.

Then put it in their face (nicely) and often you get results.

One of our mages is a pretty casual player and was ignoring +to hit... after it was pointed out the effect it had on his dps he immediately refocused on getting +to hit gear.

On a general note... you will have to do this... or move away from being a semi-casual guild.

As far as tryouts... we do 2 weeks of initiate status.

We're also a semi-casual raiding guild, so while I can't speak for how more advanced guilds screen applicants, I can say that it looks like you're going to also want a more extensive interview process (plus the trial runs that were suggested).

Semi-casual raid guilds are an interesting place to be, because we take raiding relatively seriously (we want to progress through the game), but various circumstances, such as variable play time, restrict our ability to do so as fast as other guilds unless everyone is on the ball with organization and efficiency.

So, one of the things the officers in my guild do is make sure the applicant truly understands what kind of guild we are. In addition to the usual consumable-related questions, we put a lot of emphasis on, "Are you comfortable with the fact that it may take us several weeks to kill a single boss? That our roster is slightly bigger than a more full-time raiding guild, which means you will likely need to sit out a fair share of raids? And our class balance is relatively fluid from raid to raid."

While that's kind of the other direction from what you were asking, it's also important to see whether or not the applicant will have the patience level required, in terms of walking into a zone and not expecting the boss to hand over their purples immediately.

For DPS classes at least, I would ask the applicant to provide WWS parses of some of his boss kills, with a short summary of his performance of the fight (were his numbers very good despite missing a key buff?). A month ago I transferred servers to app to a guild working on Kael'thas. I had found the guild's recruitment post on the WoW Guild Recruitment Forums, and sent an IM to their designated contact, and after providing an armory link to demonstrate that I had the required gear, I volunteered 2-3 WWS parses of fights that are melee friendly, and that was enough to peak their interest. Now obviously I still had to prove myself throughout their applicant phase (1 month), but I think a WWS parse requirement depending on the class might be another guard you can post at the door.

One problem that I've noticed in my own couple of guild's recruitment process is not actually having a well-defined idea of what sort of guild we were. We were trying too much to straddle the line between casual (only raiding 3 days a week) and hardcore (wanting to progress), and we got caught up in a sort of chicken-and-egg problem with recruits: we needed more people in order to go further but each new recruit held us back because we had to gear and train them. Defining what sort of guild you are, and stating so up-front, will help self-select your applicants. Note that defining doesn't mean you're either "casual" or "hardcore" or some other moniker; you can be somewhere on the spectrum on between so long as you know exactly where and don't try to spread out too much.

Trial periods of at least a month are necessary to weed out flakes with dedication or attendence problems. You probably need more than a month to catch them all, but considering how many one month has identified for us it's probably a happy medium between effectiveness and expediency.

If you're semi-casual, you don't need people to be top-notch right when you recruit them, you just need them to be "trainable." The trouble lies in identifying the difference between a trainable person who simply never knew that there were intricacies about shot rotation/parry/resist/DoT/etc. mechanics, and the real blathering idiots that won't figure it out even if you tell them. Remember, it's not immediatly obvious that these effects exist if you're not told about them and troll forums religiously. Absolutely high-end guilds require people to already know these things before coming in, but a semi-casual guild can afford to sit down and explain them, provided the person actually learns. Once again, a one-month trial period is helpful. If they can't figure it out or be coached within a month they're probably helpless and should be discarded. The more hardcore you want to be, the shorter you give them. Perhaps two weeks to figure learn their class, and the rest of the month to figure out attendence/regear/personality?
An important thing to remember about this is that they can't really be expected to learn if no one is teaching them. Pre-TBC I would have recomended the class lead; in this smaller raid environment I don't know how many guilds still have class leads or what, but encourage them to ask other raiders how it's done (or at least how it's different in raids), and encourage your raiders to try to explain.

References help, but they only apply to people that have them. If you're into 25-man content your recruits will at least have 10-man experience you can ask them about but if you're still in kara yourself you might be recruiting a few fresh 70's with nobody to really ask.

Are there any suggestions regarding how to improve your healers? My guild has utilized WWS to steadily improve our Tanks TPS levels and our DPS, but we are having a lot of issues in finding/ training solid healers. I have asked my consistently strong performers to help train in the newer folks, but thus far I have not seen very good results.

We have a 3-week "trial" period where we examine WWS parses (super important) and gather member feedback on the trial's "soft skills" from his interaction within the guild.

Officers vote after 3 weeks, and it's usually quite apparent which trials belong and those that don't. Trials can accumulate DKP and buy loot, but members have priority (-500dkp member will win an item over a 100dkp trial).

This has more or less worked out for us so far, but just remember that /gkick works just as well on a member as it does on a trial. You should *definitely* make it clear that you expect just as high standards from members as you do from trials.

That depends on what is wrong with your healers. Are they running out of mana? Are their assignments dying while they still have mana? Do you feel like your DPS is suffering because you have to bring too many healers in order to assure that your raid stays alive? Do you not have a balanced healing force (at least 1 of each class)? Are your healers not using the appropriate spells?

Without really knowing what the problem is I would say to look at gear and spec, spell selection, assignments, and reaction time. The gear and spec are the easiest things to fix, but they are usually fine except in the worst of healers. Spell selection can be a little trickier but this is probably something that the better healers can advise the worse ones on. Assignment is the responsibility of your raid leader and this just means to make sure that you are playing to each healer's advantages (especially make sure that you are effectively using your restoration shaman and druids, since they can both be extremely powerful in the right situations). Reaction time and decision making are the hardest things to fix if they are the cause of your problems; this is really only improved through practice and some people seem to never get any better. A good UI helps a lot but in the end this is pretty much down to player skill. Sometimes the only solution is to identify which of your healers are not very good at this and put them in positions where they can't cause too much harm.

Right now we are working on Kael'thas and I feel that in general our healers are all pretty good, but back when we were working on Gruul and Magtheridon and had a somewhat less cohesive healing force, it helped us to look at the "who heals whom" section of the WWS to make sure people weren't ignoring their assignments. Even now it still helps to verbally ask people how difficult they felt their assignment was so we can gauge if we should change up the assignments a bit to increase efficiency. A mod such as expiration or recount can also help a lot to discover how people are dying and to find out what kind of healing they got before they did.

I'm actually surprised by some of the answers in this thread. The guilds I know take recruits to raids then make a decision whether to accept them or not into the guild. I haven't heard of any raiding guild not taking an applicant to a real raid before making a decision before.

The officers in my guild accept applications then decide who to trial. Trial members then get to raid with the guild and then we gauge their personality, skills and attendance. We make a thread in the members only forums wherein guild members can provide feedback. After a non-set amount of time, the officers make a decision to let them in the guild or not. We used to only invite people to the guild after they pass. Now we invite everybody, then promote them to full member if they pass or remove them if they don't. The reason for the change is so that the applicant can more easily find groups with the guild whenever we aren't raiding and for us to get a better grasp of their personality.

We're basically talking about how to weed out the people before we even accept their trial application, not afterwards.

And most people (this may or may not be the case on EJ) are before the "everyone must pull 99.9% of their possible weight threshold of 25-man raiding".

In general, the oft-spouted term of "situational awareness" is the key. A mage that knows what to sheep, when to AoE, which side to be on on Capacitus, how to use omen/ktm, etc? That mage will *probably* be a pretty decent member of a raid, and if their DPS sucks, it's fixable.

A mage that can "lawl pompyro" every other pull and get to the top of the charts but can't do anything else? That's not quite so easy to fix.

Another thing to look at is "realistic upgrade wishlists". If your guild have 6/6SSC, 3/4 TK or something similar:
"Name the top 3 upgrades available to you that would increase your DPS/survival/healing".

"keke, I want warglaives of azzinoth" isn't acceptable.

"Talon of Azshara would increase my DPS by 12 over my season 2 mainhand, with Tier 5 gloves/shoulders would be very good, but I would want to get tier 4 leggings and the breastplate off of karathress" is a realistic, well-thought answer in comparison.

Obviously, the game isn't just about gear, but knowing how to effectively gear yourself to do your job is probably in the top 3 things that you have to do to raid effectively (this is with broad strokes on other matters, like "Situational Awareness" and "Following directions").

The trouble we have with this is that the applicant pool on our own server is extremely shallow, so most of our recruits are potential transfers. They will usually not transfer over until we can promise them an invite (understandably) and so we do not have an opportunity to evaluate them beforehand. We do put them in a "trial period" of sorts when they join where they get no loot, but it is fairly short, usually about a week or two before they are under full consideration (the trial period is of variable length since it is based on boss kills and not number of weeks).

When we recruit, we usually tell our applicants that they will not be kicked from the guild after they transfer unless they are absolutely terrible, but that their performance in their first couple of weeks will determine whether they become a core member (who are practically guaranteed invites) or whether we will invite them only if we have space. Most of our applicants are okay with this, and the ones that aren't will tell us no thanks and pursue applications with other guilds. We have to do something like this since our guild raids 4 days a week and has about 60-80% or so average attendance rate per person, and so in order to reliably field a balanced raid we need a decent amount of people willing to show up without being assured in advance of getting an invite.

The best way to test people is to throw them at raiding stuff.
Nothing shows how good someone is better then going to an execution/don't-be-stupid-and-kill-yourself encounter, tell them what they need to do and see if they can execute it. leotheras or vashj are awesome example. Take a dps guy, assign them their position on the stairs and let them kill elementals/tainteds. If they kil the tainteds reliably right away and get the throwing sorted, you can't go that wrong really.
kael'thalas and archimonde are the hardcore tests. If they don't kill themself and perform their job, most likely won't encounter any issues with them in any other fight. Teron works nicely if they get the debuff too, although for non pet/mind control classes it's pretty rough if you expect them to do it right from the get go.

For healers, well, there is a lot of stuff you can do. First of all the primairy problem is using the wrong spells. That can be checked on WWS. Next up, are they healing who they are assigned to? And are they using the proper spells to do that?
Also let them solo heal an off tank. Tell your other healers to not touch that tank. Karathress is a great check here. See how things go.
Same thing with watery tombs and watery graves at hydross/morogrim. Let them handle that and check how it works out.
If they are assigned to heal tanks, let someone whos got a clue put them on focus target. If they do not use clickcast, you will see if they switch target or focus on their assigned tank. Also with a focus target cast bar you see what spells they use and if they chain cast or just try to get away with lets pot and reactive casting (or just being clueless and thus thinking reactive healing is the way to go).
Also wws shows you how much they pot. Focus target will show you how aggressive they pot, if someone stops casting when low on mana instead of potting and all that stuff.

Also healing gear is very diverse. Ask them why they value healing higher then manatic or spirit or whatever they prioritize on. Almost everyone tends to go more towards one stat then someone else.

But in the end you won't be able to judge recruits without throwing them at encounters that are not totally easy mode for your guild progression level. Stuff you farm since a few weeks tends to be doable with 20ish people or at least some dead weight can easily be carried along. You will have to throw them at the stuff where you will notice if someone is carrying their weight or not.

Except Slave Pens is one of the easiest heroics to do, so long as you have one CC (mage/hunter) and a solid tank. The only time it's hard is if your tank is undergeared, or you bring no CC whatsoever.

You really want to stress-test a healer? Take them to SH or SL, and make sure you don't bring a mage. You can bring other CC, but just no mage. That's where there will be lots of healing needed, especially spread out; but at the same time, your tank will have 2-3 mobs on him, so that's more healing.

As far as our guild goes, we have a fairly extensive application form to fill out, which has a couple of idiot checks built it. It fairly clearly states at the top that the application is to be sent as a Personal Message using our forums to the GM. If they can't manage that, it's an immediate failure. And ironically, that accounts for at least 50% of the apps. People really are stupid.

Secondly, the form asks for some detail. Too many people ignore the details, and automatically are sent to /dev/null. It also asks for proper English, or at least an attempt at such. Excluding a couple of apps for whom English is not a first language, it's amazing how many people are too stupid to be able to type a sentence in their mother tongue.

Finally, assuming they can fill out a form (which weeds out at least 3/4 apps), we ask for links to their Armory profile, and an explanation of spec and gear. Usually I'll grill them a little (the Ebay check), asking questions up to my level of knowledge about their class. We've eliminated some apps right off the bat due to their inability to answer the most basic questions about their class, or inability to justify their spec. Someone who can't explain why they chose (or didn't chose) key talents are not people we are interested in trialling.

Assuming they make it this far, we usually take them to a heroic or two, typically with officers or experienced raiders on their mains. If they perform adequately, we'll offer them a trial on the spot (at the end of the run), or we'll turn them down. The trial lasts for three weeks, during which they take no loot (but accumulate dkp). Their attendance, performance, and attitude are evaluated, along with general guild "fit". We have a fairly close-knit guild, and people who don't fit in are failed on their trial, regardless of performance. We spend a lot of time together; having someone who just plain doesn't fit in is not going to be a positive influence.

We also have a system in place for "Alt Raider" and "Main Raider". If someone passes their trial, and then begins to flake (happens about 30% of the time), they are demoted to that rank, and basically put on alt status. If they improve, they're given a chance to regain that rank. Basically, Main gets loot priority, so if they want gear, they have to stop being tards.

You should *always* have a clear idea of what is expected of your raiders, so you can hold people accountable. If you don't, then you really have no way to say that someone is failing to uphold their side of the bargain, and no system in place to deal with them when they do. You need to be able to get rid of people before they drag you down with them.

I think that what you can get a feel for with applicants is their game knowledge. Even if I wouldn't push it as far as actually ask how much dps they gain from each upgrade, at least knowing what is an upgrade to them, understanding the basic dps cycles/rotations or efficiency debates makes them appear good in my eyes. You usually don't even need to ask much, checking their enchants and gems on the armoury weeds out the total idiots quickly.

On the other hand though, you never know how well they can actually perform in a real fight. A lot of people know how they should play their class, but I often see spriests losing precious dot ticks from recasting them too late or using 85% flash heal in any given fight because they lose their focus and just end up pressing whatever button is closer to them first. Won't tell you if someone dies to doomfire or can't move during flamestrike either, it's inevitably something you will actually have to invite him in raids to find out. So there's no real 'weeding out idiots' infalible method. The best thing you can do is making sure people understand the end of their trial isn't the end of their judgement period.

But if you want some clues, people who are good in pvp (particularly healers) can usually do well in pve as well. Check for arena ratings and so, it's a good indication. Other things you can check are reputation levels which at least indicate he has done his fair share of heroics if they are high (not me!) and also indirectly imply he is somewhat dedicated to the game. At least trying to spell correctly helps too.

One of the problems is that, for some classes and job, theorycrafting (class mechanics, game mechanics, gear, talents, etc), and ability to play the class are unrelated, and all you can get out of the app for is their theorycrafting side.

For a class like the hunter, these two are wed together very tightly since you can't dps well without understanding the shot rotations, and the question "explain your shot rotation" will probably tell you how well they play their class. If they post an annotated diagram with spreadsheets, they know their stuff. If they say Pew Pew, Pew PewPew! they're a retard. If they give a decent explanation predicated on incorrect assumptions (like pre-TBC theorycraft) then you inform them of how their assumptions are incorrect and see how they react. In any case, you can see fairly accurately how good they will be as a dps class from their app.

For a healer class, it's an entirely different matter. Someone could be a priest decked out in an int/spell crit discipline build and not even know it's possible to downrank, but still be able to play their class exceptionally well by being able to juggle various player (and pet) health bars, agro, be aware of imminent danger to themselves and others, and able to manage their (craptastic) mana bar while sustaining the necessary throughput to avoid deaths(despite their horrible gear and spec).

With the hunter, you will know if they suck from the app. With the priest, you have no idea until you see them in action.

Naturally, there is overlap. Most classes are somewhere in the middle, shot rotations still don't show how good a hunter is at kiting, trapping, agro management, and improved inner fire is a tip-off of someone who will never know what they're doing.

I do recomend both a private talk-about-the-dude forum post, and a public explain-your-spec forum post. Seeing how someone reacts to criticism can be important. We also scared a priest off with math one time. We're like, what do you think of regen? And he's like, here's the math of WoW: [50mp/5 takes like 5 seconds!]. And we're like, here's the real math of WoW: [time inside/outside 5-second rule, expectation value of mp/5 > int vs length of raid fight]. And he's like, [emo!] and withdraws his app. This is an example of someone who is not trainable and who's 'theorycraft,' such as it is, is not correctable.
Anyways, the moral of the story is, use your guild forums as a means to test for personality compatibility before you accept them for trial.

And I'm just going to second someone else's opinion, if they're too dense to realize that they will be judged on effort put into the app and can't even find their own armory link, trash them. We require apps to put a joke on the application. I don't care what joke they put there, but leaving it blank is a red flag this person lacks the critical thinking skills necessary to judge anticipate reactions and is probably a sub-standard human being.

We have a probationary period that lasts 2 weeks to 2 months. If they piss me off too much during that period they get kicked. We have anywhere from a 10 to a 75% attrition rate of recruits depending on the need for the class. Similar to Failure from Risen - we put our apps through the ringer. We're hard on them, and cut them zero slack. If they can survive this and perform well they'll last indefinitely.

Applications are like cover letters - they get you an interview.
Interviews get you the job.

But in WoW, you can add a nice little probationary period where you still kick your employee if he's a not what you were looking for.

I think all the other talk is basically nonsense.

You know when a candidate doesn't fit in. It is part of your job to kick the weaker players for the betterment of the guild... even if it isn't the most fun part of your day.

Also, I don't get the big focus on WWS - if someone doesn't die that is 100 times more valuable. Who the hell hits berserk timers anymore? Some people use WWS as some sort of penis measuring tool, and the reality is it barely affects your progression.

We do this also - ala Triton guild's application style. We have a story time. By far and away story time has been the biggest weeder of retards. I know some reading this may not believe me, but the ability to show some effort and creativity goes far beyond the canned response to "what do you do in a 25 man:? taunt, sunder, demo,lolol".

^^^^
I think linking to our most recent rogue application would be a good example in how NOT to apply.


Anyways. I agree with the aforementioned comments on healer recruitment. It is much more and artform then science. Some (a very few) very good healers I have played with have no understanding of theory craft etc but have great situational awareness and can react very quickly. I would ask for more references for healers and ask more technical questions to DPS classes.

We use a very long and detailed application form to weed out the majority of our bad applicants. You can tell quite a bit about someone from an application form if you are asking the right questions. The quality of their grammar and the answers they give will usually tell you all you need to know. I'd say we decline about 80% of our applicants pre-trial period.

If we do decide to accept an applicant and put them on a trial period I send them a huge private message detailing what they should expect and what will be expected of them during their trial period. If they are still interested in applying after reading this they can transfer over and get started.

Our trial period lasts a minimum of one month. Two weeks in our applicant guild Juggernot, and if things are going well after that point, two more weeks in the main guild. After that I'd say we decline about 25% of our applicants. Another 25% withdraw because they suck and my guild mates are mean to them(for sucking), and the remaining 50% we accept.

We're pretty hard on our applicants. And by we I mean my guild mates. I'm probably the applicants best friend once they've started their trial period, as hard as that might be to believe. I think most of my guild mates are pretty close-knit and they really have very little respect for people outside of the guild. They're probably about as elitist and spiteful as anyone can be, but I love them for it!

On the topic of healers, I've found that most healer applicants have a lot to learn. Most of them over-value mana regen to a gross extent. I guess they feel it's important to end every encounter at 90% mana or something, but yeah.

If I was leading a more casual guild I think I would probably cut the trial period by about a week, and emphasize game knowledge/playtime a little less. You're really looking for people that can get along with your current membership.

I think the most important thing is to stick to your guns. Don't make exceptions when you know deep down that you shouldn't. I've made my fair share of recruitment mistakes over the last few years, and I'll probably make a few more before I'm done. I know how hard it can be. Declining people is something I have to do semi-often, and I hate it. It cuts my heart out. The person I'm declining is quite often someone I like, but I know they're just not right for our type of guild. It sucks, but you have to try to stick to your guns.

Something else that is important is a finely tuned bullshit detector. Most applicants are less than honest and you can't let them jerk you and your guild around. They will lie on their application form, they will lie during their trial period, and they will lie about why they missed last nights raid. You would be surprised at how many times I've heard the "my grandpa died" excuse. I've heard it so many times I can only come to two possible conclusions; either most of our applicants are full of shit, or applying to Juggernaut is grandparent poison.

Also judging from applicants you propably think there's a lot of people seriously addicted to wow when 80% of them answer that their playing times are 12:00-03:00 and you are about to believe that there's so many dedicated people outside your guild when every applicant you invite for a trial is perma flasked even when we do gruul or karazhan. The bullshit people say/do to impress you knows no end.