Obviously, skill is not the only requirement from a member. Dedication, loyalty, activity, attitude, they all go a long way.
Keeping all that aside however, how do you exactly determine the skill of a player in a certain time frame?

Many serious raiding guilds take trialists on MC/ZG runs to test them out. I dont see how taking a potential member on just 1 or 2 raids can determine that player's skill. It is my firm belief that a player's skill becomes more apparent in smaller sized groups.

My former guild would take a player on a couple of MC raids, and usually by the end of the raid the officers would reach a concensus as to the skill of the player. It never became clear exactly what they were looking at. Moreover, MC being farm status n all, is prolly the worst way to test a player. Not to mention the fact that in 40 man raids; false opinions expressed in gchat by "cool" people propagate quickly amongst the weaker lol'ing zombies in the guild.

Anyway, I am thinking of designing a series of tests for potential recruits in the guild, depending on the class. That is, putting them in certain situations and seeing how they tank/heal/cc/dps etc.


Warrior
A friend of mine told me that the best way to test a warrior, is to let him tank the Beast in DM north. Take a group of 2 healers, and 2 very high DPSers, and have the warrior tank the Beast. The DPSers should go all out. Apparently, a good warrior will be BARELY able to hold aggro on the Beasts, and at times he will lose it.. and hre comes the part where "regaining lost aggro" is tested. A bad warrior on the other hand, will never be able to gain aggro.
From all the raid bosses, I think Onxyia is also a VERY good challenge for a warrior. However, I woudlnt want to waste the time, gold and morale of the raid by wiping to Onxyia just to test out a warrior.

Mage
I am a mage. So, this section might be a bit longer than I intend it to be.
A mage's role in PvE is quite limited. We should know when to spam Frostbolts, and when not to spam Frostbolts. Ofcourse, there are certain situations (Domo, supression room, Nef phase1 etc) where a Mage does more than that, but its still situational and doesnt say much in terms of skill.
With that in mind, I think that if you want a good PvE Mage, the most important factors are gear (+dmg is the way to go for PvE, no doubt), talent spec, and skill at spamming Frostbolts.
Now on the other hand, if you want a skilled Mage... I simply cannot think of a better test for a Mage than PvP. From my observation, those mages who are good at PvP, are automatically also good at PvE. Playing a Mage in PvP has incredible depth compared to PvE. But ofcourse, this is a moot point because its not easy to setup arena matches with Alliance to test the skill of your trial Mage.

I would go on and say that a good PvE Mage is one who always comes prepared with water, AIs the raid quickly, knows those key situations where amplify magic is useful, Decursive setup with priorities, and other minor little things, etc. For instance, I have CTRAID setup such that it only displays the Fort and AI buff, that too with different colors. So I single target AI people... I am also usually the only one who Dampen Magics people during Ragnaros..
Again, these things can only be observed after awhile.
As far as test goes, one good PvE test I can think of is asking a Mage to solo the 3 54-55 elites in BRS (the one sitting as soon as you enter the instance).
While waiting for MC/BWL to start, I often challenge myself by taking this little test. Its quite fun... almost always a close fight.

Shaman
Mana Tide. Check.
Ok.
Shamans are healers in raids. Compared to priests, they have to be more intelligent about their mana usage, totems, etc.
A good shaman in PvE is one who knows how to manage his mana, and is intelligent about his totems. If I wanted to test a shaman, I would take him to an MC raid and see how he heals in certain groups, and more importantly, how quick and smart he is with his totems.
Some checks..
Put him in a Mage group. See if he drops Tranquil Air.
Put him in a group with sword Rogues. See if he notices that, and hence drops WindFury and Strength.
Put him in a group with dagger Rogues. See if he notices that, and hence drops GoA and Strength.
Put him in the MT group. See if he drops GoA and Strength.
Put him in a Hunter group. See if he drops GoA (not Tranquil Air!).
The above are general Totem rules, I would put a shaman in each of these groups and see how he fares. Also, there are certain fights in ZG, like putting the grounding totem for the snake boss if hes in the MT group, putting down Earthbind totem for the Panther boss, NOT putting Poison Totem for Hakkar, etc.

Priests
Cross healing. Take the Priest on a UBRS raid, but put him in a seperate group of his own with maybe another Hunter or something... see if the Priest cross heals the other groups. Maybe ask your other healers to intentionally not heal at times to determine how quickly the Priest reacts.
You dont even need CTRA to cross heal, WoW has the functionality to display the health bars of classes if you drag their name from raid window.

Someone suggsted that a Priest who can do his epic quest without Oil of Immolation is a skilled Priest, I have no idea how true that is.

I've noticed that some Priests blow thru their mana very fast. Mana management is key, but obviously its something that can only be observed over time. Other things to notice are, how quickly he buffs the group(s), how many mana pots he carries (using /raitem), etc.
Contarary to what some may say, I consider Shadowward Pain a good form of DPS. I would love to see all my Priests regularly refreshing their SWP... because in long boss fights that DoT dmg dos stack up, and is quite substantial.
The next issue is with Fade..... some Priests dont Fade a lot claiming that Fade reduces aggro only temporarily. While this is true, Fade is crucial in the first 10-20 seconds of a fight where a healing aggro can overtake MT aggro. A Priests who Fades frequently in the beginning phase of a boss fight, is doing a good job.

Rogue, Warlock, Hunter, Druid.. will post later..maybe..

But for a new recruit, wouldnt you atleast want him to have a PvE spec to begin with?

I believe most of our shaman consider Mana Tide kinda worthless. They don't encourage speccing it at all. I'd like to believe that most of our shaman are "PvE spec" but don't have Mana Tide.

purification is a far better measure than MTT. I have both but that is cause all I like to do is heal. Also realize that it isnt just good to test them when they know it cause you will usually see them at their best. Does a person get lazy when no one is looking. That is something that can be difficult and more time consuming but usually imo more important to know.

I'm not sure why you're asking advice about testing new recruits on the forums of a guild that never recruits.

:angry:

Find out things about the person rather than how they play the game. Chat with them a bit on vent. Some people can learn quickly and are just ignorant. Some think they know everything about the game and really don't. Some love to talk about encounters they have no experience with. A little chat can give you a much better picture about who you're dealing with.

This is very true but not entirely so. Either way in the end use every raid and time you spend with that person as a trial and dont allow people to feel like they will be in the guild no matter what. If they get too comfortable and you get too dependant on that one person he or she will take advantage of this and abuse the group. I am not a very trusting person though so others may disagree with this.

if you are looking for approval to be really selective about who to let into your guild, this isnt the forum you are looking for. when EJ was recruiting, they pretty much let anyone in that was breathing. once they got to a pretty decent sized number, they stopped recruiting and as long as people behaved pretty well, they got to stay in.

you do realize that this blows many guilds theories on being selective out of the water. Does this mean that selecting your recruits could be a waste of time and just groom people or was EJ just lucky?

EJ was not lucky, we just worked hard and dragged people(including me) along until they got good, and i personally believe that selection is one of the biggest wastes of time in history. i hate the idea that most guilds think they have to be selective.