In the spirit of the other best practices threads on this forum, I'm curious as to what folks think are the best practice in terms of determing how to add a potential new guild member.
Ideas of starting points of discussion:
- Applications?
- Invitations?
- Trial periods?
- Voting by the existing guild members?
- Points of decision? When do you make the call "guild this person" or don't?
- How to tell someone no?
In the spirit of the other best practices threads on this forum, I'm curious as to what folks think are the best practice in terms of determing how to add a potential new guild member.
Ideas of starting points of discussion:
- Applications?
- Invitations?
- Trial periods?
- Voting by the existing guild members?
- Points of decision? When do you make the call "guild this person" or don't?
- How to tell someone no?
Whatever you do, do not consider "voting by existing guild members". That will be more of a popularity contest. Besides, sometimes guild members are too quick to judge a player - especially a healer. People often generalise a player's skill after a particular incident, and then they make their mind up that this person always "sucks" or "rocks".
Whats even worse is that these illconceived notions spread quickly amongst guild members - "playerx sucks, I didnt get a heal for like 2 mins".
I remember on my old US server guild, we had a shaman whose reputation was tainted for a long time when he dropped a totem during Kazzak, eventhough it was a mistake and he was a good player. This was back in the day when Eye of Shadow was a novelty and Kazzak was camped to hell.
In any case, the best way to judge a trialist is to trust have class leaders make a decision. Ofcourse, this requires your class leader himself be a competant player, and an analyst. I find SW-Stats especially useful for this purpose.
Applications: Length is good. Proper spelling and grammar is even better. Bolding/italicing questions so they stand out from the answers? Bonus.
(Example Question: What is your spec? (I'll use hunter trees here because I know them - just FYI 31/x/x is beastmastery spec, not optimal raiding spec.
Bad Answer: 40/11/0 becoz it buffz mah petz.
Good Answer: I'm currently specced 40/11/0 because my current focus is grinding cash, and BM spec is my favourite for that. However I'm more than willing to respec 0/21/30 or 5/31/15 as the guild needs me to.
Obvious differences besides the literacy and length are that the good answer shows some knowledge of hunter trees and a willingness to change for the guild.)
Make a short Vent/TS interview part of the application (second stage if you will) and in counterpoint if they pass that let them chill on your vent during a raid (mutual chemistry etc.). Topics here - anything you feel they skipped or went lightly on in their application, or more spec details, ask them what non-raid specs they like, etc. What you're really trying to do with this is get a feel for their personality, skill and experience. Ignorant people can be fixed (if you and they are willing), but assholes are forever.
Trial period: at least two weeks, preferably a month, during which time the recruits are very bottom of the totem pole for lewt. This should expose most of the obvious dunderheads. If you're serious about recruiting to make the guild better, don't be afraid to kick 'cruits that don't make it. At the same time, don't go overboard, and make sure you have clear, justifiable reasons for it. "I don't like him" isn't so good, "He has the best gear but is flat last on the damage meters, insists arcane shot is viable raid DPS, and bitches about loot he can't get" is better.
Voting: Have it informal is my view, just let the senior members know they can offer their views to the officers and that those views will be heard. Officers can then discuss amongst themselves and come to a decision.
Point of Decision: After recruit phase is over you should have a clear idea of whether or not you want this person guilded. If you're not sure, try to analyse your issues back to root causes and see if you can do anything about them.
How to tell them: Grab them sometime when they're not busy (preferably when things are quiet, kicking people directly after a raid tends to lead to negative consequences), and just tell them basically "We're sorry, but we don't think you're a good fit for this guild."
DeeNogger: "No dot timer? Get your belt off, its spanking time."
In the spirit of the other best practices threads on this forum, I'm curious as to what folks think are the best practice in terms of determing how to add a potential new guild member.
Ideas of starting points of discussion:
- Applications?
- Invitations?
- Trial periods?
- Voting by the existing guild members?
- Points of decision? When do you make the call "guild this person" or don't?
- How to tell someone no?
Well, it's hard to add a member to your guild when you don't have a WoW account.
That said, this is an amalgam of my observations from my previous guild and my current one, both of whom use relatively similar processes.
Applications are good; they allow you to get the basic info you need to know about a player, and they tell you something about their level of seriousness. "LOL guys I wants to raid" gets a swift deny, while a thought-out app tends to incline you towards giving them a shot. Things you'd want to know in apps include attunements, gear, spec (while they can respec, a quick "This is my spec, and this is why" tells you something about their playstyle), history (I can't emphasize this one enough - we've had a couple apps lately who omitted some very prejudicial information on their apps - when it was found out, that definitely didn't help their chances), etc.
If the app is decent enough to warrant a try-out, they get invited into the temporary app guild, a sort of holding tank. It's a lot easier/less stressful to boot someone from an app guild where it's *very* obviously a temporary thing (ours is even called "Temp Force") than to boot them from your main guild. The downside is, you lose the opportunity to communicate with them as easily; you can set up a common chatchan or place alts into the temp guild to assist in getting to know them.
They spend a little while in the temp guild (week or two max, generally) raiding with the main guild as possible, until you have a good idea as to whether or not they'd fit well. If they do, they get an invite; in my old guild, once invited you were a member, in the new guild, there's a 1-2 week initiate period (slightly lower priority on items is the main difference here).
Existing members do not vote, in either guild. In both guilds, member-only forums are provided wherein feedback about apps can be given by members to the officers; in one, the feedback is open to member view (and deleted when the app is guilded), in the other it's visible only to the officers. On the one hand, secret feedback helps incline people to give honest opinions; on the other hand, open feedback allows for discussion. Use what you like better.
How to tell someone no - do it as soon as you know the answer. No matter what, they're not likely to be happy about being rejected, but it's only fair to them that you let them know as soon as possible so that they can move on to whatever's next for them. Holding them in app status isn't right, and reflects poorly on your guild.
And to the people whining about the best practices series: you don't have to read it. Guild management is a giant part of the raiding game, and a lot of people here seem to find it interesting to get observations from other people as to what does and doesn't work.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
Member feedback is fairly critical - so I don't agree that the whole "Voting" thing is a big deal.
Sure the vote is mostly meaningless and some officer or leader will ultimately have to decide - but member feedback is going to be key in making your decision. An officer or leader can easily become attached to a player who ultimately pisses half the guild off. I must've kicked 6-7 people from member feedback alone that I would've taken otherwise.
Furthermore, members should have a big role in this since they're just as much their guildmates as yours once they're "fully in."
And finally, recruitment officers and guild leaders, contrary to what you might think, don't like kicking people out of the guild (unless they're total douchebags). Having the guild's advice is often a strong motivator - even then, the leader and officers can still choose to ignore them. So I don't see the problem with membership discussion, and its helped us tremendously. Most everything a member has said bad about another player has always come back to bite us later. So their advice is critical - its not like your guild is full of morons who can't be impartial like any other jury. Trust them as much as possible.
Well, it's hard to add a member to your guild when you don't have a WoW account.
Alcaras is creating a guild on a new server, that will be called humility. Since that server does not currently exist, that is the reason for the no wow account. :)
Most of us that have been playing WoW since release know of alcaras, for his sticky on the mage forums, and for being a member of Nurfed in beta and archimonde, and one of the creators of NDKP. Ah, I remember the old days in 1.0/1.1, when I was still leveling my warlock, being ganked at TM, with alliance camping TM, sending a tell to someone in UC/org, to call in the cavalry in general, and having a group of nurfed come in to hillsbrad, and 10 minutes later, SS being in figurative ruins. Ah, memories.
That said, to actually contribute to this thread, here is what NOT to do, as very recently experienced by me in GenX.
1) Be ambigous about requirements, and be afraid to gkick people that don't meet them.
2) Not have a trial period.
3) Promote too many officers.
4) Keep people that are undesirable.
Well, to be honest, we weren't doing that bad. We had attendance issues, mostly because we had a core of ~10 people that would attend every raid, and 40 people that didn't attend much of anything, but I think we could have worked out those issues. However, the fiancee of the guild leader, who happenned to be an officer, was diagnosed with cancer, forcing both of them to leave the game. For a guild 1.5 weeks old, this sort of thing can be catastrophic. We don't have anyone else who is really up to leading (I could try, but I am rather clueless when it comes to this sort of thing, and would probably fail miserably). So basically, some of the other officers and I are staying on for a while, to help the other members find a guild that will suit them, and then we will most likely disband. I don't think we will be able to last much longer, though I can always hope.
Right, i'll show you guys our application form as it stands now:
OPTIONAL:
Real Name (Just first will do):
Gender:
Location:
REQUIRED:
-Your Age:
-Are you working or are you at school (If other, specify):
How good is your English (Written and spoken - Apologies if it's personal, but we're an English speaking guild, we support people using other languages, though it is discouraged IN guild, we just want to know how well you can understand us if we need to put something across so we can make adjustments to our use of the english language):
-Character Name:
-Class:
-Race:
-Level:
-List Alts (MUST include name/class/level):
-Current Guild (if applicable)
-Previous Guilds (ALL please, again if applicable):
-How often would you say you RP? Do you go to lengths to RP?
-Will you participate in guild RP events?
-Which other mods do you have installed that you think may be useful in raid situations? (Please don't be brief. Explain to your fullest.):
-What other mods do you have installed that you think may be useful in roleplaying situations? (Please don't be brief. Explain to your fullest.):
-Do you own a microphone headset?
-Do you have any of the following (Use Y/N again):
Ventrilo/Teamspeak:
AIM/MSN/Yahoo!:
IRC:
-Would you be willing to participate in any of the following:
Ventrilo/Teamspeak (For Raid use):
AIM/MSN/Yahoo! (Talking to guild members):
And finally:
-Describe yourself when you're online as a person in three words:
-Explain why you want to join TRC:
-Explain how you will be able to benefit the guild:
-Explain why you want to leave your current guild (if applicable):
-Explain your personal objectives when playing WoW:
-State the times you are most likely to be online:
Terms and Conditions:
TRC's Officers have the right to kick, promote, demote, berate fairly and invite as they see fit.
And here are some of the other pieces of 'useful information' we provide applicants.
Generally, people can successfully fill this out and survive in the guild (thirty people at least have been with us all the way from 1-60 although admittedly we've raised the level recquirement due to PvE demands). But we take no bollocks, people who cannot be bothered to read an application form or policy (as their applications are testament to) suffer an even worst fate than the Red Hammer of Kaubel or even if they were stupid enough to make an application to EJ.
Sadly, when your realm has such a terrible server pool, stringent (and some would say extreme) appearances on a guild's application forum immediately helps to weed out the useless shite.
I would treat applications like resumes: a filter to see who gets to the interview process. I would not guild people based on apps. I would only screen out based on apps to reduce the amount of people I would have to interview.
I would then interview people on voice while in an instance. I happen to have a grasp of class mechanics of pretty much every class, and I would take particular notice to see how the applicant handles unexpected challenges or setbacks. I would probably steal some interview techniques from Joel Spolsky.
If the person proved favorable, I would guild them as an applicant rank, with lowest priority on raid invites/loot. I would watch their attendance closely; if a person doesn't show up as an applicant to raids, how can I expect them to show up as a member?
I would then ask the class leader to solicit feedback from others to make a decision as to whether to promote to "newcomer", a rank that would basically mean that you're in the guild but on a probationary status. This provides some tangible feedback to the applicant that things are doing well, but allows the guild more time to evaluate the member before full membership. After thirty days as a probationary member with good feedback, I would then promote the person to a full member.
Not at all applicable to my situation, but personally, if I were recruiting to form a raid guild, my primary criteria would be maturity, competitiveness, and an analytical bent, in that order. Given those three, everything else that's relevant will follow in short order.
but it seems like you have an idea of what you're doing already :)
Thanks to Vetinari for summarizing Humility's situation :) I changed No WoW Account to N/A since our server can't be listed yet since it won't exist until after TBC :P
One idea we've been playing around with is that of "applications by invitation" -- we wouldn't have an Applications forum where just anyone can come and apply, but we'd enable certain people to be able to post an Application, once we've vetted them (somehow, how is a good question) and think they might have a good shot... sort of a "callback" if you will.
My experiences with open applications (from time in Guild Wars) aren't that positive... the "application from someone you've never heard of" always throws us for a loop, we'd much rather prefer that person approach us in game and group with us for Arenas or something.
The key questions we're facing right now, and the inspiration for this thread are:
- How do we decide when to invite someone to fill out a private application?
- So they fill out the application, we have the feeling we like 'em, but how do we make sure? Do we ask every member? Do we get everyone to sign off on it? We want to be a tight-knit guild, but we realize that procedural tedium can be bad. One idea is to let guild members anonymously comment on a potential member in a private forum.
- What if someone doesn't suck but doesn't rock either... they're kind of ho-hum. People don't feel strongly about them either way. What to do in that situation? We don't want to drag folks out through five months of "you might get in anytime now." Some people can obviously improve and get better -- those folks we are interested in. But we don't want to guild someone and then be locked in with them if they're don't improve as we would have hoped. And we don't want to make asking people to gquit happen if possible... it should be as rare as possible.
- One of our principle aims is to have a tight-knight guild. How can our recruitment policy encourage that?
- We're considering the 'one month New Member' status after actually guilding someone as an additional safety net.
The best practices threads have been quite valuable in serving as inspiration for our officers. I started with more general questions because I didn't want it to be a "tell us how to run our guild" but now feel more comfortable going into specifics on the effectiveness of various ideas, as well as giving you more context as to where I'm coming from.
I think it strongly depends on what kind of guild you want to make. Friends and family? Hardcore progression? Somewhere in between?
Also, since you will be rolling on a new server, how will you go about finding recruits in the first place? Old friends? Connections (like posters from your site)? Forum spamming? Random people who rolled on the same server? Obviously some of those are less conducive for certain types of guilds.
Also, personal question. Will you stick with warrior or will you come back to the mage class?
I think it strongly depends on what kind of guild you want to make. Friends and family? Hardcore progression? Somewhere in between?
"Progression" in PvP isn't that well defined. I guess "winning" is progression.
A guild of nice, smart, skilled folks is the goal.
Also, since you will be rolling on a new server, how will you go about finding recruits in the first place? Old friends? Connections (like posters from your site)? Forum spamming? Random people who rolled on the same server
Levelling up will expose us to a lot of new people. Also, PvPing with folks (less so now b/c of x-server bgs, however :-/).
Also, personal question. Will you stick with warrior or will you come back to the mage class?
Sticking with warrior; though I will probably transfer over my mage after 6 months and might take him to 70 too. Warrior fits my playstyle better :P
How long until the axiom "Best Practices" becomes mandatory for all thread subjects?
edit: Just noticed Igni's new title. I'm glad I'm not the only one!
I LOVE my new title!
Anyway, why does it bother you? It's six threads among forty or so rotating across the first page. Several people have found them of value and most of them have generated good discussion. Further, I'm not bumping them artificially.
Even the EJ poster who gave me a new title acknowledged that they contain good information. He only indicated that he'd have preferred them to be in one thread - which I feel would have diluted the discussion - or spaced out further - which I do agree with.
You will see fewer posts from me because a) I've collected enough information to begin work, b) I've hacked into my own web site so I can focus on writing out my policies and plans there and c) Shail of EJ would like to see me post less.
But no one's forcing you to read them, so I fail to see the problem.
Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.
It depends on what you're trying to build in a guild. Our goal in a guild is a small "family" raiding guild. We want all of the members to know each other and to get along. This will be extremely important come TBC when we need folks to feel comfortable making 5/10 man groups all the time and going off having a good time together without the "raid leaders" to keep people in control.
Our application is short and to the point, Name, Characters, Time to contact you. We then conduct a lengthy interview on Vent, no mic, no interview, no membership. Sure this probably excludes some great raiders that refuse/can't speak for whatever reason but it also eliminates a lot of other issues. If you make it through the interview, its on to phase 2.
The cantidate is now a Trial Member for the next two weeks and at the end of that period we'll have a vote by the existing guild members for admission. We not only want people who are good at what they do but also people who fit into the environment. Above people have stated voting turns it into a popularity contest which is true in some ways but it also commits people to trying a bit more to get to know the new members during the trial period and if the person is admitted they know that it wasn't just the "damn leadership letting this jerk in", it was all of their friends/peers believing in the new recruit as well.
As far as the: How do you go about getting the "right people" to want to join your guild? This is a much more difficult question to answer in a concise manner because well people spend years in college learning to build organizations so I'll avoid trying to explain it all here. One starter question to think about making sure you have the answer to is: "If I want to recruit people like me, what would make me interested in joining a guild?" After you've done all the stuff to answer that to yourself run it by a potential cantidate and see if your vision there interests them as well.
What I'd like to know is how to recruit new members to a guild that is just starting raiding. It's one thing if you have a lot of success already and can say, yeah we've killed Rag or Nef. But what if you're a guild working on getting 20 mans all in guild? It's been particularily hard for us to get new recruits, even though we did kill Hakkar our 3rd time in ZG.
We have very usual questions, nothing too fancy, I read so many applications I don't even look at the entire application usually, though I do look at all the applications. I normally look at these three things:
1. Gear
2. Guild History, why they left.
3. Availability to make raids.
Things that stick out are if a person lists their high attendence with the previous guild.
People who make apps that are aestheticaly pleasing, well ordered with good spleling are generally more considered.
- Invitations?
We have an application guild, called In Stock(Get it, Sold Out, In Stock? haha yeah...) that we guild applicants with, it helps organize apps and makes it extremely easy to see who is online, also it gives them gchat and stuff, which can be somewhat counterproductive because they're competing with eachother somewhat ;D
Invitations are not done by me, though if I ask our raid leader to invite one or two people to try them out on a farm night they usually get invited. With exceptions to things like wanting 8 warriors for 4H, so inviting an eight app warrior to an AQ clear or a spider/abom/plague clear, we give raid invites on a "we need you now" basis.
- Trial periods?
We keep it undefined. For members with a history of drama or other personal rather than attendence/skill problems, we have longer trial periods. When we recruited a MT from a guild that had a history of being a solid level headed guy, it was like, two weeks. When we recruited the female in question of a famous WoW video where she screamed at someone, it was like 2 months or maybe 3.
- Voting by the existing guild members?
We are a dictatorship, ginvites are decided by our GM. I don't believe in voting for a guild our size, nor do I believe in officer voting, though I can see some guilds being more suited to this.
- Points of decision? When do you make the call "guild this person" or don't?
Often it's caused by an event, IE: going from Arthas to MG had us /ginvite every app that went with us, or perhaps someone got a nice piece of loot. Most of the time it's just our GM deciding someone should be guilded.
We're not in a rush to guild peolpe because 1: they are given the same looting rules as members and 2: they have access to our raid forum. Giving someone a longer apping period does not hurt them, the only thing they get when they join is gchat and our other privat eforums.
- How to tell someone no?
For someone who doesn't show up to raids, we just state they need to show up to raids on their app then a few days later we move their thread. For someone who shows up but sucks or causes drama, we generally tell them honestly once we reach a decision. For someone who shows up but doesn't get raid invites, it can be problematic because we're usually not sure if we need them or not, sometimes we string people along and then reject them or they move on, and that's regretable.
The two things we try to do is be truthful and respectful to apps. Some people disrespect apps for a variety of reasons, but we don't feel this is the best course of action, so we are very professional about it.
Something that we started doing 4 months ago (while reforming the guild) and that saved us much more trouble.
- Discuss the apply in the private section of your guild forum, inviting everyone to post. No important conversation in the public section.
- Invite everyone to give an opinion, and to argument it. Candidatures with argumented "no's" will be rejected. This may include think like "this demo is too lazy to summon people" or "I don't like his voice on TS". Say what you have at heart. Opinions from peole of the same class arre of course the more important ones
- Have a somewhat long trial period
- If you invite someone, REMOVE ALL COMMENTS on his app on the private forum (and, erase the subject) before granting the app member access. This is an extremely important point as it encourages any negative feedback or doubt to be posted in the forum. When several players have a doubt, then no doubt is warranted anymore.
- Gkick people whose attendance drops massively just after a ginvite
One thing to restress, is regardless of whether a new applicant is going to be accepted or not, you really want to make sure that he leaves the situation of his first encounter with your guild with a good impression. If he's a good recruit, you want him to enjoy playing with the guild, and you don't want to do anything to alienate him or make him feel unwelcomed or disrespected for whatever reason. If he's a bad recruit, you still want him walking away thinking of your guild in a good light, in the case he later wishes to apply when he's improved, or incase he refers a good friend to possibly apply.
Other than that, another most important thing I would say from my experience is be firm and decisive, don't give mixed impressions and don't delay and cause misunderstandings, they can be a magnet for drama and such.
-Cerralius
60 Mage, Shattered Hand
http://ctprofiles.net/7009
10/09/06, 1:16 AM
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