Recruitment. Just that one word makes me want to run for my mommy. Of all the administrative tasks a guild has to handle, recruitment is the one I most loathe.
“Is this too many melee DPS? Wait, do we need more ranged? Is five warlocks on the roster really too many? Wait, I thought we had like six resto druids…”
Apotheosis is getting very close to being basically full for Cataclysm’s launch. Actually, we’re probably already sitting at full, but there’s always something that will come up and throw a monkey wrench in our plans. You have to allow for RL emergencies, RL schedule changes, RL issues in general, as well as burnout, general malaise, boredom and the like.
Not to mention the fact that our raid attendence requirement is 75% over four weeks. That means an average of 2 nights a week and then one week where you raid for 3 nights, to maintain Raider status.
So if the typical raid requires, say, six healers, you need a minimum of 8 or so on the roster in order to mathematically make sure you’re covered in terms of attendence.
If the typical raid requires 2-3 tanks, you want to make sure you have 4 who can all do the job at about the same level of competency (ie: not using potentially poorly-geared offspec tanks to start out).
Plus, you kind of want things to be relatively balanced. At least I do. I don’t think five of one spec/class is a good thing, but we currently have five warlocks interested; two destro, one demo, one aff and one undecided. Does five warlocks screw us over? No, but it makes fitting them all into a raid more difficult if every one of them shows up on the same night.
I’m working on a second recruitment/pre-Cata video right now. I hope to have that up tomorrow sometime and a third one up in two weeks. And then a “ZOMG CATACLYSM” video the day before launch.
It’s kind of weird, recruiting for a guild that hasn’t done a whole lot this expansion. I mean, if you want to get really technical, we’ve gotten up to Thaddius in Naxx 25, got Sarth (no adds) and didn’t get Maly.
That’s sad.
In the couple of weeks pre-4.0, we did get to 11/12 ICC 10.
And this last week, we got Lower Spire and Plagueworks down, Blood Prince Council down and Valithria Dreamwalker rescued.
So, really, 9/12 ICC 25 (regular!) isn’t terribly impressive.
Until such time as we get a couple heroic modes under our belts, I’m recruiting based on the success we had in BC. Yeah. Not a lot of people particularly care what we did two years ago. ;)
Still, we’re filling up those spots on the roster and getting there.
I’ve posted to the Alliance recruitment forums (old and new), the realm forum (old), MMO-Champion, WoWhead forums, LookingForGuild.net and edited our info on Wowprogress.
Anywhere else I should post? Like, where do rogues hang out? Seriously. WTB a rogue or two. And an enhancement shammy!
Recruitment is a pain in the ass. I’m happy the roster is more or less complete but there will come the day when we’ll have to open it up again and that will be the day I cry. Indeed, you attract hopefully the right members for the right guild, but then all of a sudden you end up with a recruit who just plain shouldn’t be there. Who doesn’t get the point of wiping because, hell, what is he doing in 10man heroic ICC, he’s decked out in heroic 25-man gear, he could faceroll this in his sleep! Or you get applicants who nitpick everything about the guild in whispers as soon as you log on, and you spend half an hour answering questions and slowly realizing they’re definitely looking in the wrong place. Or they don’t get why you have to maintain a viable off-spec in a 10man guild and whine at me that they’ll just heal/tank all the time anyway. Argh!
*goes back to never-wanna-recruit-again-cave*
You probably don’t know about it, since I haven’t been blogging or otherwise active on the internet lately, but I’ve switched mains to my dear beloved Enhancement Shaman now. I got her level 80 two weeks ago and almost ready to join my guild’s regular raids.
It is exactly the recruitment that’s been giving us a hard time, as well. We’re desperately trying to fill some gaps, and with a 10 man raid group, each person missing hurts a lot. One of our gaps was for an enhance shammy, which I can now fill myself. But to be honest, I can imagine what it’s like to have a 25 man group to fill. I cannot express how much I respect GL’s who manage to keep that up.
I still would’ve loved to raid with you for once, Kurn. Unfortunately, it’s impossible.
PS. I hope you don’t blame me for basically killing my Holy spec on my paladin in favor of a Prot spec. I just couldn’t do it. Our Shadow Priest outhealed me on Putri hc (10 man). I just can’t do it anymore, but I might give it another try when I get my pally to lvl 85. I’ll be relying on your awesome blogposts to get the most out of it by then :)
I actually really enjoyed recruitment, when I last was responsible for it and did it in a previous guild. I loved all aspects of it – I loved the social part and the interviews. I loved the sleuthing and reading up on applications and reading the fine print to see what was legit and what wasn’t. I loved finding things for my applicants to do and keeping them busy.
The minute it stopped being fun is when I was doing much more than just recruitment, when recruitment stopped being all I was responsible for. Then I had a problem with it. But if that was my sole responsibility and the extended facets of it… I really enjoyed it and miss it.
:)
I’d actually been considering applying on my rogue (Nightrush, Duskwood), but for two reasons: With a 14 month old that has problems getting to sleep at a certain time, I’m not sure that I’d be able to handle the raid attendance requirements (you can see this from the level of gear on Night, he just hasn’t been able to do heavy raiding due to this), and more importantly, I’d have to convince my better half (Karley, Duskwood) to come with. And given that we each have 10 toons on Duskwood (well, 9, and a name saved for our worgens), I’m not sure I’d be able to convince her to server-change her main.
So I guess I’ll just live vicariously through your blog. Best of luck in Cata, and looking forward to reading on your successes here!
P.S. If you can find where rogues hang out, let me know. There’s a dearth of up-to-date rogue blogs in the blogosphere. =^/
Because of the fact that Apotheosis has not done much this expansion, I think that the people who you already have are either A.) old friends who have already raided with you, B.) readers who want to raid with you, or C.) people who are okay with building a guild from scratch in the new expansion. Either way, it’s win/win – you know you don’t have folks who are looking to ride a successful guild’s coattails that had a successful Wrath run.
Of course, the bad part will be recruiting those last few “strangers”. I can see Apotheosis being a guild that people stick around in, but strangers that come in just based on the guild advertisement on the forums can be … iffy. It’ll be interesting, I think, once we start raiding in Cataclysm. I think putting that “due date for 85” is going to help – if people see that we are raiding as a guild earlier than other guilds, then we may just pull in some other raiders from successful guilds of slow levelers.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens – I have a good feeling about Apotheosis, despite the recruiting pains. And you are doing it the right way, for sure – your blog is a great place to recruit since you know that folks applying from your blog are people that aren’t diving headfirst into something they don’t know anything about.
As long as you don’t hold back – I fully expect to see you picking Apotheosis raiders apart in the future on here. :-D
Lidanya – Good Lord, I hate it. I’m glad to see other GMs/officers hate it, too. ;) We were lucky in BC and got a lot of people who fit in, personality-wise, and only a few who didn’t, who got informed their trial had ended and hey, thanks for your time, buddy… ;) A druid and a warlock, in particular, are two players I remember who did not fit in at ALL.
I’m hoping most of my new players (those recruited from personal experience or my blog aside) are the types who WOULD wipe on 10m heroic, who DO agree with the ideals of the guild, who will offspec for us if we need them to. It’s always a bit of a gamble, though.
I’m glad your roster’s pretty set! It’s ugly out there in recruitment land!
Kaboomski – Traitor! ;) Whatever makes you happy, to be honest. There’s no better time than right now to make a change.
Filling a 25-man guild sucks to be sure. I feel really fortunate that I’ve got so many previous members who were interested in starting up again and that so many of my readers have crawled out of the woodwork to throw their hats in.
Oestrus – Ooh, what kinds of things would you get the applicants to do? I’m all intrigued! And what kinds of things did you end up doing apart from recruitment that made it unfun?
Agnostique – That would be a lot of money to transfer all those toons! Apart from the raid attendence requirements (definitely challenging with a little one!), the money alone would give me pause.
I will happily report the successes here, to be sure! :)
… and if I find rogue blogs/etc out there, I will surely let you know!
Dahrla – It’s interesting you mention “building a guild from scratch”. I sort of more feel as though we came back to Eldre’Thalas and Apotheosis was nothing more than some hot coals. With careful fanning and feeding, I think we’ve got a cozy little fire going on! You know, just your basic campfire. I think we can turn it into an inferno as we jump into Cata stuff.
It makes me wonder what, exactly, is the difference between a guild that’s been away from each other for 19-20 months and one that was pretty active this expansion, but lost half its roster and had to bring in new people?
Hm. Food for thought. :)
We basically are expecting people to be 85 around the 28th of December and spend the next week farming heroics for gear for the raids on the 4th of January. We’ll be keeping an eye on the slower levellers, etc, of course and will recruit to fill if we need to.
It would be silly not to use the blog to recruit. I kind of wish I desperately needed healers; I think I’d be flooded with apps! ;)
As to picking apart the guildies here… ehhhhhhhh. haha. Hopefully I won’t have too much picking apart to do! ;) But I will likely be vague about any major issues on the blog while the role officers address the individuals personally. It’s kind of difficult to hide the blog when you’re a GM and it’s all hosted on the same domain as the guild, so I’m going to be respectful, even when I’m pissy. ;)
I will happily show myself screwing up, though!
tankspot.com for some reason while recruiting for the cata launch that is where the most of the people that actually came into game, looked me up and talked to me extensively came from.