Opera Campus Crew Blog

[/URL] For our larger Crew branches, we encourage you yesterday to “Get It Together”: meet each other, decide who will do what, make plans, and get social! For our many branches with just a few members and feel that extra people would increase their capacity for activities, we are now helping you with a “Recruitment Blitz”!

For other information about planning recruitment and sending the right message to potential members, check out our other recruitment post.

And This Is How You Do It...
Before you begin, consider how many members you want to recruit, as this affects the amount of promotion you should do. Consider what type of students would be most interested in joining the Campus Crew (What do they study? What year?), and where on campus to find those people. Also, make sure you have a good understanding of the benefits and activities of the Crew (see the Campus Crew webpage) so you can explain these to potential members, and check out our analysis of the top 10 reasons people join the Campus Crew.

Here is a list of ideas to help you recruit new members on your campus. If you have more ideas, please add them in the comments!
• Hang recruitment posters around campus (you can provide us a translation for the text if you wish, and we will make the poster for you), particularly around computer labs, libraries, cafeterias, student centres or buildings where IT or web design classes are held (check if you need permission to do this)
• Approach IT, computer science or web design departments at the campus and ask if you can:
- Speak at the beginning of a related lecture for two minutes (you could show the Opera Campus Crew and Opera Education slideset, available in PDF or Open Office format)
- Place a flyer-sized (eg A5) version of the recruitment poster on each chair before a related lecture
- Put an announcement on the department’s webpage or newspaper
- Send out an email to all students in the department about it
• Hand out a flyer version of the recruitment poster (especially outside the room of a related lecture finishes)
• If your school/university has a group on a social network (eg Facebook) and put an announcement there
• Find out if your campus has an area of its website especially for campus groups, and see if you list there
• If your campus runs days for campus group booths during the first ‘orientation’ weeks after vacation, find out if you can have a booth there
• Hold a presentation or Demo Day, and bring interest sheets where people can write their email address for more information, or bring a laptop so people can sign up straight away

Take a look around campus and see how other campus groups promote their activities. Campus Crew members have also found that presentations or Demo Days are great opportunities to recruit members, too! Good luck!