Recruitment

There are a lot of ways you can go about recruiting players to your corp, and most of them suck.

Here are just a few of the recruitment strategies you can use (and reasons why they suck):

1. Joining the recruitment channel - For a new player, this seems like an obvious place to find corps to join.  For a new CEO, it seems like a great place to recruit players.  But it's really not the best place to be looking for the latter if you're starting a new corp.

This is because there are a lot of established corps who advertise here, too, and a good portion of them who are PvP corps.  Any time you advertise your corp, you run the risk of being targeted by a bigger corp who likes stomp small corps into the ground.

Until you're confident you can fight-off waves of tech II battlecruisers, don't go around waving the "join noobie corp" flag.  You may not like the attention you get.

2. "Waving the noob corp flag" in local - There are few instances where mentioning that you're recruiting for a new corp is ever a good idea in local chat.  No one ever really talks in local in EVE, and when they do they're usually uneasy to discuss any sort of corporate plans.  It's just not good policy for your corp's security.

3. Purchasing ads from the recruitment menu - Don't waste the ISK.

4. Sending EVE mails with a recruitment message - This one works sometimes, but be careful about who you send it to and how you write your message.  If you write a general 'join my new corp' message, then don't spam old toons with it.  Odds are they'll either not pay any attention, or decide you're a juicy target.

If you send this to days-old toons, you'll have a little bit better luck, but not every new toon is a new player.  In fact, there are several who are just alts that established people use as scouts and spies.

Take your chances, but this method isn't worthless.  I've recruited a dozen or so people in my last corp through this method, and it takes less effort than the most effective method of recruitment, which is -

5. Private Chat - This is the best way to not only convince someone to join your corp, but also get an idea of a prospective recruit's personality and see if they're worth recruiting.  Personality does mean a lot (I recruit fun and dependable people over maxed-out skills all the time).  However, this method is the most intense for a CEO to undertake, the most delicate to practice effectively, and one of the most time-consuming activities you will do.

Before you even begin recruiting, you need to be able to communicate exactly what your corp does and how it does it.  This is half the reason why we started off making a corp structure and business plan.

You will also need to be prepared to answer these questions:

"What is a corp?"
"What does your corp do?"
"How will your corp help me?"
"What are the requirements for being in your corp?"
"Where does your corp spend most of its time?"
"What times (in real life) does your corp mostly play?"

Have an answer prepared beforehand for each of these.  Nothing looks worse to a prospective recruit than a recruiter who cannot give them the entire spill on their corp.

The best recruiters have more than just answers prepared for these questions, they have a process through which they deliver it (and a proces through which they judge the responses of the recruit).

Here's where your interviewing skills come into play.  It seems almost ridiculous to suggest this for a video game, but googling interview tips can help give you some ideas as to how to form your questions.

My process worked like this:

1. Scan local chat, hitting show info on everyone, looking for who might be good recruits.

2. Send them a chat invite and keep searching.

3. If they accepted, I lead of with a general, casual question to lead them get them interested in a conversation.  Usually it was something along the lines of "hey, how long you been playing?"

4. If they seemed up for a convo, I would keep it going, bating them toward my recruitment pitch.  Often it was with the phrase, "You ever do any work with corps?"

5. Depending on their answers here, I would either start my pitch, letting them know that my corp was recuriting, what kind of players we're looking for, and asking if they would be interested.  Or they would just say 'not interested' right off the bat, in which case I'd say 'thank you for your time, fly safe o7,' and leave.

6. If they were interested, the convo could go any number of ways.  Most players will ask the questions I listed above.  Your goal here is to answer them concisely while at the same time driving them toward giving you an answer

Something like:

"We offer perfect reprocessing rates, too, so you won't have to train those skills unless you want to.  The corp takes x% of the minerals, but it's less what you would give to an NPC faction.  So you get better refines, train fewer skills, don't have to build standing, and we've got some pretty cool peeps in corp chat :) Sound interesting?"

7. Even after your recruit sends an app, your job isn't over.  You have to make sure they receive a warm welcome from the people in your corp so they feel like they've made the right decision.  When you first start out without any members, you will be the one to keep the convo going.  However, once you have people in corp chat, all you have to do is ask your recruit to introduce themselves, and maybe even pop on over to corp chat yourself and say "hey guys, everyone welcome SPACE FIGHTER 9000! :)"

That was recruitment basics.  If you want to really boost your numbers, however, you need to create strategies.

A good strat for new corps is to camp a noob system and talk new players into joining.  Often they will oblige if you agree to teach them more about the game (and always remind them that they can leave a corp).  Having lots of new players join may not make your corp more effective, but the numbers make you look like a worthwhile venture for older players.

In turn, having experienced players makes you look appealing to both new and old players.  The first week I started recruiting for my first corp, I managed to recruit 20 players this way.  Not all of them were active, but the numbers made us look appealing enough start finding experienced players.

If you're looking to fill skill gaps in your ranks, then you should add that to your recruitment pitch.  Nothing too complicated, just ask them what they're levels in x skills are, and if they would be willing to train x skill to fill a role.  Careful with this one, lots of players don't like having their skill que restricted, so you want to make the goal a small one.  e.g., "We're looking for someone with good veldspar reprocessing, think you'd be willing to train for it?" instead of "We're looking for a goo reprocesser, think you could train (all these skills)?"

When you need to really make your numbers soar, then you can organize a recruiting night for your corp.  Mine once did this when we were faced with wardec.  We put guys at all the high traffic systems nearby and spent several hours chatting people in private, asking if they would be interested in PvP.  We were not only going for numbers here, but also filling skill gaps.  We managed to recruit about 12 new members in around 3 hours this way.

Also, don't forget about the online forums.  You'll find more experienced players here looking for corps than you would running around inviting people to private chats, but you'll also find lots of trolls (and again, people looking for new corps to smash).

Keep in mind that these are just the strategies I'm familiar with.  There are likely other, better ways to find new members, but you won't figure them out unless you ask experienced players.  For this reason, and many other, it's almost always a better idea to join an established corp before you try starting your own.

Hope this helps your recruitment efforts, good luck o7