Recruiting Tips

Recruiting new team members may sound like alot of work to some.  The work for us came in when we started getting so many kids we had no idea what todo.   

Lets start with how to get the word out about your new team. "Word of mouth"  Just asking friends and family can fill a team up quick. We also asked our kids teacher to get the word out in the kids class. The teacher sent an email out and about two days later I was getting swamped with calls.

The next step is to inform the parents. We held a informtaion meeting to tell the parents what FIRST Lego is about and how our team would join the league. During the meeting we also covered the Mindstorm robots to show them thats its not just a lego group. That step helped alot with finding out which kids wanted to build robots and what ones just wanted to play with legos. The meeting also covered the commitment the kids and parents will need to have to join the team.  Some teams have also used this time to have the kids fill out applications to help pick kids for the team. Our team just went on a first come first in policy.

After the parents  meeting we started having team meetings. The recruiting didnt stop there. In the beginning you might not have a full team or you will find kids might decide to drop off the team. Our team kept a waiting list since we had so many that wanted to join. When someone left the team we would call the next kid and ask them to come check out one or two meetings. We used those meeting for two main reasons. One is to ensure the kid and parents really want to join and the second is to be sure the child is mature enough to handle the robot building, programming and of course team work.