"Speed Dating" Recruitment Ideas

[jennlovesgphib]

Hey ladies!

I am the Chapter Advisor for Gamma Phi Beta, and recently our Membership VP decided that she would like to do a kind of "Speed Dating" for our Kick-off event. Unfortunately or not, however you think about it, our campus does not do formal recruitment. We are on a Continuous Recruitment plan. This means that everything is informal, and we are "no frills", so not a lot of decorating, we can't wear matching outfits, etc. Have any of you tried anything kind of like speed dating or have any suggestions as to how we could make this a fun recruitment event?

Thanks!

[33girl]

I have done speed dating (with another GCer) and it reminded us both EXACTLY of rush.

Do you rush in classrooms or the student center? You can just set up several pairs of desks facing each other and have rushees and sisters be paired...in speed dating you have like 10-15 minutes and you generally ask each other as many questions as possible. You would probably want to adjust this depending on how long you have for each party.

Be sure that not everyone in the room is paired the whole time because 1) if you have an uneven # of sisters and rushees, you don't want to have 3 rushees standing by themselves and 2) not every rushee will like the setup.

I don't understand though, if your campus doesn't have formal you should be able to be as frilly or unfrilly as you want....rules against frills are usually part of formal rush.

[jennlovesgphib]

Yeah, I've never understood exactly how the campus came up with their set of rules. However, one of them is no frills, which don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. We will probably be doing an event like this in more of a conference type room, one that can be big enough to do a circle of desks. You raise a good point about having more potential new members than sisters, which could very well happen because we are a small chapter.

I also thought it could be interesting to have it turn into some type of contest maybe??? Have people fill out cards when they meet people, and then do a kind of trivia thing at the end??? Don't know if that would really work out though.

[AOII Angel]

I think you'd have to make some kind of little game out of it, or it could look like a string of interviews to the rushees rather than a chance to get to know everyone. Maybe you could have different questions per station. Maybe you could even play musical chairs with sisters and PNMs getting up and scurrying around until the music stops and you talk to whoever is next to you. Having sisters sit at desks in a circle while PNMs get up and move down the line gives me a bad feeling. Think this through really well before implementing it.

[Just interested]

Cute idea!

[LAblondeGPhi]

Hmmm... I'm unsure about this idea. I love the concept of making the events more fun, but, like Angel said, you have to really think this out before you do it. Unfortunately, a lot of dating events (speed dating, online dating, singles nights, matchmakers, etc.) have a bad rap, and I don't want the chapter to inadvertantly carry along that negative stigma into the event, or PNMs to discount the idea before they get involved in it.

P.S. Check your Private Messages, I'm about to send you something.

[alphagamgirl06]

My chapter last year went speeding dating to practice for Rush. It was really awkward but it helped us out a lot. Of course it wasnt an official event cause boy arent allowed to help with rush preparations.

[PeppyGPhiB]

I am going to caution you against doing any type of trivia game that might scare the PNMs by putting them on the spot. If you do a contest, make it something fun and maybe non-sorority related so PNMs don't feel more pressure than they already do.

I'm also really urging you to not do the speed dating thing for rush. One of the sororities did that the year I rushed, and it was very awkward and made it feel like a cattle call. It was just a very unnatural type of setting for conversation - forced, and you felt like everyone next to you was listening to everything you said. It got a very bad reaction from PNMs, and the chapter never did it again. IMO a traditional rotation would work better, or even better than that (since it's COB), just form some recruitment groups and challenge all the members in certain groups to talk with certain PNMs at each event. COB is perfect for casual conversation and getting to see the "real" PNM.

[LAblondeGPhi]

I agree with PeppyGPhiB. Informal recruitment has so many opportunities to have fun activities, and because you have more than 30-40 minutes, like you would during formal recruitment, you don't have to be as structured to meet many women. You can allow the women to go with the flow a little bit more.

[couggirl]

The groups that I was involved in did trivia about the university. usually trivia that was talked about at orientation or campus tours. Things like, what was the universities origianal mascot, original colors, original name of the university. it was always fun to see who paid attention during orientation.