As CEO of a small HighSec corporation I’m faced from time to time with the need of filling up the rows of my loyal minions corpmates. Grabbing new players or drawing the attention of veteran players isn’t sometimes as easy as you may think…
Many different concepts of corporation compete against each other. Your corp is about mining? Cool story Bro, but there are about 298437493028 corps out there who have the same context, can provide the same imba-max Orca/Rorqual Boost and have the same daily business in eating belts. Just the type of space differs. A player may choose between HighSec, LowSec, 0.0 or w-space.
You have the same problem with any other kind of corp or guild or whatever you want people to get in. YOUR concept is always a copy or being copied by someone.
And here comes the masterquestion: What makes other player to join your corporation?
Attraction
To attract new players you need to be special. The presentation or your recruitment advert in different forums or the official recruitment chat is everything about: “Get attraction of player X, present yourself as interesting as possible in 3 seconds.”
This is the time given from mother nature to human race to decide if an information is relevant or irrelevant. Because of this, pictures are always a good start to stop people from just clicking to the next advert. In my corporation we have had some “special” themed recruitment pictures:
These pictures are not filled up with senseless We-have-stuff information. These pictures make people stop and eventually reading the we-have-stuff information provided below.
The recruiting officers work is not ending with adverting the corp in the EVE forums and accepting players to join or not.
Recruitment is kind of a psychological game, where you try to persuade others to trust* you, where you pretend others to have the perfect corp which fits perfect to the player who is interested to join, while you make the paranoid background chec.
The balance of powers
You also have to decide: Does the Recruit fit to my corp mentality? Is he like a ticking bomb you cannot control, or will he be a loyal follower and real benefit for your corp? What are the measurement you set on new corp joinlings?
The hard thing is always to balance your corpmates. As smaller your corp is, as often the people are in contact with each other. This might bring up some conflicts you have to deal with as CEO. Due you’re not interested in investing your gametime in solving problems of people who can’t stand each other, you have to kick or reject people who seem not optimal for your constellation. Kicking or rejecting from a corp should always come with a small explanation.
A warm welcome
It’s not smart to expect everything from your new corpmate from the first day. They need their time to get in, to eventually relocate their stuff and organize themselves with all the links and new rules they’re confronted within the first hour in you corporation. Give them a slow start for “getting in business” with you.
But he can expect everything from you! Only this way he will stay for a longer time. Be patient, be nice and be helpful. Even if you have currently really no time for EVE due RL issues or whatever – always make sure they are integrated in some activities other corpmembers are doing.
The most deadly thing is to “forget” your new corpmates. The first two weeks after someone joined a corp are essential for him in his decision to stay or to leave it again and watch out for a new -better- corp.
So far
Jezaja
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* imho trust is the highest currency in EVE