Recruiting

[afroney]

Question for every team:

How do you guys find quality people?

ISU FSAE has been in a slump with membership. Its pretty much down to 5 people that actually build the car, and 2 people who spend more than 20hrs/week in the shop.

Our problem is finding quality members. Every year, we have 50 people that show up, and most of them leave. I would say that the problem is that 95 percent of the incoming engineers at ISU are either too stupid or lazy to contribute to the team. It sounds harsh, but its the truth. Trouble is finding the 5%. It seems that Iowa State University is lacking quality people nowadays...

How do you guys keep recruit/retain members?

[afroney]

Question for every team:

How do you guys find quality people?

ISU FSAE has been in a slump with membership. Its pretty much down to 5 people that actually build the car, and 2 people who spend more than 20hrs/week in the shop.

Our problem is finding quality members. Every year, we have 50 people that show up, and most of them leave. I would say that the problem is that 95 percent of the incoming engineers at ISU are either too stupid or lazy to contribute to the team. It sounds harsh, but its the truth. Trouble is finding the 5%. It seems that Iowa State University is lacking quality people nowadays...

How do you guys keep recruit/retain members?

[J. Vinella]

I have seen this a few times on the forums. There are a few good threads. It is a hard question to answer. I'll give my 2 cents for the day:

We are lucky to have SAE as a credit class here at UW. That being said only a couple take it for credit each quarter. How do we keep the other people? We have a decent sized team. Many come and go as you have experienced, and I wish I knew the secret to making them stay. I know a few people on other FSAE teams and they do not have SAE as a credit course; they say the major difference in my experience and theirs is organization. Passion is great to get people involved but if you are not organized people can lose interest fast.

There is that old adage: 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I bet this holds true for most teams out there. It's just another good learning experience that FSAE teaches you. Some people are hard working and some are flakes.

We often show our car in public events like the Engineering Open house and other big events. Many people come up and ask questions, about 5% actually come to a meeting about out of that 5% probably 1 will stay on the team. Meeting people in class is another good way to recruit. I never pressure them to join the team, just a gentle nudge. The people that join the team on their own are usually the best.

Good luck,

[John Stimpson]

This is a massive problem with our team right now. We have perhaps 10-15 people "on" the team.

Of those 10-15, there are maybe 4 people that have legitimately put good effort forth to get the '07 car done in one way or another. As far as building/fabrication of the car goes however, we have 1 person doing 95% (or more) of the work. You read that right!

I think part of the problem is having patience for newbies. Fact of the matter is that almost all newbies have never worked in a shop before, and don't have the first idea how to use equipment to build things. When a newbie makes something, and its complete crap, not worthy of being on a go-cart with a rub-the-wheel brake, how do you not piss them off when you explain its not going to work/not good enough? Its a big turn off to them when their ideas aren't good and get shot down. A bigger turn off to them when they put effort forth to build something and it gets shot down.

Then you've got the skilled people that have built cars/engines in the shop with their dad since they were 10. In my experience, these people want to walk in the first day and be chief engineer running the show. After coming down a few times, they feel like they're being shit on because everything isn't done "their way", and they stop coming.

Anyone else notice that when an interested freshman gets involved with a fraternity, they are LONG GONE?

Crazy, Kettering University used to be called "General Motors Institute", and we are highly acclaimed as car guys. How we can't get some true, experienced car people down to the shop to build a frickin' racecar is way beyond me.

[Mike Flitcraft]

First off, I don't know how some of the members can put in the hours they do and balance school at the same time. They know who they are, and they're largely responsible for the car getting finished.

I just started contacting instructors of mandatory courses, to see if we could get a chance to talk to the class. I've had pretty good response, especially from the co-op courses, but dont' ahve any dates from the instructors yet.

I think the only way to get car guys into the shop, experianced or otherwise, is to do a mass recruiting campaign, we're at our smallest team number in eyars. The folks that aren't that interested will drop like flies, the experianced will start designing and manfucaturing, and the new guys (like me) will start where we can help.

I've had experiance reparing since a young age, but this is my first year of designing and fabrication on this scale. Needless to say, I'm learning quite a bit.

Edit: I guess I'm an interesting subject for this. 22 years old, freshman. I've learned to take critizism and relize the more that I get, the better I can improve on something. Most folks in college are right out of high school and have never held the same job for more than a year straight, and I don't count pizzas as a job, been there, done that.

The thing I find funny is most people it seems are too worried about hurting what feelings are left in me by telling me that I'm screwing something up, doing something the hard way, or something's complete crap.

[John Stimpson]

You touched on this, but I'd like to reiterate it and bring it into the light:

The new potential members that are older are almost ALWAYS keepers! When you come across a 22+ year old freshman, or transfer student, GET THEM INVOLVED! They're by far the best.

Last year in Cali, it was pretty obvious the older the team members looked, the better their car looked and the better it performed.

Sorry if this offends the youngsters, but 25 year olds know whats going on better than 19 year olds, basically without exception.

[Mike Flitcraft]

Yeah, Ben Frisby and a few other folks couldn't believe that I was a freshman. Apparently, according to them, I either know too much to be a freshman, or look too old.

[DustinJones]

The University of Evansville has gone through the same thing. We've got 20 members on our team, and 6 or so of us that do 90% of the work, and our car is even considered a class project for credit. Granted 5 of those 20 are freshman and are still learning the basics of machining. We usually pair the underclassmen with the upperclassmen, it helps with passing the information on to future classes. The prospect of driving the car is usually a good enticement to get potential engineers on the team, its just a matter of their work ethic to see how they do.

[Jersey Tom]

Same thing happens every year, though you get periodic fluctuations in the amount of "good" solid core members and how much they're driven.

I feel the 2007 car, or possibly 2008, will be a peak for CU Racing, though its hard to predict after that. Past couple years started as kinda redneck engineering, and through knowledge transfer and some intensive study has gone up orders of magnitude in quality.

We have 9 seniors on the team this year, 5 of which returned from previous years for a total of 11 man-years experience coming onto the team. Also had have some long-time alumni around helping out here and there. Of the 9 seniors we have now, most put in a good amount of work, and 2-3 put in the long long hours. At this point I'm doing 40-50 hrs a week on top of class.

Underclassmen, think we have 15 total. 4-5 of them have been absolutely tremendous in getting the car done. And I agree with John, a lot of times the older people, even if new to the team, have a lot more maturity and proactivity. Next year's team I think will be a bit more driven and organized, though will be losing out on a lot of fabrication knowledge and facility access.

Its tough to motivate peers. I think its particularly difficult for people who have been on the team and then do it for senior design.. while they may have come done work when it was just volunteer work on their spare time.. the fact that theyre now responsible for work and have to get it done when it means throwing away some social life, etc.. doesn't always work out.

[Yellow Ranger]

For the past 9 years I've been with volunteer organizations (not just FSAE) I have noticed that a 5% retention rate is normal under most conditions. When our team acknowledged the fact that we were loosing 6 seniors this year (our 90% of the team) we new that recruiting was not something we could brush aside. That's why when the year was started- I knew the team needed at least 7 new members on the team which meant having 150 names on a roster.

Here we are, two and a half months before Detroit and we have 7 new, good members (two of which are freshmen) and we started with 136 on the new member roster. The key is to get your name out there, reach out to the community, recruit, but that "90% of the team"� will find you, and stay with the program; the hardest part is keeping those people. Assuming your retention skills don't involve you being impatient with new members and making "newbies"� do bitch work rather than learning key habits and skills, keeping those people should be easy- but then again, some people tend to neglect the obvious.