UNIVERSITY COALITIONS for GLOBAL HEALTH

Recruitment

Introduction | Strategic Recruitment | One on One Meeting

Introduction

If we want to rid the world of global health injustices, then we need join together in numbers. This means empowering all students – medical students, undergraduates and graduate students to take action.

People = Power

Recruitment involves identifying student leaders and developing their potential. Here are some general recruitment tips:

Recruit to events, not meetings
Recruit to every event you hold
Get a verbal commitment when you recruit
Repetition – people need to hear about your event at least seven times
Follow-up after the initial invitation
Follow-up within three days after a student comes to an event
Be creative in your outreach

Strategic Recruitment

Engaging new members involves developing a well thought out plan that goes beyond getting people to show up for an event. Recruit to develop new leaders and forward your advocacy mission. This can be done through strategic recruitment:

Targeting – Develop a strategy for recruiting who you need and want.
Identify who is likely to join and who you would like to attract. Try to be as specific as possible (for example: people living with HIV, medical students, etc.). Then determine how many new people you want to involve and create strategies that might reach out to your different target audiences.

Remember to consider connections and resources that a potential member will bring to your advocacy mission.
Personal ask – Face to face interaction is more effective than flyers. Personally ask people to attend one of the organization’s events or meetings.
One on one – Have a one on one meeting to discuss how your organization and the student’s interests are interconnected. This is really your chance to hear more about the leadership potential of the person.
Gradually train leaders – Once you have developed a strong group, start increasing the intensity of your ask so that you are incorporating them more and more in your organization. Remember to involve new people right away. Identify tasks for them at their first meeting.
Depending on the student, this process could take a few weeks or a number of years.

One on One Meeting

One on one meetings are directed conversation between you and a student. The purpose is to talk about what motivates their interest, introduce your organization and build a relationship with them.

Always remember the 4Cs when doing a one on one:

Connection – Try to find out something that you share in common with the student to make your interaction more personal.

It is important to let the person talk about their interests and actively listen to find areas where their interests and your issue/group overlap.

Context – Give a brief background/history on the issue and give the context of why he or she should care.

Talk only about 20 percent of the time and reinforce how their interests relate to your campaign. Also, don’t be too revealing – you want them to be slightly curious and intrigued so that they come the next meeting to find out more.

Commitment – Be direct about what you want from the person (ex: make a flyer, come to a rally etc.).

Communicate – Be clear about what you have agreed upon, what the next steps are going to be, when you are going to see/communicate with him or her next.