VHL Recruitment, The Importance and History

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Recruitment has always been one of the most important jobs in the VHL. It is one of the most important jobs in any simming league. If a league cannot keep a steady flow of fresh members, it puts the league in a period of inactivity. It puts more pressure on the current members to stay consistent, as they are literally the only ones holding the league’s legs up at that point in time. A league can survive a period where the well is dry, we have seen it in the VHL during a few different era. It’s scary, it brings the fear that the end is near and the league is on the verge of collapsing. That is where recruitment is critical. Having a good recruitment team who can get creative can pull a league out of the weeds.
 

Even a good recruitment team can struggle, they’re going down every avenue and pulling all the tricks but the well is still dry. I’ve personally experienced this. During my time in the VHL, I’ve held many jobs. Recruitment was one of them during my early days in the VHL. We definitely took advantage of the YouTube boom, which is still a very relevant form of recruiting today. I also recruited a good chunk of my real life friends while we were in high school. I at one point got 10 members in just from home, all active for at least a brief stent. I was ironically recruited from my best friend, so it was a chain. Going on YouTube and posting the link on “Proboards” main forum was a big method of members joining at one point. This was called the “teen bloom” where during the teen years of the VHL (S15-S20) we started driving in new members using this method. I was in the YouTube video making game for a while. Had the elite tools such as Microsoft Movie Maker to get the job done. Throughout my VHL tenure I’ve been lucky enough to come across some awesome graphic creators in the league. They were never shy to share their skills for the sake of recruitment.

 

It is pretty cool to see advertising on websites such as YouTube and social media such as Facebook is still relevant to today’s recruitment. Also you have Twitter and Instagram to throw into the mix and can use hashtags to help draw attention. It seems Reddit may be the biggest tool to add to the gauntlet. Reddit is so popular and used by so many. Also the VHL sister pipeline with leagues such as the SBA draw huge benefits with the affiliate TPE links available. I am sure there are plenty of forums to openly advertise our link to. What I am curious is to what other tools or resources the modern recruitment team uses that have not been used in the past. I imagine they’ve had to get quite creative. The league could be trending towards another period of limbo if we enter another “ice age” where we see a freeze of new members.