Recruitment Theme Week Thoughts

[Corco 1,281]

Recruitment is vital to any online sim league; without a strong recruitment efforts, leagues would grow stagnant with members and slowly begin to die (and I believe that was what was beginning to happen in the VHL a short time ago, but I wasn't active at the time so I'm not 100% positive). Always having a fresh batch of newer members provides a league with a new perspective, as those newer members often have the freshest idea for what will bring people to the league, and I feel like the current VHL does a very good job of that. League management understands the importance of having a strong recruiting system, and promotes it with aplomb, however it wasn’t always this way.

 

Now, this is going off my memory, which may not be 100% accurate, but when I joined the league ~2013, recruitment was not NEARLY as intense as it is today. I was only on the SHL at that time, and I had only heard about the VHL in some casual chatter with some SHLers, so I went to check it out and see for myself. I likely received a welcome PM, but I can’t recall. The main point is that I immediately felt unwelcome, as I could feel a sense of elitism with the VHL, with certain members postulating that the VHL was the “big boy” sim league, and other leagues, especially the SHL, were seen as childish and inferior. Now, the members saying those things weren’t league management, but still, to hear that as a new member was not a good sign. In my first few seasons in the league I felt like this mindset persisted, and eventually it went away, but I cannot remember if it went away because I just got used to it, or because it actually went away. Thankfully, I don’t feel like the league acts like this as much anymore, but then again, I’m also not the most active person in the Discord, which is where most league discussion takes place now, so I could be wrong.

 

The league has many more features that aid in member retention now in comparison to when I joined; the portal, improvement in the VHLM, World Juniors, etc. Mentioning the World Juniors is a bit of a toot to my own horn, as I created it when I was VHLM Commissioner in S55, but all of the additions have been fantastic; if the portal had been around when I first joined the league, I feel like the VHL would be even further along in its development as a sim league than it is right now. Don’t get me wrong, I think the VHL is in a VERY good place right now in terms of member retention and recruitment, but hey, it could always be better right? I’ve always been interested in what the maximum amount of players the VHL could have would be, and if you had told me 30 seasons ago how many active members we would have now, I wouldn’t have believed you.
 

[Victor 11,043]

I never understood the idea of us being elitist when we are so clearly better than everyone else.

[Beketov 9,140]

1 minute ago, Victor said:

I never understood the idea of us being elitist when we are so clearly better than everyone else.

Elitist implies there’s some competition.