My thoughts on Recruiting and Retaining

[animal74 1,803]

As someone who was familiar with the league, had a player ten years ago and came back, I have an idea about recruitment and an idea about retaining talent.

 

Social Media

I haven’t read any of the media spots on recruitment yet so a lot of ideas may be surrounding this but as we are an online league, I think we could leverage social media a lot more. I have worked in the IT field for many years and I have used social media to promote my own personal hobbies (Twitter and Facebook accounts with over 500 worldwide followers each in a niche area). I wouldn’t say I’m an absolute expert but I have a lot of experience. I understand that maintaining multiple social media accounts (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.) is a lot of extra work when running the league is already a lot of work. But if we want to expand the VHL brand and get more people interested, more social media/online presence is better. It’s easy to just have a marginal account. It’s a lot of work to make it visible and useful but I think some time invested in a few more platforms would go a long way in sustaining the VHL for the future. Perhaps make it a job position or two to run social media accounts. We are looking for people with very specific interests. We need to expand our web of influence to find those recruits. I realize that I’m speaking in generics and not specifics and I’d be happy to chat more about social media.

 

Website/Forum Navigation

I love the automation of the player management side of things. It makes life a whole lot easier to add on that TPE and create the player you want. As a newer player coming into the league a second time from when it was all manual, everything looks slick. Also as a new player, I’d say it took me about six months to get comfortable with how everything is laid out and I had some background to work from! There is a lot of information to learn, and having to bounce between the forums, the index, player management, and my player profile is very overwhelming when you’re trying to learn about:

• how to update
• what the stats mean
• where do I post media spots?
• where do I get welfare (oh, I have to post it before 10pm?)
• oh, VHL articles are in a different place
• what’s a press conference?
• someone’s trying to sign me
• now I’m drafted to a different VHLM team
• now there’s the VHL draft
• I want to write a historical article – where’s that info?
• do I have to go on Discord?
• where is this TPE category located?
• oh I need another post to claim the media spot twice

 

Those are just some of the questions I had and I had a bit of an understanding of how the league works already. I can imagine someone completely green must be looking at everything and wondering – Where do I start?

 

To be fair, the league has done a good job of getting relevant information to new recruits and one must understand that it takes some commitment to learn how the league works if you want to have fun and be successful. Also, not being a Discord user before I rejoined the VHL, I didn’t realize how helpful it was to be on your team's Discord (very!).

But, I think we still lose a lot of new players who are confused and frustrated by the sheer wall of information and I think the league needs to investigate simplifying the navigation for new players. My suggestions are as follows:

 

Navigation: A simple opening page (or otherwise easy to find) with links to the most valuable places for new recruits to find. No busy forum page with links and threads and updates and teams, etc. Just easy to follow links/descriptions that would ease a new recruit in.

 

FAQ/Glossary: To be honest, the search on the forum sucks. I think a FAQ page and/or a Glossary would help not only the players, but the vets and GMs who answer the same questions over and over again.

 

Processes/Schedules: I was very confused when I came in as to what was going on, how VHLM free agency/drafting worked, contracts, etc. I think the process needs to be laid out very simply with a timeline of the league schedule that is not on the forum and cluttered with comments and snide remarks (THAT CIRCUS MONKEY DID WHAT?!).

 

A lot of these may already been updated since I joined and there have been massive efforts by many people over the course of time to organize and consolidate and implement and archive. In no way am I belittling their time and efforts – in fact, I applaud them – but I just think this problem is indicative of how much the league has grown and it’s longevity – there is just data EVERYWHERE. I think another look at simplifying the initial dump of information that a new recruit needs to know and having answers in an easy-to-find location will go a long way in keeping many new stars as we embark on the next phase of VHL’s history.

Edited April 27, 2020 by animal74

[Beketov 8,996]

5 hours ago, animal74 said:

THAT POOR CIRCUS MONKEY!

I mean he’s the one doing the fisting so....

[animal74 1,803]

1 hour ago, Beketov said:

I mean he’s the one doing the fisting so....

Ah, true. It was late when I finished. I may have to edit that...

[diamond_ace 3,110]

6 hours ago, Beketov said:

I mean he’s the one doing the fisting so....

@.sniffuM your legacy lives on

[Matt_O 897]

Review

 

This a very well thought out response to recruitment efforts. I agree with you about social media specifically, since the last time I checked, the Instagram and Twitter for the VHL aren't active. I also completely agree about the search, it is pretty terrible. I do historical articles often and try to look up player names and other stuff, but it is very hard to find. The way you formatted this made it easy to understand. Your experience with social media could be used in a useful way, and I would hope that the higher ups contact you about that because you bring up a very fair point that this site is for a very specific group of people. Overall it was a well written, well thought out article with many good suggestions that can help recruitment and retention. 

 

9/10