Recruitment Ramble

[Tagger 2,722]

How many people have I recruited to the VHL?

 

Directly, zero. Since becoming an active member of the VHL around the end of Season 33, I haven’t had anything close to an online presence outside of the league. I don’t use Reddit and I’m not a member on any kind of hockey forum (mainly because I don’t watch hockey), so I haven’t really been in contact with anyone who liked hockey but didn’t know about the league. The lone affiliated sim league that I’d been in at the same time as the VHL was the short-tenured USFL (which existed around S39-S40 VHL time) and while some players did make their way over to the VHL from that site, none of them were through me.

 

Indirectly however, I did recruit Advantage to what I seem to remember was his first player sim league in the ISL (an American football league) and from there he found the VHL, so that’s pretty much my lone claim-to-fame when it comes to recruiting efforts. Back when I was on the recruitment crew as a “retainment specialist”, I did give my two cents in regards to my thoughts on proposed recruitment strategies from both Beaviss and Spade, but I don’t know if I actually came up with any of my own (and if I did, they weren’t used).

 

Which recruitment strategy have I seen that had the least payoff?

 

I would say our least effective adverts have come courtesy of the paid google and reddit ads. In fact, I cannot recall any VHL members who are currently on the site (although maybe this has changed at some point) having found the site through our paid advertisements on those platforms. I think it’s fair to say that we’ll never get anything close to bang-for-our-buck when it comes to those advertisements as we just don’t have the capital or the userbase to make a noticeable enough impact in those spaces. I don’t use Reddit to post, but every time I go on there, I see the same advert every single time multiple times on the same page and it’s usually some trash mobile game or app.  

 

Which recruitment strategy have I seen that had the most payoff?

 

I’d have to say our targeted reddit community posts, which played a huge part in us being able to stack the Season 63 Draft with talented prospects in a draft that really needed it (there were only five recreates taken in the first three rounds of that draft, and of them one was under an alias and another had not added any of his TPE to his player). Also, our affiliations (while not being on quite as good terms as before) continue to provide solid recruits.

 

Thoughts on current recruitment

 

To be honest, I can’t make a proper comment on this since I feel like I may be missing some of the recruitment strategies that are taking place right now, but it’s good to see that reddit posts are still going and that we’ve made a new affiliation with the PBE.