Recruitment - the story

Something that has cropped up recently as a topic in my guild is recruitment.  But first, a story of how I got into the next more factual post.

I was out doing some trade spam to garner some new recruitment through our application process, I got a couple of bites and I had a chat to them.  They seemed like nice people but possibly not up to the technical standard we were looking for.  I told them to apply on our forums anyway, as the officers of the guild told me to.

I then mentioned in vent that a few new apps were up and could the appropriate class peoples eyeball them.

This elicited a rather interesting response behind my back, and not one I am entirely comfortable with as a guild member.  I have come to realise that in my attempts to try to help out, that people are polarising with my efforts.  Many people know I ran a guild for a long time - and I have a lot if information and experience on how to do things.  What works? what doesn't work?  And I am vocal in passing on my opinion and experience in the guild forums, but always trying to make it clear that the officers are the ones who make the decisions and it is up to them.  I am also active in trying to get people into the guild in whatever way the officers say I am allowed to.  At the moment, I have permission to trade spam.  So, since I don't get time to get into a lot of pugs, I have been doing said trade spam to help out with recruitment.  I also bump our realm recruitment thread and keep it active.  I do this because I want to raid, not for any ulterior motive.  The more guild members help out, the better the guild becomes.  It really is very easy to sit back, do nothing, then complain when people don't show up or numbers are low or whatever.  WoW is an MMORPG - that means dealing with people as well as pixels.

But back to the story, one of the class peoples I mentioned above obviously started talking after I left vent last night about my trade spamming activities.  They then posted in our forums their displeasure at trade spam in general (leaving my name out of it, but it was very clearly a direct result of my actions) saying that trade spam for a 12/12 ICC guild was effectively beneath us, and by extension, my behaviour was almost out of line with his vision of the guild.  In fact, it seems that they were almost inciting a backlash to what I was doing deliberately, but passive aggressively.  I hate passive aggressive so I said that I was the trade spammer in the thread and that I had officer approval (which I did).

This has been compounded by the fact that the officers are talking about "a shakeup" and inviting new officers into their team for some new blood up there.  Quick piece of advice to officers out there? NEVER say there is going to be a "shakeup coming" and "new officers" until you know who they are and promote them straight away or are immediately ready to put the officer selection process in place.  The bitching and disquiet created by people thinking they are the one in mind is not worth it.


Unfortunately, there has been one person who has been saying out loud that they think I am the person that they should take.  I have told him to STFU but... it's not working.  Person complaining about trade spam is quite active in the guild, is reasonably new, and could quite possibly be thinking that they are a candidate for that position and sees me as a threat.  That last bit is complete speculation on my part, I could be completely wrong and it is based in my paranoia.

*sigh*

If I were offered the position, I would actually suggest someone else instead and not me, but I am getting off topic.

There are a lot of strong personalities in this guild (including me!), it is very interesting to see them posture around each other.  I am also learning a lot about how important communication is within a guild.