July Recruiting Success Story

Each month on the CAP Recruiting & Retention Facebook page we will highlight one Unit’s Recruiting Success story for others to learn from and gain new ideas.

This month’s unit is:

Columbus Composite Squadron 
Georgia Wing

Over 40 members from the squadron showed up bright and early Saturday morning ready to recruit and well over 30 were present Sunday morning for the Thunder in the Valley Air Show. 68 people filled out the CAP Prospective Member Forms wanting more info about the CAP and members of the squadron stayed up to the wee hours of the morning the next day adding them to the Prospective Members List on eservices.

The squadron commander Lt Col Karabasz has a great senior team; Maj Adams, Capt Colley, Capt Talley, 2nd Lt Stockelman, SM Jesse Holmes (who was also the Army National Guard recruiter that day pulling double-duty with CAP), TSgt Hickman and these hard working dedicated cadets all did us proud that day!.

Some keys to their success:
1. They are pro-active. They actually go out to events, set up a CAP recruiting booth in front of a traffic flow of people and TELL THEM ABOUT CAP. Simple and it works, however the majority of squadrons no longer do this. However this pro-active strategy has worked in the past and still works today.

2. They used a condensed version of the CAP Prospective Member Forms as recruiting aids. After speaking to passers by, we filled out the forms ourselves for all that were interested. Many say they will go on line and fill them out their selves, but few actually do it. By being proactive and doing it ourselves the sampling of those that were interested was MUCH HIGHER.

3. That night (and into the wee hours of the morning) Commander Karabasz and his staff took the time to go on eservices and filling in the info for each that filled out a PMF and send it in to NHQ. They didn’t wait days or weeks to give those interested a chance to forget about us; they did it that night.

4. Finally, Commander Karabasz went one step further; he put together a squadron response with information about the Columbus Composite Squadron and sent this to all that filled out the form and invited all in to visit the squadron.

There are some squadrons where the recruiting strategy is to sit back and wait for someone to wander through the door. Not the Columbus Composite Squadron; they go out in the field and recruit for the CAP!

V/R, 
Capt Tim Ledford
Director of Recruiting and Retention
Georgia Wing – The Civil Air Patrol