We’re looking to step up our recruitment game, and one of the way’s were looking at is school assemblies.
Does anyone have a tested and proven method of delivery that they would be so kind to share? (publicly or privately)
It’s something that we’ve never really done before, and it would be great to get a head start.
At present our average attendance on a night is 11, with 21 on the books. We’re quite top heavy (like most of the Corps is) so we’re keen to get new ones in the door.
TIA.
Contact your local MCO. B)
Have a slideshow or video of YOUR cadets doing things as there may be some faces your audiences recognise, much better than the bland/banal corporate nonsense. Most schools have an AV suite, but check whether you can use your own laptop etc or will you need to use the schools kit, if the latter put it on a stick and take it or email it beforehand.
Prepare your own leaflets / flyers advertising your sqn, when you meet etc and or when your new starters evening/open day is.
Give the schools plenty of notice as assemblies are generally infrequent and if they have others coming in it may be some time before they can accommodate you. Check if they have year or house/college assemblies. The latter can mean longer at the school OR more than one day. One of our local schools has gone to house assemblies over 2 days each fortnight.
I’ve never done it as I don’t have staff and or older cadets with the availability to attend, but some sqns have had a recruiting stand in a school through lunch. This might be an option IF you have the manpower.
We have 3 staff inc. the OC and myself that work shifts that allows us time off during the week to be able to attend during “working hours”.
We tagged along with the Army/RAF/Marines/RAF Regiment trailers that came to the school during a team building day at the school last year - for about 6 hours work we only managed to get 2 new cadets. Not good. But then again most of those who were attending that day were 4th years (15-16yr old) and above.
We’re aiming at first years and second years - at the 12-13yr old mark.
We’ve got our own flyers and I’ve gathered as much as I can from various sources - so handouts aren’t really a problem.
What I’m more looking for is a proven pitch/presentation that someone knows that works. We’ve got 2 schools that we can target - so it’s a potential honeypot for new starts that can either come to us or another nearby sqn.
We’re all fighting the same war here!
The corps sent out a disk a few years ago with a PowerPoint on, it’s surprisingly quite good. However you do need to adjust the slides as it is more of a template than the finished article.
I did year 9 2 weeks ago and am doing year 8 next week.
As most school kids have the attention span of a goldfish I have a 8 page (Death by) Powerpoint with pretty pictures and a few words - simple and to the point.
pm me for a copy…
In our WRO’s a few weeks ago was a message about not visiting schools with obtain ACO approval.
Can’t find it now for details but was something about the governments youth scheme.
Anyone else seen anything like this?
[quote=“scotland” post=16272]In our WRO’s a few weeks ago was a message about not visiting schools with obtain ACO approval.
Can’t find it now for details but was something about the governments youth scheme.
Anyone else seen anything like this?[/quote]
Nope 
Nope. It may be a local issue that the expansion programme is complaining that they aren’t achieving anything.
The nearest I have seen in our WSOs is: ‘application for Participation in Public Events has to be submitted to the WgExO – for approval’
We had PR at a couple of assemblies last September. They were done by cadets/pupils alone and were quite fruitful.
If the rumours are true, you’d have to start doing what (I believe) Dunfermline Sqn has to do and parade each flights on different nights! 
DDR61 - PM inbound
Do you know how long the presentation was?
Did you have an open night afterwards?
What’s the winning formula!?! :worthy:
I think it was a 10-15 minute presentation including a 5-or-so minute video.
We did have an open-night and we had them queueing to get in, though that was mostly due to us trying to capture their details at the door
About 30 came through of which about 10-12 joined and stayed. Most of them are in CS95 at the moment though as we can’t get blues from the RAF!
Our next open evening will be at the end of March but we aren’t planning to go into assemblies before that one.
If we can get 15 down and have 5-6 stay - that would be brilliant.
As stated earlier each unit was issued a set of CD’s a few years back together with a wallet. I have copies and can send on.
This is a starting point and should be edited. There are lots of other small video clips on youtube to incorporate into a presentation.
Make it last no more that 10 mins, see if the school has an internal video channel and see if they will run for a few days prior to the assembly.
There is a daily pupil bulletin, get info for the page.
Contact Mr McKay directly and send him copies of the presentation.
[quote=“scotland” post=16272]In our WRO’s a few weeks ago was a message about not visiting schools with obtain ACO approval.
Can’t find it now for details but was something about the governments youth scheme.
Anyone else seen anything like this?[/quote]
The intention of the original release was relating to any potential new cadet units under the government’s wonderful new “reinvent the wheel” scheme.
It is not intended that approval be required when recruiting for your Squadron.
Personally I don’t think there is a proven way, we have taken the same approach over the years and its success has varied. We’ve had 23 on one open evening and to 5 on another, essentially the same things done/said each time. Its extremely galling as there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason.
Oh something I forgot to mention initially, try and find out if the schools have an evening event, when you’re planning to get new starters along. I got caught out one time when unknown to me the Year 9s at one of the schools were doing a play, so now I try and find out and change it if possible.
Re Uniform. There doesn’t seem to be anything official yet about the end of the embargo of uniform supply to the ATC. However the clothing stores at our parent station are happily supplying blues uniform now. We just enquired and they said no problem the supply chain is back to normal. If things run as ‘normal’ it could be another 6 months before we got to know that officially!
We received notice the other day that the embargo was lifted