Staff Recruiting on a Forum: Applications vs. Invitations

When your com­mu­nity gets to the point where you just can’t man­age it by your­self, you will be need­ing staff mem­bers (AKA Mod­er­a­tors) to watch over your forum when you can’t. Staff mem­bers can be either one of the great­est thing to hap­pen to your com­mu­nity, or the worst.

Two com­mon ways to recruit staff on a forum are through staff appli­ca­tions and invi­ta­tions. Staff appli­ca­tions are when you set up some type of sys­tem and get users to post a résumé with all of their infor­ma­tion such as past forum expe­ri­ence, per­sonal info, etc. Invi­ta­tions are when you per­son­ally invite a mem­ber to the staff team through PM, IM, etc.

There has been many debates on which is the bet­ter way to recruit staff mem­bers for your forum. I would like to just go over a few short pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives of staff appli­ca­tions and staff invi­ta­tions.

Pos­i­tives of Staff Applications

Staff appli­ca­tions def­i­nitely have some things Invi­ta­tions don’t give you.

1. Cre­ated Interest

Because this is in the pub­lic, any­one can see it, and any­one can be eli­gi­ble (pro­vided they fit your spe­cific guidelines).

2. Plan­ning for future staff members

You can take infor­ma­tion from their cur­rent appli­ca­tion and use it for later when you need a posi­tion filled. It is a great way to plan ahead, and there’s noth­ing wrong with that is there?

3. Get­ting to know your com­mu­nity a lit­tle better

You can use this to learn a lit­tle more about your mem­bers. Their names, inter­ests, their his­tory on the Inter­net and more. The more you know about your com­mu­nity mem­bers, the bet­ter your com­mu­nity can be. You can have more in-depth dis­cus­sions, and even con­sider some­one to your staff you never thought you would con­sider before.

4. Get staff mem­bers and then some

It does one thing every forum admin­is­tra­tor wants: It makes peo­ple post! If you set up your appli­ca­tion sys­tem so it involves post­ing it on a forum, then you will get more posts/topics to your forum. While some may think it’s cheat­ing, those posts are ben­e­fit­ing to your forum. Plus it makes your stats look bet­ter, and that’s per­fectly fine!

Neg­a­tives of Staff Applications

While they bring in some amaz­ing pos­i­tives, the neg­a­tives can get pretty heavy.

1. Sad­den­ing realizations

If you don’t get enough inter­est, it may seem like to you no one cares much about your forum. This can prove to be a real depres­sor for you, because when you think you needed more staff mem­bers there wasn’t any­one to fill the position.

How­ever, this doesn’t always have to be neg­a­tive. It could just show that maybe your forum isn’t ready for new staff mem­bers and things can still run fine under your man­age­ment. Give it a few weeks, build your com­mu­nity and try again mak­ing it a lit­tle more formal.

2. Can be con­sid­ered an unpro­fes­sional approach

Some peo­ple can always see this as a cry for a des­per­ate forum need­ing atten­tion. While your goal may be clear (to get more staff mem­bers) it could just look like a scheme for get­ting more posts, or more mem­bers kiss­ing your ass just a lit­tle more than usual. I have seen it done before, so you should be care­ful of the fol­low­ing with your appli­ca­tions format:

1. Your word­ing makes a dif­fer­ence
You need to make your forum sound legit. Show your mem­bers that you want their inter­est in this, but you don’t want slackers.

2. Have a plan, or a sys­tem for new staff mem­bers.
You need to real­ize that your new staff mem­bers won’t know 100% how you want things done at your forum. You should cre­ate a mod­er­a­tors man­ual, or some­thing among those lines.

3. Never sound des­per­ate
This kind of falls into the cat­e­gory of word­ing your appli­ca­tion for­mat, but it’s very impor­tant. You can’t sound des­per­ate when you tell your com­mu­nity you need staff mem­bers. You need to remain pro­fes­sional, and if you sound like you’re beg­ging then it can stop poten­tial staff mem­bers. No one likes a panic, and responses to pan­ics are never good.

3. Upset members

This is prob­a­bly the largest neg­a­tive of staff appli­ca­tions. I know from per­sonal expe­ri­ence that when a mem­ber does not get picked as a staff mem­ber that all hell can break loose. That once ded­i­cated mem­ber can turn into the exact oppo­site until they get what they want. Hope­fully you are smart enough to never hire them as a staff mem­ber because of how they acted. Every forum that does appli­ca­tions has mem­bers like that.

This is some­thing else that is not always neg­a­tive. If you have mem­bers who do act like chil­dren for not get­ting on your staff then it prob­a­bly would have been a mis­take to hire them in the first place. By declin­ing their appli­ca­tion, it brought out their real attitude.

Pos­i­tives of Staff Invitations

Staff invi­ta­tions are lot less for­mal and more pri­vate. It calls for a smaller response, but in some cases a greater reward.

1. Earn­ing more respect from the mem­ber you invited

Out of all the mem­bers on your forum, you picked that one per­son. Wouldn’t you feel hon­ored? I know I would be, and I would cer­tainly respect you for pick­ing me above all the other pos­si­ble staff mem­bers. It’s good to have staff that respect you, it will work out bet­ter in the long run then some­one who doesn’t.

2. Moti­vate a bet­ter community

If mem­bers see that you can be pick­ing a staff mem­ber out when­ever you want, it can moti­vate the ones who want a chance to be a bet­ter com­mu­nity mem­ber. Now does that mean you should just pick staff mem­bers because you see good behav­ior? No, it doesn’t. But always be on the look for the mem­bers you think would be fit­ting when you do need another moderator.

Neg­a­tives of Staff Invitations

The neg­a­tives for pri­vately invit­ing mem­bers are a lot less than the neg­a­tives of staff applications.

1. You will still have the jeal­ousy, and dis­ap­proval as you would with a staff application

There will always be the mem­bers with the large ego ask­ing why they didn’t get picked. It’s sad to see, but you just have to brush it aside. As I said above, it brings out the real per­son behind the user name and shows they are in fact the worst choice for a staff member.

2. You won’t have as big of a response

With this process being as pri­vate as it is, you won’t have all those extra forum posts to add on to your stats. This should be the least of your con­cerns, but it can cut out poten­tial prob­lems with your members.

3. Your com­mu­nity may think you are pick­ing favorites

Some peo­ple can see you not car­ing about them by going behind the scenes and just pick­ing one per­son for the job. As any com­mu­nity, there are peo­ple who want their voices to be heard. Hope­fully you have a sys­tem to find the mem­ber you want on your staff.

I would like to give you a short list of what I think is the best way to find the per­fect mem­ber for your staff.

Step 1: Weav­ing through the ded­i­cated mem­bers and non ded­i­cated mem­bers
This is not hard to do. Just post on your forum for a cou­ple of days and look for those who seem to post a lot and always cre­ate a good discussion.

Step 2: See­ing how those mem­bers inter­act around the com­mu­nity
Just keep an eye out for cer­tain mem­bers you think are fit­ting for the job. See how they act towards dif­fer­ent users not just you and other moderators/administrators.

Step 3: Cut your list down
If you found about 10 or so great mem­bers, try to cut the list down to about 2 or 3. This is prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing to do. But it is also the most impor­tant. Again, you will prob­a­bly need to take some time and observe how each of the mem­bers acts.

Step 4: Get opin­ions from other staff mem­bers
If you have other mem­bers on your staff team, get their opin­ions. You never know, they may have met each other on a dif­fer­ent web­site and they could have got­ten into a fight with each other. Some­times your opin­ion alone is not enough, get others.

What do you think is the more supe­rior way for find­ing staff mem­bers on your forum? Let me know in the comments!

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