Player recruiting continues to be tough for guilds and their leaders around the community. Some might even consider resorting to third party sites in the hope that they can drive up and attract interest to their raiding guild. In the Recruiting Roulette series, I’ll offer my opinions on different recruiting sites and what kind of results my guild received and what you can expect. All fees are paid out of my own pocket.
Site: Elitist Jerks
Fees: $25 per thread or $30 for 6 months (Patron status)
Elitist Jerks has widely been accepted as the think tank community of choice where top theorycrafters go to exchange ideas and beginners go to dive into more advanced concepts of their class. With a such a large and skilled community, it makes sense to try to recruit players here. The upfront costs can be considered expensive.
Is it worth it?
Ground rules
Once you’ve paid the requisite membership fee, you’ll be allowed to post in EJ’s /LFGuild forum. You can only have one visible recruiting thread at a time. Only threads with a post in the last 30 days will be visible.
Next, your thread must be in the following format:
[Faction][Server] <Guild> Title
[Alliance] [Ner’Zhul] <Conquest> Looking for all ranged DPS, 4/8 HM 25 man
Conquest started using Elitist Jerks back in the Fall of 2011. I can’t remember the exact date. Sometime around October or November or so? We were starting to dry up with applications and it was time for us to explore other alternatives. After some asking around, Elitist Jerks was one of several recommendations made.
Which option?
I could’ve gone with the 1 time fee of $25 which would only allow me to create 1 thread. Or I could’ve gone with the $30 fee which is good for 6 months and allows me to make as many threads as needed.
Didn’t take long for me to decide that the second option with the $30 is a better bang for the buck. The registration process after that was absolutely flawless. Payment is accepted via Paypal. After the confirmation email was received, I followed my own guild ad guidelines and created a forum thread on the site. Only thing left to do was to sit back.
Effectiveness
Was it worth it? I was essentially paying $5 a month for 6 months to keep a guild ad up there for maximum exposure.
In total, we received 2 applicants from Elitist Jerks and no additional referrals.
- A tank who played no more than 8 weeks before deciding to leave to play with his real life friends.
- A melee DPS who played for about 8 months before stepping down to real life. Still plays other games with us and remains a part of the community.
My option for renewal is going to come up fairly soon within the next month. Right now, I don’t think I will be exercising the option to renew it until we get closer to Mists release.
Factors
If you are planning to utilize EJ’s services, then keep some things in mind.
The community behind Elitist Jerks is full of extremely knowledgeable and skilled players (usually). Expect to get players of reasonably high calibre. With that in mind, your guild’s ability to attract candidates is going to depend on the progression of your guild. Proven guilds with consistent hard mode kills or successful raid achievements are going to have a higher appeal than a friends and family guild that had just taken down normal mode Ultraxion (as an example).
Mind you, your mileage may vary and you may have better responses. In addition, we’re also in a “lull” period of the game right now where burnout is quite high. I suspect results will be way different once Mists gets closer to release.
Edit: Just to help clarify a few things, I don’t suggest using their service right now. Most players are already cemented in their guilds and are hoping to finish out the tier and expansion with their guilds. Once Mists comes out, expect a stronger and higher population of people. With all guild progression resetting at “0”, this should warrant a much better yield for your money.
Disagree completely. I don’t actually do the recruiting, but I know how I found my guild. I heard about my guild through a maintankadin post, but I was also immediately linked their EJ recruiting post by two separate people. They also told me about the reputation of my guild, *on EJ*. The next thing I did was that I went to EJ and searched the post histories of the RL and several of the members. I’m just one person with one recruiting experience, but I’d guess that I’m not the only person who has gone and looked at our recruit post on EJ. The presence of not just a recruiting thread, but members of my guild, on EJ was something that meant rock-solid player to me. It had a huge impact in what I thought of the guild I had found. But that is the expectation that I have, that the people I play with have. Me, I’ve never posted on EJ, so I don’t even have a post history there. But that presence on EJ meant a great deal to me.
So I guess the disconnect is that I don’t really understand how this post is phrased. It doesn’t make much sense. EJ is about a little bit more than money for a thread and then counting the responses that come in. If you are just looking at spending money on EJ as another recruitment site then it’s probably not worth your money. If not, then I don’t think I have to explain it to you– your recruitment thread is probably there.
It is not just for hardcore guilds. There are less progressed and more progressed, casual and hardcore guilds, that all find it important to have a presence on EJ. It’s not just for recruiting hardcore 25 man players just like EJ isn’t just for hardcore players – it’s a community tool for everyone that provides information for everyone. Simply because the most vocal players tend to be the more progressed ones does not mean that EJ isn’t a useful tool for all.
How do you want to look to your applicants? Is it important to you? What about those applicants who are on EJ and who don’t necessarily want a hardcore guild? Well, I think that presence is important, but that’s just my opinion. I prefer the people I play with to share it.
@anafielle Ana is right (as she usually is). When it comes to community sites, you don’t get your full value just with the paid services. I’m sure the number of clicks on the thread exceeded the number of applications received, and a strong segment of those probably did what Ana mentions and looked for guild member activities. Remember, EJ isn’t AdWords, they aren’t a paid service first, they are a community & discussion board first.
Similarly, I disagree with the idea of recruiting only after MoP launch. The first week of progression is not the time to be trying to fill your raid. You need kills that first week or two to propel your next 4-6 months of recruiting. If you wait til MoP launch to recruit, you’ll be recruiting with 0/8 kills while guilds with less skill will be 4/8…who are the applications going to go to then? Trust me, the people who argued with me about the need to recruit heavily pre-Cata weren’t able to catch up on recruiting until post-nerf FL.
Yes, there is a drought right now, players are tired of DS and aside from main-swaps and those trying to go 8/8 HM, have no motivation to move right now. But once the launch date is announced, you want a functioning team that is as lucrative as possible, so that you can pick up those few key players who will help you in early MoP. Don’t let those guys go to your competition because you were waiting til launch day.
@anafielle quick test for matticus
another test
testing for matticus
@anafielle @Viktory So I’m going to take a moment right now and apologize because it’s plain to me that I wasn’t quite clear in the intent and the point of the post. The main purpose was to offer my impression of EJ’s _solely_ from the standpoint of someone in a raiding guild that’s progression is between average to above average hoping to use such a service to augment their roster. This was not meant as a full review of the Patron level benefits. This post would be different if it was a full on evaluation of the entire benefits suite that EJ has to offer (a much more positive one, for sure). Depending on your guild’s progression, your mileage and experience WILL vary. Some, like yours and Berus will experience a high amount of applications (which is great, excellent return on investment). Others will be lucky to even get 1 or 2. A hardcore, server first oriented guild is going to get more hits specifically from EJs than a casual oriented friends and family group, for instance. Not that it’s bad, but this is something that needs to be kept in mind for GMs who are thinking about using it.
Now, with regards to recruiting timing, again it seems I’m losing my communicative touch.
As there is a big time lull right now in the expansion due to lack of interest, burnout and so forth, this probably isn’t the best time to invest in their services. Rather, I’d say the ideal times to hit all the buttons would be in the month or 2 months leading up to the confirmed Mists release date. More players will be returning to the game. More players will be shopping around for guilds. This means that the potential return on investment will be way higher. This is also going to be true during the opening weeks of the expansion as rosters will continue to be in flux. Contrast that with the current state where many established players are looking to wind down and finish out this tier with their guild which leads to my conclusion that this isn’t the ideal time to invest (unless you have the resources).
Vik, you do raise up a solid point with regards to measuring. In the future, I will mention post views in addition to application followthroughs. That’s a metric I just forgot to include.