Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.Thank you for your interest in <This Column>. Our recruiting at this time is limited to officers who are interested in creating or improving their guild's application. Please copy and paste the questions after the jump, along with your character's name, class, and level, into your form. For more background on <This Column>, click here.
1) Does your guild's application form contain yes-or-no questions?
It probably shouldn't, and this "application" is a very poor example of one for that reason. Yes-or-no questions give the applicant no reason to elaborate, and as a result you get no further information. For example, "Have you read and do you understand our guild's Mission Statement?" doesn't encourage the applicant to comment on what he or she thinks about it. It's much better to ask, "How does our guild's Mission Statement reflect your preferred style of play?" or "After reading our guild's Mission Statement, you've decided to go forward with your application. What about the Mission Statement appeals to you? What would you change?" The answers to these questions will give you insight into the type of person who's applying and what his or her priorities are.
2) Do you number your questions?
If you don't, it's much easier for an applicant to skip one or two that they'd rather not answer, and more difficult for you to notice that they've done so.
3) Does your application have an "idiot filter" question?
An "idiot filter" is a question that's virtually impossible to answer poorly. Its purpose is to identify as quickly as possible an applicant who is a big jerk or a dishonest person. You should put this question early in the app so you don't have to bother reading the rest of it. An example of an idiot filter would be "What is your favorite thing to do in Warcraft?" Arena = pass. Join PUGs and wipe them = fail. Another example would be "What other guilds are you currently applying to?" If they answer none, and you've already heard he or she applied to another guild some of your friends are in, you have successfully filtered your idiot.
4) Do you ask your applicants about their history with other guilds?
In my opinion, this is the most important question to ask, regardless of what type of guild you run. Very few players have never been in a guild (and depending on how long they've been playing Warcraft, that information alone can raise a red flag). So if they're applying to your guild, that means their previous guild either no longer exists, no longer wants them to be a member, or wasn't meeting their needs. The answer to this question gets to the bottom of the applicant's motivation for wanting to join your guild. Do they want a better social atmosphere? Are they focused on progression? Did they have a "misunderstanding" with their previous guild's leader? If so, you want to know about it before you extend the invitation. Obviously you can straight-up ask them, "Why do you want to join our guild?" But not everyone is going to answer that question honestly -- and you're going to read a lot of shameless brown-nosing. You often get a better sense of where they're coming from by reading between the lines about why they're looking for a new home.
5) Do you ask intimate personal questions?
You might think that knowing a person's race, religion, sexual orientation, marital status, annual income, blood type, credit history, college GPA, astrological sign, Social Security number, and chest/waist/hip measurements provides valuable insight into whether or not they will be a good guild member, but you'd be wrong. Unless your guild is full of bigots, Red Cross nurses, and IRS agents.
On the other hand, it's okay to ask about age. Real-life professions can also be relevant, and most people don't mind telling you about that -- even if they're famous.
6) Do you ask unbelievably vague questions?
"What does being in a guild mean to you?" "How would you describe yourself?" You're running a guild, not a beauty pageant. Don't make people waste time answering questions like that.
7) How often do you update your application form?
If you're still asking about Onyxia attunement and Hydraxian Waterlords rep, it may be time to blow the dust off that document and make some adjustments.
8) Does your application contain more than 20 questions?
If so, you better run the most totally awesome guild in the whole game. A dozen questions (or less) is a much more reasonable app, particularly if you're not a big progression guild and just want some decent players. An app that looks more like a final exam in Chemistry is going to turn people away. You can say that they weren't going to be dedicated to the guild if they couldn't even take the time to fill out the application. However, people have limits on the amount of time they want to spend filling out an app. And do you really want to read all those answers? Wouldn't we all rather be playing the game?
9) What else can you ask about?
Depending on what type of guild you run, you can ask who the person knows that is currently a member of the guild, whether or not the person enjoys role-playing, and what types of PVP they are interested in. Raiding guilds sometimes ask about connection reliability, PC specs, hours played per week, attunements, endgame experience, familiarity with specific add-ons and VoIP software, time zone location, understanding of and agreement with the guild's loot system, and even raiding experience in other MMOs. Depending on how discriminating you want to be, you can ask a great number of questions . . . but see #8.
10) Do the answers you receive from applicants give you a reasonably accurate sense of the player's attitude, goals, abilities, and intentions?
If so, you've created a successful application! If not, take a look some of your applicants' completed forms and ask yourself, "What else would I like to know about this player that I don't know now?" Then add the questions that will give you the information you need.
/salute
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott.andrews@weblogsinc.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-03-2007 @ 3:40PM
Charlie said...
Solid article.
Gotta go take a look at my apps now =D
Reply
9-03-2007 @ 3:46PM
Willfferal said...
Half of the forms guilds currently use show a distinct lack of intelligence and a lot of laziness on the side of whoever wrote them.
With the introduction of the armoury questions like "level", "rep", "spec", ect... are obsolete and to be honest if a recruiting officer is not willing to spend time looking at a simple armoury profile I am not sure if I even want to join that guild.
Also while important a lot of guilds seem to focus on "how can you contribute" style questions rather than "what do you want" ones. Half of the application is asking for details that are rather irrelevant (age, location, etc) and the other what they get out of it. It makes a lot more sense to ask what the player wants, what upgrades they plan on getting soon and how they want to get there. You can find out so much more about dedication and interest through that instead of just getting to read what you want to hear (oh your guild is great, you rock so much...).
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9-03-2007 @ 4:24PM
Dave said...
Here's a better idea:
You're not MIT, You're not Stanford. You're not NASA, you're not Google. Stop treating everyone like they're getting in on the ground floor of something special just because they want in your average progression guild with nothing significant to offer beyond the vast majority of guilds in existence.
Why do most guilds say they don't progress at content? They don't have enough good players. They don't have enough people on at the right time. People in the raids slack. All of these are incorrectly "solved" by guild leaders making even more restrictive application and filtering processes.
There are tons and tons of "and they finally let me raid with the main group this week and we one-shot all the bosses and I got 4 purples!" stories out there. There are plenty of people out there who are good at the game, interested in the content and would otherwise kick your raid's ass into gear, but you don't let them because you're more interested in attempting to cherry pick the people you think are going to be awesome, rather than just letting everyone join up and if they're good they raid, if they're not they sit.
Being able to fill out an application, only means you have to be good at filling out applications.
Here's what you really need to know:
1: Will you study the content, and be ready to raid without needing the boss encounters explained to you?
2: Will you install the addons that will enable things to run more smoothly and everyone to avoid making stupid mistakes?
3: Are you available at xx times on xx days and will at least show up xx times per week even if you don't end up raiding?
After that, everything else is mostly useless information at best, and something people are more than willing to lie about at worst or just something you'll reject an otherwise good player for, when in reality they could probably help you out.
I know everyone likes to believe that their guild is the best guild out there, but really you're only hurting yourselves by being so restrictive.
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9-03-2007 @ 5:39PM
klink-o said...
One thing I'd like to add is please please stop copying other guild's applications (and policies for that matter). When looking for a guild on my server a few months back I ran into this problem over and over again. It was blatantly obvious from reading most of them that many guilds simply stole their application and policy from eachother. Sure sometimes things were shuffled around a bit but any idiot could see it was still far from original work (The half-assed reworking usually created inconsistencies as well). I passed on a number of higher progression guilds before I found one with a friendly application process that didn't smell of plagiarism.
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9-03-2007 @ 5:41PM
Zarra said...
Our guild uses the following application form to screen people:
http://www.thegarrison.eu/forum/showthread.php?t=202
You will probably be going wtf when you read it, but I can assure it works :) - We are a guild of mostly "mature" players btw, which means that we focus more on finding like minded people than anything else. We often reject people with good raiding history and the right class+spec simply because we don't feel they fit.
The form doesn't adhere perfectly to your good little guide, but it comes close.
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9-03-2007 @ 5:48PM
Dipstick said...
Agreed with the above, we always found that although some very nice people were accepted into our guild, they didn't cut it at raiding. These kind of people show up to every raid, speak with the utmost politeness to everyone and are generally pleasant characters. They're just retards as well. Unfortunatly these are the type of people that always put maximum effort into their applications :/
Makes it hell for the officers to think of a good reason to get rid of them, without looking like cold-hearted bastards (which admittedly some of us are, but sometimes it looks better to pretend to be human as well).
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9-03-2007 @ 6:27PM
Imogen said...
I think that this article covers application forms nicely. The one thing that I would add is that it is a good idea to ask for a link to the armory page in the application. Have you ever tried to find some of the weird characters people use?? silly èü keyboards with lots of accents! :)
This is our current form
http://www.mystic-daggers.net/forum2/index.php?action=AppForm
If you are wondering why we ask for an email its because forum access is by invite only now thanks to spammers.
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9-03-2007 @ 11:27PM
potatowedge said...
You forgot to add, "and don't say that girls shouldn't apply because they cause guild drama."
I'm still feeling the effects of that.
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9-04-2007 @ 7:39AM
yotix said...
I'm in a multi-guild raiding group that organizes itself via a forum ...
... and yes, people definitely did have to apply in order to be considered.
But what were we looking for?
We asked players to decribe their main char, their "main twink" if they felt like it, and to briefly mention any unusual items they can make.
Of course, the actual main char hardly mattered -- what we were looking for was players who had the ability to communicate in whole sentences. It does not really matter how well-equipped a char is -- if the player sounds like reasonably smart, they're in.
We're refused many, many applications which were usually either two-liners ("I'm a great mage now get me thru MC") ("I want to join because I really need [Itemname] from [Raid instance]") ("I wanna join because NoD guildkicked me") or written by arrogant idiots.
One kid in particular couldn't understand why we refused him ... he sounded vaguely nice on his application - until it turned out that 3/4 of the raid group had him on /Ignore because he spends most of his nights chatting in Trade channel. We told him were to stick his spam, and never come back ... I think he's still crying.
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9-04-2007 @ 12:36PM
Juliah said...
I like the questions that #3 suggests, but I think they should exist in addition to other questions on an application - not in place of them.
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9-04-2007 @ 5:23PM
Rob said...
I'm somewhat amazed the guilds actually turn down lvl 70 toons, and they actually go through this process. My thoughts are, how many actually want to play the end-game raids, and for how long this will last until boredom sets in. Our guild is very low key, only half a dozen 60+ ppl. Obviously we need to work on recruitment, but i can't see having huge laborious apps helping. Either they fit in or they don't, you'll know right away. Guess you all are in a different league.
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