Here’s an essay I wrote last year and never got around to posting. I updated it a bit and cleaned it up. Enjoy!
How To Recruit Staff for Fannish Conventions
Since a couple of people have mentioned that they had issues with putting together staffs for their departments at various conventions, I thought I’d post some thoughts that I had on the matter. I have run Registration at Midwest FurFest for the last six years and Artists Alley at Anthrocon for the last three years. I have put together quality groups of people to work both of these labor-intensive departments with minimal year-to-year turnover, so I figure I must be doing something right! I don’t expect that anyone is going to read this and suddenly all will become clear, but I hope that it might provide fuel for thought and at least some of this might be helpful.
I’ll break this down into three sections: Before the Convention, During the Convention, and After the Convention.
Before The Convention
So, how do you build a staff from the ground up? First off, I would urge you to remember that not everyone is interested in working at a convention, and that’s OK – this is a hobby, something that we do for fun. If it’s not fun for someone, pressing them into service isn’t doing anyone any favors. And for heaven’s sake, don’t use guilt to persuade someone! It will only foster resentment and unhappiness further down the line.
The key to recruiting a staff is networking. In order of preference, I recommend starting with your close friends, then friends of friends, then acquaintances, then finally open calls for help. I say in order of preference because you want a staff that you can rely on, and you don’t want to have to guess whether someone will show up for their shift or not. That’s not to say that you can’t recruit reliable, trustworthy people through an public posting, but there’s a big difference between thinking you can rely on someone and knowing. Still, if an open call succeeds in netting you volunteers, then it’s certainly not a bad thing!
So now you have a list of people who have said they are interested. Your next job is communication. They need to know what you expect of them, and even more importantly, what’s in it for them. Make sure you know your conventions staff policies: do people need to work a minimum number of hours to be considered staff? How many hours need to be worked to earn a membership rollover? Do staff register separately from the public? All of these things need to be communicated to your staff. They will feel better if they know that they are a part of the process, and know what to expect when they arrive at the convention.
In my departments, I prefer that a shift schedule in place before the convention, so everyone knows where they are expected to be and when. Before you make the schedule, consider the following: how much does each person wish to work? When are they arriving, and when are they leaving? Do they want to work at the same time as another staff member (or NOT work at the same time as another staff member)? Be flexible, and remember that they are doing you a favor by helping you out. I generally wait until the convention programming schedule has been published before I begin asking these questions (usually only a few weeks before the con) so that staff members can look at the schedule and see what panels or events they don’t want to miss and I can schedule them around it.
When it comes time to make the actual schedule, the first thing I do is try to figure out how many people I need on hand at any given time. For Registration, I need as many as I can get on Thursday night, but only two people on Sunday afternoon. Past experience is a good guide for this, but if you’re new in a department also check with past department heads or volunteers familiar with the department to get an idea of what the demands might be. Generally speaking, I try not to schedule anyone for any shift longer than two to three hours at a time – that seems to be a good time for them to get settled into their jobs and also to leave plenty of free time for them to do other things at the con. Sometimes it’s unavoidable that I have to schedule someone longer than that, but that’s the exception to the rule, and I usually try to make sure they’re OK with it.
Now, take all of the information that you’ve gathered and try to build a schedule (I recommend Excel for this, but use what works for you). It’s a frustrating task, a weird logic puzzle that usually takes a few tries to get right. Once the schedule is done, you need to get the word out: publish it to a web page, and e-mail it to your staff (both in graphic and text formats) at least a week before the start of the convention. They will have questions and changes will be necessary. Be flexible.
At The Convention
So now the con has started. You must remember one very important fact: No schedule survives contact with the convention. And that’s OK. If you’ve chosen your staff well, you can substitute people on the fly, making sure you have the correct number of people on hand as needed.
Make sure that you know who your staff are, and that they know who you are, and how to get into contact with you if necessary. Again, remember that these people are doing you a favor in helping you, so be good to them. Keep them happy! For example, Thursday night Registration can be crazy and hectic, and people have to work right through the dinner hour without a break. I make sure that we have pizza and soda for the Registration staff in return for their efforts. I’m not saying that you can or should buy off your staff, but recognize when you’re asking a lot, and be prepared to show appreciation accordingly. Finally, check with your staff often – make sure they have everything they need, answer any questions they might have, and again, make them feel appreciated. The worst feeling they can have is that they’ve been abandoned at their post, and that’s a sure way to foster ill-will toward you and the convention.
After The Convention
The con is over, and teardown has begun. Be sure to thank your staff for the time that they put in. In general, Anthrocon’s staff dinner and MFF’s pizza feed are good for this too, but be sure to thank them personally as well. And after the convention is over and everyone has gone home, be sure to e-mail your staff and thank them again. If you have the opportunity, thank them publicly – everyone wants to feel appreciated, and this reinforces the fact that they were an important part of the convention – and in keeping you sane! Finally, don’t forget the follow-through. These people knocked themselves out for you, so it’s your responsibility to make sure that they get whatever is coming to them, be it T-shirts, rollover memberships, or whatever in as timely a manner as possible. If it’s going to take extra time, be sure to stay in touch with them and keep them updated on what’s going on. This is the surest way you have to keep good people on your staff from year to year.
So those are my thoughts on the matter. How about yours? Any suggestions for things I might have missed, or ideas you’d like to share?
I haven’t read through this yet, but I want to after I get home from work this evening. I’m really interested in what you have to say!
Sadly, it seems that brevity is not my forte 🙂 Hopefulyl there’s some useful stuff in there, though.
Good read.
There’s something else I think should be included in the “before” part, which I think is critical. If anyone contacts you about helping out, make certain you follow up with them, honestly.
Even if you don’t want that person on staff, you are better off telling them than just leaving them hanging. If you do that enough times, eventually it will get around that “FooCon doesn’t really want staff” and someone you do want on staff won’t bother asking. Even worse, if you forget to followup with someone you do want, you can lose them entirely.
I would also say you should probably NOT rely too much on friends only at anything above a single small department. Doing so turns the con staff into little more than a clique, and you lose the ability to bring in “new blood.”
I think it’s critical to keep a flow of “new blood” into a staff, as well. One, that ensures new ideas make it in, which is always good. Two, that keeps people from becoming jaded. For example, in your art show post, I’m not sure which person you are implying is the dick, the attendee, or the staffer who replied? IMHO, that was a case of someone on staff replying totally inappropriately, because “everyone should know this” probably. When you are answering the same questions over and over for years, that happens unless you are exceptionally careful. A good downstaff will privately write back to the senior staff and say “did you really want to write that?” (and a good senior staff will actually consider that message.)
I guess it really comes down to communication, all in all, and I think that deserves more stress. I have yet to see any con (as staff or member) which doesn’t have at least some notable communications issues. Gathering staff is very much a process of communication, so I think it should be something the senior staff members focus on.
Excellent point about follow-up. I’ve always made it a point to try to respond to all inquiries to official con addresses within 24 hours, if possible. It’s unreasonable to expect that of others, I suppose, but it’s a good starting point. Also, I’ve been in the habit that if there are multiple people on an e-mail alias, all responses get BCC’ed back to the alias so that everyone involved knows that a question has been dealt with.
I agree also on the “new blood”. Burnout can be a natural progression all too often, and it’s important to have people available to backfill vacated positions. Ideally, they’ll have had some experience with the department in question, but I suppose that’s a luxury we can’t always have…
I’d also say, in addition to the “24 hour turnaround” (lord knows I don’t always follow that rule! :> ), there’s the issue of following up a later, to make sure the “hiring” (in the case of staffing issues) actually happened.
I think the bottom line, though, is that communications are critical, in all parts of the effort. I’d have to say 90% of everything I have ever seen go wrong at any con (be it one I watch from the inside or outside) seems to stem from one person not really understanding what the other was saying/doing/planning…
In the three or four completely unrelated volunteer groups I’ve worked with, every one has been plagued with some form of communications issues. Then again, so has every company I every worked at. :>
“Volunteer burnout” is a big problem in all sorts of organisations. Having run some admittedly non-con-like events in the past the one thing I’d also suggest is letting each volunteer-staffer know pretty firmly what his/her roles and responsibilities are.
This can help avoid much inter-volunteer friction where 2 people each believe *they* are uniquely responsible for doing something, and the converse where 2 people each believe the other is taking care of something so the something doesn’t get done.
It also helps avoid the situation [which I’ve unfortunately experienced] where a volunteer-staffer has made contractual promises to someone believing they were empowered to do so, when in fact they weren’t.
I recommend starting with your close friends, then friends of friends, then acquaintances, then finally open calls for help
‘Staff’ for ‘Fannish’ conventions? HOGWASH.
Its time I exposed you for what you are.
Its a thinly veiled ruse to lure heterosexual men into the family.
so it’s your responsibility to make sure that they get whatever is coming to them
FOR SHAME.
Its a thinly veiled ruse to lure heterosexual men into the family.
Well, duh. Of course, just when you think you have someone firmly in the clutches of gheyness, some of them have to go off and get married. That really confuses the rest of us.
😉
FOR SHAME.
I used to have shame. I traded it for a lovely set of assless chaps.
I’m taking a break from screen painting, but I have a deadline to meet so I will not get a chance to read through this completely until later. What I did skim through, however, are all things that I’ve seen you do in practice.
Are there any rules, etiquette-wise, for taking a break from a staff position? I make two shows a year and somehow I’ve become staff at each. I’m trying to remember what it was like to go to an event and not be staff. It’s become a not-easy task. That tells me that I need to attend an event where I’m not staff.
No worries about Furfest this year. I’m still dedicated to being Gopher Second for yet another year. This is just self-acknowledgment that I need to make some changes either to how I approach being staff or take a break from being staff sometime in the future.
I think the only etiquette rule for not being staff that I can think is, for heaven’s sake don’t wait until the last minute! Try to give as much advance notice as possible that you will not be serving on staff, to allow time for people to find a replacement.
Burnout is one of the greatest enemies of volunteer organizations. I think it’s vital that people know the signs of impending burnout and be prepared to do what is necessary to avoid it. If this means taking a break, than by all means, I think it vital that they do so! There are few things that make a convention more unpleasant for you and those around you than staying in a staff position even though you don’t enjoy it and don’t want to do it. It sounds strange, but I’ve seen it happen. It’s not pretty.
I say this above, but it’s always worth repeating: this is supposed to be something that we do for fun. If it’s not fun, then something is wrong and it’s time to find a way to change it.
I view it as the job of the organisers to spot incipient volunteer-burnout and take action to manage it before it turns into a reality.
There’s a problem in that the willing workhorses will inevitably find new tasks migrating towards them – until the infamous straw breaks the camel’s back. This feeds into to my earlier comment about clearly defined roles scopes and responsibilities – if all the volunteers know and understand what’s expected of them then they’re less likely to feel difficulty or a sense of embarrassment when telling someone “that’s not my job – I don’t do that”.
I will be the first to admit that FC’s over-the-top version of staff rotation can sometimes cause issues, but the one thing it does help with is preventing some of the burnout issues. There’s no a priori assumption anyone will be in the same position one year as the next (even though it very, very often happens that way), so everyone has to make a conscious decision to re-enlist, so to speak.
At the annual “firing party” (it’s official name), where everyone is “fired” from their current position, and has the chance to approach the new exec and say, “I’d like to do it again,” it’s not uncommon for people to say, “not this year, I need a year off.”
Perhaps it’s as easy as going up to all of the staff at the post-con meeting, before planning for the next year starts, and asking, “do you want to continue another year, or take a break.” Volunteers will tend not to back out until it IS too late, unless you give them an obvious chance to do so earlier. (And shortly after the con is best, IMHO, since how hard it was is still fresh in their mind, along with how rewarding it was.)
The flip side, of course, is too much staff turnover. It’s a hard balance to meet, especially in a volunteer organization.
Hey, people know people. Networking is the name of the game! The trouble is, you’re in a tougher corner than me, since you need people with specific skills AND are willing to donate their time. Well, either that or you start devoting more time to training 🙂
And that’s a really good point about keeping in touch. I need to create a better way of tracking my staff’s e-mail addresses while splitting time between two e-mail clients.
Funny… I always thought the categories would be tasers, curare, and alcohol.
Look for those to make an appearance in “Part 2: Advanced Methods”.
*nods* sounds about right.
I’m still interested in volunteering and such, but I can’t go so far as to really jump in and say what I’d be able to do when just yet. My own life scheduel’s a little flakey, and I wouldn’t want to say that I’d be at X for Y hours if I don’t even know if I can go to such and such convention.
You all do a great job, I’m sure you know what works and what you’re all capable of.