Question for every team:

How do you guys find quality people?

ISU FSAE has been in a slump with membership. Its pretty much down to 5 people that actually build the car, and 2 people who spend more than 20hrs/week in the shop.

Our problem is finding quality members. Every year, we have 50 people that show up, and most of them leave. I would say that the problem is that 95 percent of the incoming engineers at ISU are either too stupid or lazy to contribute to the team. It sounds harsh, but its the truth. Trouble is finding the 5%. It seems that Iowa State University is lacking quality people nowadays...

How do you guys keep recruit/retain members?

I have seen this a few times on the forums. There are a few good threads. It is a hard question to answer. I'll give my 2 cents for the day:

We are lucky to have SAE as a credit class here at UW. That being said only a couple take it for credit each quarter. How do we keep the other people? We have a decent sized team. Many come and go as you have experienced, and I wish I knew the secret to making them stay. I know a few people on other FSAE teams and they do not have SAE as a credit course; they say the major difference in my experience and theirs is organization. Passion is great to get people involved but if you are not organized people can lose interest fast.

There is that old adage: 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I bet this holds true for most teams out there. It's just another good learning experience that FSAE teaches you. Some people are hard working and some are flakes.

We often show our car in public events like the Engineering Open house and other big events. Many people come up and ask questions, about 5% actually come to a meeting about out of that 5% probably 1 will stay on the team. Meeting people in class is another good way to recruit. I never pressure them to join the team, just a gentle nudge. The people that join the team on their own are usually the best.

Good luck,

This is a massive problem with our team right now. We have perhaps 10-15 people "on" the team.

Of those 10-15, there are maybe 4 people that have legitimately put good effort forth to get the '07 car done in one way or another. As far as building/fabrication of the car goes however, we have 1 person doing 95% (or more) of the work. You read that right!

I think part of the problem is having patience for newbies. Fact of the matter is that almost all newbies have never worked in a shop before, and don't have the first idea how to use equipment to build things. When a newbie makes something, and its complete crap, not worthy of being on a go-cart with a rub-the-wheel brake, how do you not piss them off when you explain its not going to work/not good enough? Its a big turn off to them when their ideas aren't good and get shot down. A bigger turn off to them when they put effort forth to build something and it gets shot down.

Then you've got the skilled people that have built cars/engines in the shop with their dad since they were 10. In my experience, these people want to walk in the first day and be chief engineer running the show. After coming down a few times, they feel like they're being shit on because everything isn't done "their way", and they stop coming.

Anyone else notice that when an interested freshman gets involved with a fraternity, they are LONG GONE?

Crazy, Kettering University used to be called "General Motors Institute", and we are highly acclaimed as car guys. How we can't get some true, experienced car people down to the shop to build a frickin' racecar is way beyond me.

First off, I don't know how some of the members can put in the hours they do and balance school at the same time. They know who they are, and they're largely responsible for the car getting finished.

I just started contacting instructors of mandatory courses, to see if we could get a chance to talk to the class. I've had pretty good response, especially from the co-op courses, but dont' ahve any dates from the instructors yet.

I think the only way to get car guys into the shop, experianced or otherwise, is to do a mass recruiting campaign, we're at our smallest team number in eyars. The folks that aren't that interested will drop like flies, the experianced will start designing and manfucaturing, and the new guys (like me) will start where we can help.

I've had experiance reparing since a young age, but this is my first year of designing and fabrication on this scale. Needless to say, I'm learning quite a bit.

Edit: I guess I'm an interesting subject for this. 22 years old, freshman. I've learned to take critizism and relize the more that I get, the better I can improve on something. Most folks in college are right out of high school and have never held the same job for more than a year straight, and I don't count pizzas as a job, been there, done that.

The thing I find funny is most people it seems are too worried about hurting what feelings are left in me by telling me that I'm screwing something up, doing something the hard way, or something's complete crap.

You touched on this, but I'd like to reiterate it and bring it into the light:

The new potential members that are older are almost ALWAYS keepers! When you come across a 22+ year old freshman, or transfer student, GET THEM INVOLVED! They're by far the best.

Last year in Cali, it was pretty obvious the older the team members looked, the better their car looked and the better it performed.

Sorry if this offends the youngsters, but 25 year olds know whats going on better than 19 year olds, basically without exception.

Yeah, Ben Frisby and a few other folks couldn't believe that I was a freshman. Apparently, according to them, I either know too much to be a freshman, or look too old.

The University of Evansville has gone through the same thing. We've got 20 members on our team, and 6 or so of us that do 90% of the work, and our car is even considered a class project for credit. Granted 5 of those 20 are freshman and are still learning the basics of machining. We usually pair the underclassmen with the upperclassmen, it helps with passing the information on to future classes. The prospect of driving the car is usually a good enticement to get potential engineers on the team, its just a matter of their work ethic to see how they do.

Same thing happens every year, though you get periodic fluctuations in the amount of "good" solid core members and how much they're driven.

I feel the 2007 car, or possibly 2008, will be a peak for CU Racing, though its hard to predict after that. Past couple years started as kinda redneck engineering, and through knowledge transfer and some intensive study has gone up orders of magnitude in quality.

We have 9 seniors on the team this year, 5 of which returned from previous years for a total of 11 man-years experience coming onto the team. Also had have some long-time alumni around helping out here and there. Of the 9 seniors we have now, most put in a good amount of work, and 2-3 put in the long long hours. At this point I'm doing 40-50 hrs a week on top of class.

Underclassmen, think we have 15 total. 4-5 of them have been absolutely tremendous in getting the car done. And I agree with John, a lot of times the older people, even if new to the team, have a lot more maturity and proactivity. Next year's team I think will be a bit more driven and organized, though will be losing out on a lot of fabrication knowledge and facility access.

Its tough to motivate peers. I think its particularly difficult for people who have been on the team and then do it for senior design.. while they may have come done work when it was just volunteer work on their spare time.. the fact that theyre now responsible for work and have to get it done when it means throwing away some social life, etc.. doesn't always work out.

For the past 9 years I've been with volunteer organizations (not just FSAE) I have noticed that a 5% retention rate is normal under most conditions. When our team acknowledged the fact that we were loosing 6 seniors this year (our 90% of the team) we new that recruiting was not something we could brush aside. That’s why when the year was started- I knew the team needed at least 7 new members on the team which meant having 150 names on a roster.

Here we are, two and a half months before Detroit and we have 7 new, good members (two of which are freshmen) and we started with 136 on the new member roster. The key is to get your name out there, reach out to the community, recruit, but that “90% of the team” will find you, and stay with the program; the hardest part is keeping those people. Assuming your retention skills don’t involve you being impatient with new members and making “newbies” do bitch work rather than learning key habits and skills, keeping those people should be easy- but then again, some people tend to neglect the obvious.

Especially don't make them die grind aluminum.

It takes a special type of person to build these cars in one year, and even more to build them right. It's very difficult when there's a few people on the team who would do whatever it takes to get the car done, and the rest just don't have the same priorities. I think we all have similar stories and face similar situations. It will never be perfect. All we can do is try our best to build the teams and make small improvements each and every year.

Restore an old formula car that's been lying in the basement of your engineering dept., come up with an interesting freshmen project, teach them everything you know. That's all we can do because eventually it will be their turn and we don't want what we built to go to waste.

Aaron Cassebeer

UNH Precision Racing is in its 4th season. I have been a member of the program since the 2nd season. Recruitment has been something I have worked hard at to keep the program going. UNH Precision Racing is the single most important thing to me in school.

To recruit members, we do the same stuff anyone else does...Display the car, attend all university acctivity fair days, etc. This season, we had about 50 kids show up wanting to 'build a racecar' before they knew the true meaning. Most of them were underlcassmen, the blood and future fo the program. Keeping them was crucial; I was aiming to keep 50% realistically.

The trick here is to KEEP the members...Recruiting is easy when you have a racecar on display and promo videos. To KEEP the members, our 'super' seniors, who have an extra semester left, are 'Student Advisors' and get technical credit. They host seminars in the fall to bring the underclassmen up to speed on theory and fabrication experience. There were about 4 and they covered the basics from statics and frame design, to basic suspension geometry; i.e. what to do and what to avoid...

This helps bring them into the program on a basic level, rather than slamming them with fluid dynamics and intake design.

The next step is to get them in the shop. MAke them know they are needed and the car won't get done without their help. Whether it was sanding or making slugs. Make sure you tell them they are needed, because THEY ARE!

Final step. Keep it fun. When it comes down to it, ya the seniors need to man up and get it done with or without the underclassmen. So keep them involved by keeping it fun. Whether its playing GTR-2 during down time or going karting and teaching the basics of navigating a race track, its fun, and its beneficial for the program in all aspects.



Side note: Lap times in GTR-2 get better after an average of 2-3 beers, but begin to get worse after approx. 4.

Ok, time to get back in the shop and get this thing built. Good luck.

Note: Our 'super seniors' were 4th year seniors the previous year when they were on the team. As Student Advisors they have to write a large, indepth research paper on a specific aspect of the car. This is the primary reason for their credit.

We have lots of people show up at the driver's meetings, and some at the general meetings, but only 5 or so that ever do real work.(everyone wants to drive, no one wants to build)
I'm one of two who built the chassis. Next year I am suppost to carry it on. As a non engineering major, its something I probably won't do for a few reasons. The main reason is that disagreements on the team are never compromises and always end in someone thinking their manhood is being challenged.

Tony,

Trust me, what you are going through is nothing new. I think a lot of teams will report loosing members as it gets closer to competition.

You can try announcing incentives (free food?) at the general meeting so people show up to work on the weekends. This will also bring people to the shop for free food, and then they will leave.

Most new members have generally stopped coming because they didn't have anything to do. They stood around for a while during the fall semester and then just stopped coming.

You're problem is NOT finding quality members, it's that you haven't spent time TRAINING quality members. There are very few students that come to college that can perform any type of design or fabrication, and less that can do quality design or fabrication.

It's hard to say why older members stop coming. They need to study more? Could also be "all work and no play" sucks. Everyone needs to find their balance. How much school work they can handle. How much FSAE they can handle. How much other fun they can miss.

The best way to keep members is to have a mentoring program. One on one. Current member works with a new member. It's hard work, but that's what it's going to take.

Here are a few of the past posts:

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/2406044402/p/1

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/24060444...676055402#7676055402

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/14310959...10089511#70410089511

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/25810897...10599131#70710599131

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/58260153...076073485#2076073485

quote:

Originally posted by Mechanicaldan:
Tony,

Trust me, what you are going through is nothing new. I think a lot of teams will report loosing members as it gets closer to competition.

You can try announcing incentives (free food?) at the general meeting so people show up to work on the weekends. This will also bring people to the shop for free food, and then they will leave.

Most new members have generally stopped coming because they didn't have anything to do. They stood around for a while during the fall semester and then just stopped coming.

You're problem is NOT finding quality members, it's that you haven't spent time TRAINING quality members. There are very few students that come to college that can perform any type of design or fabrication, and less that can do quality design or fabrication.

It's hard to say why older members stop coming. They need to study more? Could also be "all work and no play" sucks. Everyone needs to find their balance. How much school work they can handle. How much FSAE they can handle. How much other fun they can miss.

The best way to keep members is to have a mentoring program. One on one. Current member works with a new member. It's hard work, but that's what it's going to take.

Here are a few of the past posts:

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/2406044402/p/1

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/24060444...676055402#7676055402

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/14310959...10089511#70410089511

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/25810897...10599131#70710599131

http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/58260153...076073485#2076073485

Not to rant, but I remember in my first two years of ISU FSAE, I had only a few parts go on the car - A carbon fiber radiator shroud and a few chassis tubes and mounting tabs and brackets. Most of these two first years were spent doing the "bitch" work of the team - taking out the trash, sanding, and grinding chassis tubes. I also watched the other leaders machine, weld, and assemble various components. I knew if I kept coming to meetings and shop days that I would eventually get more meaningful work. In the past, I also watched a lot of leaders, namely Jason and Jim, scare away alot of new members, but I decided to put up with their criticism.

I might sound like an old man, but alot of the new guys that come in here don't know the vaule of a hard day's work. They come in, tell you you should turbo the car, put NOS in it, and tell you that they could build a better car themselves. We've had a few new guys that knew their shit and rose to the top quickly. They are the ones now building the car. But, most of them don't know their shit, and don't think they need training on a lathe or welder. When told to sand or grind, they think they are above that "bitch work" and leave. In my mind, the new guys should have to put up with the same level of "bitch" work that I did and work their way up, but that hasn't obviously worked out for us.

After reading all these posts, I have thought of a possible new position - New Member Coordinator. The leaders could train this person in all aspects of fabrication and design, then this person could pass this knowledge down to the new members. Our problem is right now, we honestly don't have the time to train new members, which in turn, screws us over even more in the future. This new position could allow the leaders to go about their work while engaging new members at the same time.

I have also thought of conducting an interview process and tryouts for new recruits. Over the past few years, our team has built up a very high level of prestige on campus, and I think we could use this prestige to our advantage. Make every new member go through basic shop and saftey training. Give them a few small projects, like repairing systems on an old FSAE car. The ones that show up every weekend and show a geninue interest in the car are the ones we will focus more training and support on, the ones who only show up occasionaly, get cut. This way, leaders can focus training efforts on people who are going to stay, rather than spreading out their training efforts on 50 different people.

As a side note, another interesting trend i've seen with some of the new members is outright lying on resumes about FSAE positions. I've seen random people claim they were Project Directors, Engine Team Leaders, etc. Of course, this bites them in the ass when I get a phone call from the Caterpillars, the Mercurys, and the Hondas asking about their ficticous positions. These guys are just asking to get blacklisted from an entire industry. Have any of you guys seen this? Its a pretty interesting trend...

quote:

Originally posted by afroney:
Question for every team:

How do you guys find quality people?

ISU FSAE has been in a slump with membership. Its pretty much down to 5 people that actually build the car, and 2 people who spend more than 20hrs/week in the shop.

Our problem is finding quality members. Every year, we have 50 people that show up, and most of them leave. I would say that the problem is that 95 percent of the incoming engineers at ISU are either too stupid or lazy to contribute to the team. It sounds harsh, but its the truth. Trouble is finding the 5%. It seems that Iowa State University is lacking quality people nowadays...

How do you guys keep recruit/retain members?

Hah - you think you're in a bad spot? Wichita State has about 6-7 hard workers in both Baja and FSAE. A few of us are also wanting to go to both Baja SAE Rochester and FSAE West - we're still trying to figure out how to do that!

Ask H. G. Wells

quote:

Originally posted by Azim:
Hah - you think you're in a bad spot? Wichita State has about 6-7 hard workers in both Baja and FSAE. A few of us are also wanting to go to both Baja SAE Rochester and FSAE West - we're still trying to figure out how to do that!

Hah! You think you've got it bad?? Between the Clean Snowmobile, Mini Baja and FSAE, we have 4 productive people! 2 on CSC, 1 on Baja, and 2 for FSAE. You might notice that adds to 5... Thats because I'm one of the 2 on both CSC and FSAE

Good grief....12 days to CSC competition, and 72 days to FSAE...

quote:

Originally posted by John Stimpson:

quote:

Originally posted by Azim:
Hah - you think you're in a bad spot? Wichita State has about 6-7 hard workers in both Baja and FSAE. A few of us are also wanting to go to both Baja SAE Rochester and FSAE West - we're still trying to figure out how to do that!

Hah! You think you've got it bad?? Between the Clean Snowmobile, Mini Baja and FSAE, we have 4 productive people! 2 on CSC, 1 on Baja, and 2 for FSAE. You might notice that adds to 5... Thats because I'm one of the 2 on both CSC and FSAE

Good grief....12 days to CSC competition, and 72 days to FSAE...

Yeah thats bad. I know I've become the angry shop resident after 4 years of Formula. I remember looking at some of our leaders my freshman year and wondered how someone could be so angry at the world. Now, I realize that I've become the pissed off, freshman bashing, chair throwing shop monkey.

One more competition left... Then i'm FREE!!!