How, you may ask, am I going to tie my collegiate Greek experience with recruiting? Well, my friend, with two small words: "rush party".

I'm involved in planning a recruiting event with one of my teams, and we are discussing the format that has worked well in the recent past. As the other event planners are going over the event, I'm struck by the realization: Oh, my, gosh, it's a  RUSH PARTY.

Now, for those of you that lacked the Greek experience or scoff at it and considered yourself a "Gamma Delta Iota" (otherwise known as "Go- Da*ned Independent") let me tell you that I learned valuable skills as a member of the Greek community, I have made lasting friendships that are still alive today, and I now am giving back to Sigma Kappa by volunteering my time at my local chapter house by helping on resume workshop and career panels for the young women getting ready to graduate and enter the workforce. My alma mater, Miami University, was (and still is) a fairly heavily Greek campus, also being the alpha (or founding) chapter for a number of the fraternities. When I refer to a rush party, I'm talking about the process whereby new members are recruited for each organization. Each Greek organization has a goal, or number of new members, it is hoping to pledge. The panhellenic council and the leadership team of each organization works on planning the parties. Usually there are a large number of incoming freshman (and sometimes sophomores) looking to join the Greek system. Often family members will have what are called "legacy" candidates (think of them as the equivalent of employee referrals). Each Greek chapter then hosts a series of "parties" where the interested candidates get a chance to talk to members of the chapter, and after each party, the candidate decides on a set number of organizations s/he would like to return to for the next round. Each round gets longer, with first meetings being anywhere from a short chunk of time (15+ minutes) onward, depending on the logistical needs of the school (number of chapters, number of rushees). From my first rush season, I remember we had our first set of parties was 20 minutes for a full day. Then the next round was 45, then 90, then 2 hours. Each set of parties was smaller because the rush candidates and the chapters were going through an elimination process to try and match up interests.

We had training in conversation topics, learning to evaluate a person based on how they presented themselves (verbally and non-verbally), mnemonic exercises to remember the young women so that at the end of each party we could "take notes" and compare them with the other women that spoke to them. We were grouped together in a carefully coreographed entry-exit strategy so that a maximum number of women had a chance to speak to each candidate without her feeling overwhelmed.

Returning to the recruiting event in planning, we were discussing the exact same things. Who should be available for the candidates to speak with, how many people and for how long, best ways to remember key facts about each candidate to compare notes later. Let's face it, as recruiters we are all looking to make the best hires for our clients. It needs to be a match of technical skills, cultural fit, and a genuine synchronicity between the candidate and the members of the team. There are more commonalities than disparities between Rushing and Recruiting.

It would be an interesting study to find out if Greek alumnae make better interviewers overall, and how many of them move into recruiting.