Tips and Recruitment Ideas

Everyone you meet in the process of doing your job is a potential STC member but they aren’t likely to join unless you ask them. Why wait?

Suggested Prospects

• Academics
• Content developers
• Documentation specialists
• Information architects
• Information designers
• Technbical editors
• Technical illustrators
• Technical translators
• Technical writers
• Usability and human factors professionals
• Visual Designers
• Web designers and developers

Helpful Ideas

• Invite a coworker to a monthly chapter or SIG meeting.
• Publish the new member’s name and the recruiter in your newsletter.
• Send a letter to all technical communicators at your place of work and invite them to come to a meeting and learn more about STC.
• Talk to your company’s senior management and encourage them to make STC membership mandatory among the staff.
• Have a brown-bag lunch meeting at your office, invite all your colleagues to attend, and then ask them to join STC.
• Give special ribbons to new members at chapter or SIG events.
• Develop a buddy system by providing each current member with a potential new member to contact and invite to meetings.
• Hold new member receptions at events and announce new members and recruiters at every meeting.
• Ask the potential new member if they would like to contribute an article or give a presentation at a chapter event.
• Coordinate the timing of all campaign efforts and marketing communications so that members are not overwhelmed.

Brown-Bag Meetings

• Coordinate a one-hour lunch meeting at the STC member’s office.
• Ask that everyone bring their own lunch or have a sponsor cater the lunch.
• Invite company colleagues to attend the lunch.
• Hold a discussion on a technical communication “hot topic.”

Meet STC Program

• Conduct a membership recruitment program at your monthly Chapter or SIG meeting.
• Pass out STC membership bruchures and applications.
• Ask chapter or SIG members to target this meeting to invite potential members.
• Conduct a PowerPoint presentation reviewing the benefits of STC membership.
• Offer special incentives if people join the night of the meeting.
• Alternative: find a sponsor to pay for nonmember dinners and offer free dinner certificates to area restaurants as incentive to join.

Fireside Chat Meeting

• Identify a restaurant, or members’ home, with a nice fireplace seating area.
• Have a Sunday night mini-meeting.
• Hold a one-hour discussion on a technical communication “hot topic.”
• Ask members to invite prospects to attend with them (ask the national office for a list of prospects in your area to invite).

Live Web Seminar as Recruitment Vehicle

• Schedule a live web seminar in a member’s office conference room.
• Find a sponsor and speaker to present a “hot” educational topic.
• Invite members and non members to attend.
• Follow-up with non members and invite them to join.