On a Silver Platter

Email is great. Facebook is great. Just “great,” and not excellent. Many of the information we want to receive or simply be notified whenever and wherever is not delivered on a silver platter, because in a world where information floats abundant, having to manually search for it, whether it includes opening up an iPod Touch to check Facebook messages or opening up an agenda for an evening dinner reminder. We simply do not want to inconvenience ourselves. The problem addressed will not target the global population in an attempt to ease information accessibility so that everyone receives it, but instead towards a minute demographic, say an entire university student body. I have noticed that many students do not attend academic seminars, club meetings, or recruitment talks not because of their lackadaisical natures, but instead because of their incompatibility with many of the students’ behaviour, most notably laziness, or in this case, the “expectation of information delivered on a silver platter.” Ultimately, it seems that unless students are catered to by recruitment attempts, they will simply remain unresponsive.

So what can we do as recruitment agencies, such as school clubs and external organizations? From my experience with working as an active club member and environmentalist, I have found that posters and flyers do not work unless they are delivered straight to the target audience, and even then there is a possibility that the receiver simply dumps the pamphlet down the drain. Hence to increase the possibility of accessibility, more action on the provider’s end is essential. So here’s how we can increase involvement and notification: provide direct contact with the recipient with flyers and pamphlets sitting outside their residence, call them and email them DIRECTLY and not as a group because there is no intimate contact and the recipient will simply dismiss it as superfluous, and aggressively host active meetings that can work with or without a large body of people because in the event of few numbers then the ones who are present are not disheartened. I do agree that this issue is not as pressing as many that are currently running rampant throughout society, but it is one that we need to address in order to ensure participation from everyone as one collective group, because a team is only as strong as its participants’ organization and collaboration.