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Guild Management is a thankless and unpaid job. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t leverage what you’ve learned managing your guild in WOW for a job in real life. Below are some skills that guild management uses in game that are applicable in the real world job market.

Conflict Resolution

A large part of guild management comes down to conflict resolution.  At its most basic level, this could mean that you’re settling a disagreement between two or more players.  At its most advanced level, you’ll be addressing complex issues that are related to some of the core principles behind your guild.  These could include players upset about your raid policies, loot distribution etc.  Your ability to effectively manage these situations can be the difference between helping players understand why your policies exist to having raiders be shown the door.  Effective management of all varieties of conflict uses the right tool for the right job (oftentimes, the right tool can be more time intensive…which is the reason why you see poorly run guilds have lots of fluctuation in their rosters).

Managing conflict amongst employees uses the exact same tools.  Firing anyone is always considered to be the last resort and should only be a conclusion that you reach after having exhausted all other (often time intensive) avenues.
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We are at just the beginning of what I like to call the Great Funk of 2010. Summer is upon us, which is always a big transition for raiding guilds as some people can raid more while others either stop raiding entirely or ease up, but summer is a minor worry for raid leaders compared to the glut of content and the daily news coming out of the Cataclysm Alpha then Beta. Keeping people interested in Wrath content will be a growing challenge over the next few months. Raid leaders know that if they are not prepared to survive the summer and early fall with a stable group of raiders, they will be behind when Cataclysm comes out.

So how do you recruit?

The short answer is.. well, it depends on your guild and focus.

Many guilds are lax on recruitment. Most famously, AIE on the Earthen Ring server recruits new members at the beginning of each month and there are no requirements other than filling out a basic form. They are able to recruit so many people this way, their needs are always taken care of. Ensidia and Premonition, although they do actively recruit, have such high regard that they will always have enough people willing to join them that they can be extremely selective and still survive the funk.

These guilds have very different recruitment models and both can be successful. But for the vast majority of raiding guilds, it is not so simple. Open recruiting waters your talent and personality base down and can cause your better players to defect, while super selective recruiting can result in a negative growth. In many ways, as the pressure to recruit builds, you can feel like you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Remember that recruiting the right people is more important than just recruiting people. A guild comprised of many casual raiders, if you are not a casual raiding guild, will cause your committed raiders to leave and vice-versa.

It doesn’t have to be like that

Recruitment is time consuming, it requires the help of everyone in your guild, and it can be humbling. Everyone focuses on the easiest, but essential, recruiting method:  Guild recruitment threads on the Blizzard forums. That is a given, you should always do that,  but it is only the start and it is the least effective way to recruit.

Shotgun thread method

Instead of just posting on the blizzard forums, make sure you post on every available forum including: mmo-champion, tankspot, wow.com, curse forums, and any other WoW-related forums you can think of. Keep your wowprogress.com guild recruitment profile updated. Raiders who might be looking for new servers or even new guilds on their current servers tend to look at wow-progress  at each guild to see what they are recruiting, their raid schedule, and a link to their forums/website.

Using the WoW Guild Recruitment Forums to Actively Recruit

One of the absolute best ways to recruit is to use the Guild Recruitment forums on the official WoW forums. You would be amazed to see the number of people who post threads there looking for guilds. In fact, so many posts occur in that forum in a single day that it is worth digging several pages in. Need a Shadow Priest to fill a core raid spot? Chances are you will have 2 or 3 candidates in a single day.

Recruiting is work. It is one of the most important functions of guild leadership in a raiding guild. Do it well and your guild will prosper!

A quick introduction before we jump in.  One day I was casually talking to a coworker about our favorite game experiences and I shared a few of my favorite raiding moments.  Jack got a paranoid look in his eye, gave a quick look around the room and started to tell me about his time as a GM.  I found the conversation, and his experiences in Vanilla WoW, very interesting so I decided to do an interview.  Hope you enjoy!

Plec: Before we get started, lets get a brief synopsis on your history in WoW. You spent a long time as a Guild Leader on the Llane server in Vanilla WoW? What type of guild did you start and what was being a guild leader like back in the time of 40 man raid content?

Jack: That’s right, a few friends and I founded the Irate Pirates on Llane the week the game opened. There was five or six of us to start and we had to bribe people on the bridge into Stormwind to sign our charter. I think we were paying something like 10 silver per signature because that is all we could afford. We didn’t really know what kind of guild we wanted to be, we didnt really have any clue what the end game would look like at that point. All we knew is that we wanted a guild that felt like a friendly place. We didnt put restrictions on levels or gear back then. The one rule we had was basically “don’t be a dick”. Read more…

When I say ‘chewing glass’, I’m referring to the activity of trying something very difficult over and over and over until you get it right. The hope is that once you are successful, you will be better able to repeat the success the next time you try.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

– Albert Einstein

We have all been in the situation. You wipe on a boss, head back in, and start over again real quick.  The inclination is that you hop right back in and try again and hope it goes better. There may have been a chance occurrence that caused you to fail in the previous attempt and people say “just get better”. You may also feel that because you are limited by time you need to get as many “attempts” in as you possibly can so that you get more experience. For example, say it is already getting late and your raid is going to end in 30 minutes so you group up and buff as fast as you can and try again. Read more…

This will serve as the first in a series of interviews with Officers and Guild Masters from different servers. My intention for these articles is to cast a wide net to cover all of the different approaches to guild management and to shine a light on some of the ordinary guilds that may not be catching the spot light with World or Sever Firsts.

Today’s interview is with my old GM and good friend, NateArizona. Nate is the former GM for the Alliance Proudmoore guild, Pansy Division and also the co-host of the critically acclaimed podcast Proudmoore Pansies!

Plec: Time to go for the jugular Geraldo style! Just joking…but not really. You were recently the GM of Pansy Division and you decided to hand over the reigns of leadership after several months in charge. Most officers see guild management as a part of the meta-game offered by WoW, something that is as integral to their experience in game as raiding or PVP. Did you perceive Guild Management in a similar fashion? Why did you eventually hand over leadership? Read more…