Step 1 - Gather the information you need.

• Faction and Server Type - i.e. A US-PVE (Means Alliance, US (neener Canadians!) Player vs. Environment). Say this first, that way people who aren’t eligible to apply to you guild won’t waste their time.
  
• Time Commitments - If your guild raids from 7pm to 11pm Sunday through Thursday they need to know. If your guild holds candle light initiation sessions every 3rd Thursday of the month they need to know.
• Guild Focus - What is the purpose of you guild? Are you focused on raiding, leveling alts, role playings, pvp, community? The way to attract people who share your goals is to make them clear from the beginning. Bikutanda of Nazgrel muses on this topic here if you’d like an example.
  
• Brief Listing of Guild Accomplishments - How far along are you towards your goal? 4/6 SSC? Newly started guild? Well respected role playing guild that runs events 3 times a month? Some people want to help build a guild from the ground up. Others want to come into something more established. By letting people know where you are in terms of your goal you attract people who want to be there with you.
  
• What the guild is looking for - You’re making a recruitment post so clearly your guild has needs. Tell them about your ideal candidate. Let them make a self check to make sure they are what you are looking for.
  
• About your server - Most of these recruitment posts are made on cross server platforms and your candidate may be making a leap of faith to join you. Tell them about your community so they know what they may be getting into if the initiation period doesn’t work out.
  
• How to find out more - You can’t list every relevant piece of information in your recruitment post. Tell the candidate where to find more information if what they’ve found interests them.
  
• How to apply - Sometimes they know all the need to right from the recruitment post, tell them how to apply.
  
• Contact Information - Some people want to speak to a person while they make these decisions, tell them who to talk to, and how to find them.

Step 2 - Figure out where to say it.

• Realm forums - Find your realm under the “WoW Realm Forums” section on the WoW Forums - Forum Index page. If you are interested in drawing apps from the pool of people on your server who might be interested this is a great place to post.
• WoW Guild Recruitment Forums - This is a great way to find cross server candidates. Now broken in to Alliance and Whorde errr Horde sections.
  
• Bosskillers.com - Bosskillers has a guild search page. Go here to find out more information about how to submit your guild. This is a great place to find raiding applicants.
• MMO-Champion.com - MMO-Champion has several recruitment forums broken down by region and server type. Again this is a great place to pick up a raider.
  
• ShadowPriest.com - Here are their recruitment forums. This specialized site is a great place to pick up a raiding shadow priest. You may get other interested classes as well (I mean, shadow priests have friends too right?) but you’re mostly hitting shadow priests with this one.
• TankSpot.com - Here are their recruitment forums. Guess what you’re attract here? DING DING, raiding tanks.
• World of Raids - They used to have recruitment forums, but this post indicates something new and exciting is afoot. This is another place to recruit raiders.
• Wow Lemmings - I love this tool. This is an aggregate of the posts in the official recruitment forums, but you can search it. We use this tool to find people who’ve posted that they are looking for a home that meet preset requirements we have already set. You will have to post your recruitment notice in their thread on the official forums to contact them.
  

Note: You might notice, a lot of my links involve wow raiding. Well, that’s because I lead a raiding guild in wow. If you have links to other locations, I’m all ears. I’d love to make this post more accessible to all the different types of guild leaders.

Step 3 - Figure out what they want to hear.
Recently I came across a post from Pugnacious Priest titled “Guild Audit - and Guild Loyalty.” In this post she discusses leaving her current guild and what she’s looking for in a new guild. This is great information if you’re trying to recruit Pug, but what I really want to take away from this is the insight into her mind. Out there is your new member, looking for what your guild has to offer.

Take a moment and think about what your ideal candidate wants to see in a new guild. Are they looking for a guild that’s on the brink of something new and needs to draw people from all over to join in the effort? Are they looking for a home that’s established and want to drop rank in file with a group of people who know what they are doing? Are they just looking for a place that recognizes WoW is one thing on a list of many balanced priorities? What does your new member want? Make sure your post tells them you have it.

Step 4 - Personality.
Your guild has a personality. It has to, it’s comprised of people who have a personality. If your guild is business like, make sure that comes across in your tone. Playful? Have some fun with your post. You get my point. There is something that makes your guild unique. Make sure you play that up!

Step 5 - Putting it all together.
You’ve gathered them all together, now it’s time to put them into a mix bowl and beat them until something intelligent comes out. Remember that some of the information I told you to gather might not be needed in your post because it’s covered where you post. I.E It’d be pretty silly to include that you’re an Alliance guild if you’re posting in the Official WoW Recruitment Alliance forum. When I reply to an individuals post in the recruitment forums, I try and make sure my reply indicates that I’ve read what they have to say about themselves.

Sample - Below is a sample of a well written (in my opinion) recruitment post.*

The Guild of Server is looking for a few raiding members to fill out our raid composition in SWP.

Currently we are looking for a Shadow Priest, Resto Druid, Holy Paladin, and Elemental Shaman.

About us: The Guild was formed in July of 2007. During that time we have progressed to full clears of MH and BT and are currently working on Kalaecgos. Our raid times are Sun-Thurs 7pm-11pm EST and we expect 75% attendance, though we certainly understand things come up and will always work with individuals on that.

Our guild is very personnel oriented and we are looking for skilled players as well as folks that are decent and can fit into our guild. Before we even see any potential applicants play we like to talk to them to see if they will be a good fit for us, and if we will be somewhere they want to call their raiding home.

Our loot system is a fair one that doesn’t include a “pecking order” we run an EP/GP system which can be explained when you speak to me. There have been some variations to this in the interest of fairness.

Our guild does not make the GL’s rich. All items accumulated in raiding that are not wanted are distributed in cash at least once per month including flasks (marks).

About The Server: The Server is one of the oldest and most established PVE servers around. We have recently experienced a high number of PVP transfers due to both the quality and speed of queue times in both arenas and battlegrounds.


If interested please apply at our website or contact one of our officers in game. You may also email me at EmailTheGuild1375@email.com

http://theguildwebsite.com

Recruitment Guy (you CAN contact me during raid times)
GMX- GM
GMY -GM
MeleeGuy-Melee Role leader
AdminGuy-EP/GP Officer
RaidLeaderGuy-Raid Leader/Caster role leader

*Note: Details changed to protect the guild that allowed me to borrow this.