Discarding Scripts...

and people; an anecdotal addendum to the process vs people-oriented debate

I went to a Christian college in Cincinnati. Campus was small and intimate. Sometimes the admissions building would open up an office in the evening and recruit current students to make phone calls recruiting future students. The process was informal. Walk in, say, “I’m here to make some phone calls,” and they’d be like, “Yes, please come in.” Then you’d get candy and free dinner and eventually prizes once you achieved a certain number of verbal pledges from high schoolers, who are of course young men and young women of their words.

My friend and I decided to give it try one evening. They were serving pizza, and we were poor, starving college kids. It would end up being our one and only foray into the world of college recruiting. Because we were bad at it? Quite the contrary, actually. We were really good at it. And we found it fun, too. We just never returned, and I’ve never had a good explanation as to why.

When we arrived, we were given two pieces of paper. One of them contained names and phone numbers of prospective students. The other one was our script. I hated the script. I looked it over and immediately determined that it would make me sound like a robot and might accomplish more dissuading than persuading. But for my first couple calls, I went with it. Sure enough, these were some short phone conversations. Then I decided to wing it. What did I have to lose? Not being invited back?

The conversations became free-flowing, fun even. This was my freshman year, so I was talking with people essentially my own age and was having success in creating genuine interest. My friend also ditched his script and proceeded in the same manner, also bringing him success. Despite our success, we initially thought we were going to get kicked out for not following the rules. The head guy would randomly walk around the room and listen in on the conversations. We noticed when he noticed that our particular conversations were not proceeding in the typical robotic manner.

But to our surprise:

“You guys are really good at this!”

“We’re not really following the script.”

“That’s okay. Think of it more as a guide than anything. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

At the end of the night, he told us he’d love to see us back. And we told him we probably would be back. However, as I’ve alluded to, we never did return. So, back to as to why that might be:

Though he assured us that disregarding the script was fine by him, the thought of everyone else in the room robot-ing their way through conversations bothered me. While I had fun and was given the green light, the environment still promised a burden I had no interest in dealing with. Perhaps, had we gone back, we could’ve worked to gradually lightening that burden. But would that really have worked? Many of those student recruiters actually needed the script. People are either going to follow a process or they’re not. This dynamic doesn’t matter as much as who the people are.