Accepting and Rejecting Applications

In most guilds, a poorly filled application means the recruitment officer first laughs at you and then deletes your app without a moment's hesitation.

I've gotten applications where the applicant only answered 9/25 questions, where they left important things like "Did you read our rules?" blank, where raid experience is "none," and where people really and truly don't know how to:

• Read.
• Spell.
• Form a sentence.
• Form a word.
• All of the above.
  

I got A's in school, I'm a professional writer, and while I understand that some people have zero grammar skills (and that's okay), that does not mean that they are unable to read the question and think about their answer. Lack of writing skill does not mean lack of mental function, as so many people seem insistent to impress upon recruitment officers.

Sometimes with applications, even people I accepted into IVV, I felt like I was grading tests from a 5th grade class that just Did Not Care, and I was too tired and fed up to fail them.

In the real world, this is unacceptable.

If you bring a resume to a job you want and it's handwritten on notebook paper in pink pen with your qualifications squeezed together to fit on the front, you will go in the trash without a second thought. They are busy. They do not have time for idiocy.

Officers are busy. We do not have time for bad applications.

Unless we're Family Guild officers.

The sad and frustrating truth is that Family Guilds do not shunt people aside for having a less than pristine application, as most guilds do. Most guilds say "Someone makes the game harder to play, gkick them" or "An app bores you, reject it" and "Who cares? It's just a game."

But that attitude goes against everything a Family Guild stands for. We do not gkick, reject, or throw a slovenly amount of ennui over a situation as an excuse to make things easier for ourselves. We take the hard road.

We take the annoying road.

In a family guild, getting an application from someone with connections is like getting a job application from your boss's nephew. His resume might be in crayon, but if he doesn't drool on himself or pee in your trashcan, you give him the job.

This makes it very hard to adhere to any sort of standard for applications. You can't punish people for slovenly work, no matter how much you want to, because it might cause drama.

And drama is bad.

Very very bad.

Still, you might think "I'm a recruitment officer, I have a right to enforce some standard."

Yes and no. Mostly no. You're hoping that people assume you can and that fear of rejection will make them pay attention to the application. But the honest truth is that you're going to be overlooking a lot. And you don't have a choice about it.

If you reject the wrong person, it could get very very ugly. I'm not joking. People in IVV love each other and would never knowingly hurt each other, but GOOD GOD I got ripped a new one by people who weren't even angry and had no clue what they were doing.

Weak, emotional people + influence over your friends or superiors + you rejected their friend = "Kill me, please."

A Family Guild recruitment officer only has as much power as the guild gives you. If you need to reject someone with connections, do it carefully. It's possible, but you need to be able to defend your reasoning, and even then half the guild will assume "Real Life Friend = Auto Invite."

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Beth Blevins is a former officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.