How to table
When I ran tabling in the fall of 2016 for CIA Buggy, we took on pretty drastic new strategies and as a result were comically overwhelmed by attendance at our recruitment events. While some of that was surely luck, there was also some skill involved. Here's the one-sentence summary:
A team of one very sociable opener funneling people to a few closers is significantly more effective than the same number of people taking conversations from start to finish.
Let's dive into the details.
What's tabling?
In my experience, tabling is when you go out to some public space on your campus and sit around behind some tables and hang out for a while, vaguely hoping that someone will approach your table and ask to join your organization ("org"). On a good day, the other people tabling with you are friends; on other days, they're near-strangers who happened to be conscripted into the same timeslot as you.
For the next couple hours, you're both united by a shared obligation to the org you're tabling for. So you hang out, and you idly chit-chat, and occasionally you shout some slogan (if you feel like it). And very rarely, you'll make a pitch to the intrepid passerby who somehow spotted your table and made the trek up.
If you're reading this post, maybe you've experienced this personally. If you have, then you know: it's really not an effective way to recruit people.
There is a much more effective way to do this, and all it requires is a person who is reasonably outgoing and wholeheartedly shameless. Luckily, I check both of those boxes, and hopefully you do too.
Prerequisites
For maximum effect, you will need a few things before you even start tabling.
a) Get an idea of what to say
You should figure out your messaging. What are you really offering to these strangers?
Is it a chance to develop mechanical design skills and work on cool carbon-fiber vehicles? A wild way to stay fit and participate in a hundred-year-old tradition? Or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to yeet yourself headfirst down a hill and have people cheer you on?
Hopefully it's all of the above, plus lifelong friendship. These examples are focused on buggy at CMU, a racing sport with human-driven and human-powered carbon-fiber vehicles (video); but regardless of the org, you should be prepared to talk about it.
More than that, you should also be aware of the alternatives, both within your niche and elsewhere.
There are five independent buggy teams at CMU (we compete against each other) that can all claim similar benefits -
what sets yours apart from theirs?
If I want to do mechanical design work, why would I choose any buggy team instead of joining the solar boat or the FSAE car team?
For athletics, why buggy over club sports?
To make friends, can't I just join one of the venerable drinking social organizations on campus?
These might all be valid questions - the onus is on you to answer them.
Prepare for questions
You will likely receive questions in two categories: facts and experiences.
Fact questions
Fact questions have a concrete answer. The implied context is,
Is it possible for me to participate?
Here's a few examples:
- When do you do your main activities?
- What is the time commitment like?
- Do you require prior experience with [whatever]?
These common questions about facts and policies should be standardized - this might require some discussion among the membership or leadership of the org. At the end of the day, every tabler should know the answers to common fact questions, even if the answers are "maybe, it depends on the situation" (as long as that's the actual policy).
Experience questions
Experience questions ask about what it's like. The implied context is,
Is it worth it for me to participate?
Here's a few examples:
- What exactly is it that you personally do?
- What are interesting problems that you face?
- What do you enjoy the most about the activity?
- What keeps you involved and engaged in the org?
Do you already know what you would say if someone asked you these questions right now? Take the time to think about it. Knowing your answer beforehand allows you to quickly respond when a potential recruit asks the questions, saving precious seconds and potentially embarrassing scenarios - "They couldn't even say what they like about the org, why would I join?".
If you ask an experience question to every person in the org, you'll get a wide variety of answers back (hopefully, most of these are positive). Since this is just about the personal experience, you don't need an official "party stance" - variety is good.
Remember to be realistic
Zooming back out to the messaging as a whole, it helps to be realistic.
People hate it when you lie to them. Daniel H. Pink's book To Sell is Human is a good reference here - the concept of "attunement" helps you find the recruit's perspective. You don't really benefit from suckering in someone who is going to try it, dislike it because they were misled, and leave anyways.
b) Get something to hand out
No matter how compelling of a speaker you are, it's easy for people to forget that they spoke to you - they're busy too.
You need to be able to hand people something as a physical reminder of your conversation. It should have minimal information - an event's name, time, and location, a link to your website or other contact information.
You also want it to be small enough for them to slip in a pocket, ideally without having to fold it or otherwise tarnish it. A full letter-size, 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper is way too large; even half that size is too large. Ideally you use a standard-size busines card, which also has the benefit of being fairly sturdy. [footnote 1]
On the front, a splash photo and contact information.
![[2016 Recruitment Card, Front]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/595b129c72af65691b797b34/1590791544139-D4ID7POHEV0DBGLHSEUQ/2016+Recruitment+Card+%28Front%29.png?format=300w&content-type=image%2Fpng)
On the back, a list of minimal info for events during recruitment week.
![[2016 Recruitment Card, Back]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/595b129c72af65691b797b34/1590791505182-Q8UM9JB8MF1H5HZX2XWL/image-asset.png?content-type=image%2Fpng)
Make sure that an interested person can make it to an event or find out more using only the information on the card. Since you have limited real estate, it might be tempting to just throw in a link or a QR code. Don't. When's the last time you scanned a QR code on a flyer someone handed you? For every additional step that you add, you will lose potential recruits - the additional friction isn't worth the space savings.
c) Get some tabling partners
After you get your snazzy business cards, grab a few tabling partners - this is going to be a team effort.
In traditional tabling, where you sit behind the table and wait for people to approach, one person owns an entire conversation. The same person introduces the recruit to the topic, answers questions, and tries to get contact information on a sign-up sheet.
In my version of tabling, we will split up conversations. One person will start a very large number of conversations, talking nearly nonstop as long as there are people passing by. They are outgoing and shameless, the opener who jumpstarts the process. [footnote 2]
At some point the opener will hand off conversations to the people behind the table, who are closers: they will pick up conversations, make their usual pitches, and finish the job by getting the recruit to sign up.
The benefit here comes from division of labor - we'll see exactly how in the next section.
The technique
Now that you have messaging, business cards, and partners, we can begin. This section focuses on the opener (as you in the second person), since traditional tabling is very similar to closing.
1. Stand around, aggressively
In your past tabling experiences you may have sat in a folding chair, safely behind the table. Maybe you even had a canopy to protect you from the heat of the midday sun.
It's time to give up these material luxuries, time to leave your esteemed colleagues behind the table and step into the sun. Take your place where you truly belong: standing directly in the flow of passersby. Wear sunscreen. [footnote 3]
2. Pick a victim
After you've established your place in traffic, you will choose a lucky victim person to enlighten with knowledge about your organization.
This person is moving slowly, not heading anywhere in particular.
They're not (too) actively engaged in a conversation.
Maybe they just had the misfortune of making direct eye contact and glancing away isn't going to save them now.
3. Initiate
Once you've selected an appropriate target, engage. A good way to do this is a quick throwaway question. For buggy, I always used "Hi, are you interested in buggy?". It's something very fast that communicates your intent, and then hands them the initiative. [footnote 4]
4. Handle the response
There's a few ways this conversation can go after you've thrown them an easy question.
a) No
Not a chance!
Sorry, I already do this with a different org
furious head shaking as they speedwalk away
Well, you tried. If they say no, that's totally fine - respect it and back off. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of other people walking by right now, and many of them will be much more receptive. So why waste your effort on someone who's already convinced they're not in?
b) Not right now
I'm late to class, maybe later?
That's okay! At this point you should slip them your business card and let them go: "Here's our business card for now, and see you later! We'll be here all week, so stop by when you have a chance." Bonus points if you do see them again later and can approach them with mild familiarity.
Often, people say "Not right now" because they legitimately need to be somewhere. Other times, people will say it meaning "No", but want to avoid the (perceived) harshness of being direct. There's really no way of knowing for sure which they are, so I take a "later" at face value. [footnote 5]
c) Anything else
Yes, how do I get involved?
Maybe, should I be?
I've heard of it, but has anyone ever died doing it?
Congratulations! You've caught one. If they ask a specific question, answer it. Otherwise, now's the time for you to make an extremely condensed pitch. Based on your preparation from earlier, what's the first thing you want people to know? It's okay if you don't painstakingly write out a pitch and recite it from memory. The best way to refine one is by practicing on real people anyways. By the end of the first hour it'll be better than anything you could do trying to write it out alone, and you'll be able to alter it on-the-fly to emphasize certain aspects based on the context of the current conversation.
Then, learn their name! Learn about their potential interest in what you're doing. And take that information to hand off the conversation to one of your confederates back at the table. The closer can then pick up the conversation, go into much more detail, and hopefully grab some contact information and some kind of commitment (verbal or otherwise) to show up at a specific event of yours. For example, if a potential recruit is curious about doing mechanic work, then open garage hours (where mechanic work is done) is incredibly valuable to them compared to a track workout or a late night food social.
5. Go to 1.
Here is the value of the handoff: now you, the outgoing and shameless opener, are free to go start talking to other potential recruits. Go out and get them!
Why is this better?
If all you do is set up your table and wait, you're going to miss out. As an outsider, there's no real reason to walk up to a table and ask them what it's all about, especially if you can't even tell their organization's purpose from a distance. Bribing people with free food will only get you so far. You'll also inadvertently select for people who are outgoing enough to initiate a conversation with a stranger - not that it's a bad thing to recruit outgoing people, but you don't necessarily want to limit the size of your recruitment pool.
When the opener initiates one-on-one conversation, you lower that barrier to entry, all the way down to the simple response "yes". And by handing off the recruit to a closer, you can effectively divide up the effort and maximize the effect of your shameless, outgoing opener.
Pitfalls
There's a few pitfalls along the way. Try not to fall into them.
The messaging - deciding on what you want to communicate - is important. The interactions you have during tabling are transient. If you accidentally mislead or confuse, you will never have a chance to correct that. But you do have infinite time beforehand to prepare. It's worth the investment.
Your business cards (or whatever printed media) need to have correct information. It looks amateurish if you have to scribble over dates or locations, and it's even worse if you distribute them without noticing - people might show up at the time/place listed on the card and have a bad experience because you're not there. If, like most campus-based organizations, you don't have personal control over room bookings, you can mitigate this by always meeting at a centralized public location ("Meet at the black chairs in the University Center").
Don't hoard your business cards! It's true, they look cool and they're in limited supply. But the whole point is to give them away - you don't benefit from holding extra business cards at the end of the day. You can get a couple thousand business cards for $60 or so, which should be more than enough for your face-to-face recruiting.
Try not to repeatedly talk to the same people. The faces will blur together after a while so it'll be hard, but it's annoying for them to be repeatedly accosted even if you back off immediately. [footnote 6]
Be nice. It's tempting to harass tablers from rival teams or interrupt their pitches, but it doesn't reflect well on your organization when you do that. The kind of recruit who appreciates that probably isn't the kind that you want.
Conclusion
Traditional tabling - waiting for the interested to come to you and having one individual fully own the conversation - can be made much more effective simply by adding an opener.
This drastically widens the size of your initial funnel. You're going to get a lot of signups. Heads up: this may cause new and exciting problems. Having so many more people is going to divide your attention more, and you might not be able to operate the way you did before. You need to be prepared to expand your capacity at every point down the line. [footnote 7]
Finally, there's no substitute for passion. People can tell when you really care about the thing that you're talking about. When I was a freshman at CMU, the very first person I talked to about buggy was Sarah Dieckmann from CIA. She was so interesting and obviously passionate about the team and the sport that it utterly overshadowed every following conversation with the people from other teams. That's the real sale. CIA recruitment is extremely effective because people genuinely care, and it shows.
Thanks to Johnny Mok and Sabrina Wang for feedback on drafts of this post.
Footnotes
[footnote 1] (back to content)
Note that you'll need to order business cards at least a week or two in advance, depending on your supplier.
[footnote 2] (back to content)
Opener? I hardly know her!
[footnote 3] (back to content)
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.
Excerpt from "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young", by Mary Schmich.
[footnote 4] (back to content)
Note: this opening question should really be something that is tailored to your organization. Once while tabling with David for C# (a singing club), I saw him ask the ridiculous leading line of "Hey, do you like music?". This sparked some confusion as people stared back wondering what his game was, and on at least one occasion elicited the world's most deadpan "No, I actually hate all music, thanks for asking".
On one hand, it seems like a great question - everyone likes music, right? So people are basically obligated to say yes and start the conversation (or alternately, lie to your face). And that's technically true, and then you realize that engaging everyone is actually not what you want, because in that narrow group of "literally everyone" there is a large subset who have literally zero interest in singing with you.
So you can superficially boost your engagement this way, but you don't really help your cause of getting more people to join your organization. In the worst case, maybe you have guilted these people into expressing insincere interest, and down the line you're going to waste your effort and resources trying to contact them and get them to participate.
[footnote 5] (back to content)
There's also this unfortunate case where people are incentivized to do this, because for some reason tablers and other salespeople don't respect a direct "No" and escalate their efforts upon hearing it, but do respect a "Maybe later" and back off. If you're selling something, please don't contribute to this. We would all be better off just expressing our true intentions and respecting others.
If you suspect this is happening, you can just ask directly, "Do you mean 'later' as in 'later', or as a polite no? It's okay if the answer is actually no". This will help you free up mental space to remember people who actually might come back later.
[footnote 6] (back to content)
I was often guilty of this. Sorry to the people around buggy-driver height at CMU.
[footnote 7] (back to content)
In CIA we saw some of these issues after the huge fall recruitment in 2016-17. Although there were many more recruits initially, their numbers dwindled over the year. I mostly blame our head mechanic at the time (who incidentally was also me) for the retention issues.
The space below is left empty so that clicking on footnotes will scroll to the correct location.