Candidate Academy

Last year we helped 47 candidates run in the Leadership Race. This year we want to inspire over 100 students to take part. More candidates gives our members more choice as to who should lead their union, encourages more students to vote and ensures that we have 6 excellent individuals to lead our members.

This toolkit has been created to help you as staff identify and encourage students to stand in the Leadership Race.

The key to this is helping our staff identify student talent within their team or within students groups that they engage with.

• someone who is approachable and engaging
• staff who are keen to keep involved in LUU
• students in committee positions
• students who show a good attitude and are good at using their initiative
• someone who is comfortable in talking to students
• students who show signs of creativity
• continually has ideas of how to change things
• is passionate about student issues

Remember that a candidate does not need to show all of these traits to be encouraged to stand!

Tips on your involvement

As you have seen staff have an amazing potential to help inspire 100 candidates.  We want to help you to do this as well as helping you stay within the rules. The bottom line is you can encourage students to stand as much as you (a long as you don't pressure them) but you may not help them run in anyway or encourage other students to vote for them. As a staff member it is your role to stay neutral during the elections process.

The best way of encouraging students is to simply tell them that you think they would be good at it. Students respect the staff they engage with on daily basis so simply knowing that someone thinks they would be good at it can be a massive confidence boost.

Don't be afraid to ask students questions and help challenge any fears they may have about standing. A typical conversation may look like this:
 

'Have you considered standing in the Leadership Race?'

     'A bit, not really sure to be honest.'

'What about Activities Officer? You would be good at that, your always helping your committee be more active and you great at talking to students'

     'You think? It just seems really tough'

'Well 90% of students who stood said it was easy to stand and had a great experience. You should have a chat to the guys in CDS'

     'Thank’s, think I will.'

'Can’t hurt, and remember you do get paid to do it'

Myth Busting

You can be a real help in myth busting fears for potential students

• Running an election is difficult.
  Remind them that they will be given full support from CDS and that 90% found it easy
• You need the backing of a 'faction'
  Students often fear that if they do not have the backing of a student 'faction' (groups like Labour Students, Jsoc and Isoc etc.) they cannot win. This simply isn't true. The largest of any faith or political society is no more than couple of hundred. With 8000 students voting these groups simply have no sway over that number of students. The majority of the current exec were not members of political societies.
• Running will harm your studies
  Students in final year often believe that running will hurt their studies. We can help them talk to lecturers about getting extensions and help to manage their workload during this busy time.
• You need campaign experience
  Some students believe that a lack of campaign experience will mean they can't hope to win. Remember that every candidate gets a 121 campaign meeting with James Robertson - CDS. We also run campaign training that 95% of students found helpful and gives them great C.V skills.