Enhancing Outdoor Leadership Candidate Assessment and Hiring Practices
Introduction
Hiring the right outdoor leaders can be a challenging process. Outdoor leadership demands a unique blend of Technical Skills (Hard Skills), Human Skills (Soft Skills), and Meta Skills (Conceptual Skills). However, assessing these skills effectively can be tricky. Many programs rely on recruiters and trainers to sift through resumes, cover letters, and interviews to identify the ideal candidates. While this approach works, it can also create dependency on individual recruiters, leading to challenges when high turnover occurs in the field. In this blog post, we'll explore some practices that can help alleviate this dependency and bring greater clarity to the hiring process.
1. Outdoor Logs: Shining a Light on Experience
Outdoor Logs are increasingly becoming standard documentation for professional outdoor guides worldwide. They aim to clarify various aspects of a candidate's experience, including roles, locations, environments, sports, group sizes, durations, objectives, and participants. While they provide insights into prior experience and exposure to technical skills, they may not necessarily gauge competency. These logs capture all outdoor-related experiences, whether personal or professional, shedding light on a candidate's situational experience across environments, activities, seasons, and roles. This information can be invaluable in evaluating an individual experience that is directly and indirectly translatable to the work demands expected of them in the field.
2. Develop and Refine Hiring Practices
Most programs follow a standard hiring process, which typically includes; letters of recommendation, 2-3 references, certifications, resumes, cover letters, interviews, and training/orientation periods. However, to refine the hiring process effectively, it's crucial to maintain as many constants as possible, even when different individuals facilitate various stages, the general level of detail associated with the hiring and interview process is approached with less eye for detail, note-taking, communication, and discussion as is used for staff development and client care in ongoing programming. Consistency in training materials, facilitation methods, and approaches can also help refine the recruiting and training process over time, despite staff turnover at the recruiter, and midlevel leadership levels. Reflecting on what has contributed to staff longevity and continually re-examining the recruiting process, materials, and initial training serves to improve the quality of initial training and hiring outcomes.
3. Blunt Honesty: Setting Realistic Expectations
One common challenge in wilderness therapy is the mismatch between candidate expectations and the actual demands of the job. Guides often express dissatisfaction when they feel that the organization did not provide enough clarity about the position's requirements. To address this issue, organizations should adopt a policy of "inform and warn”: This approach involves providing a balanced view of the role, highlighting both the challenges and benefits. Maintaining open and honest communication on the difficulty of the job, the potential experiential challenges and how the program will support the staff as they go through them and what they have in place to support staff, as well as the benefits and training they’ll receive will create a more complete conceptualization of the choice staff are making when they commit to a year-long contract or work commitment. It empowers candidates to make informed decisions about whether the position aligns with their long-term goals and expectations. Building trust by setting realistic expectations is crucial to retaining staff and reducing turnover.
4. Frontloading Literature: Building Competency from the Start
Many programs recommend reading lists, typically focused on texts relevant to the program's curriculum. However, a more holistic approach is to provide a balanced collection of readings covering various aspects of outdoor leadership, including risk management, facilitation, working with specific populations, wilderness therapy's history, campcraft, ethics, the local environment, and decision-making. This approach allows candidates to self-direct their development and build baseline understanding, practice and competencies before their initial training. It cultivates a culture of higher competency and reduces baseline stress among staff, leading to better performance and job satisfaction.
Conclusion
Selecting the right outdoor leaders is essential for the success of outdoor programs. By implementing these practices—utilizing Outdoor Logs, refining hiring processes, practicing blunt honesty, and frontloading literature—organizations can improve their candidate assessment and hiring procedures. These approaches help identify candidates with the right mix of technical skills, human skills, and meta skills, setting the stage for effective outdoor leadership and reducing turnover in the field.
