Leadership: Hiring and Recruiting

By: Khris

Introduction

In any setting, regardless of voluntary or paid employer, employee relationship it is extremely important to have a clear set of outlines, and personal beliefs with how to address each situation and individual. Granted, no one person or writing or book can prepare you for every situation you may encounter in this setting. Some situations you may have to decide how to address it on the fly, as it may be unique. The best thing to take from this is how you handled it, to learn from it, and decide wether the outcome from your decision was the best recourse or if perhaps it should be handled differently if addressed in the future.

For those situations which you can prepare for, and aspects of leadership that you can be prepared for, I would like to assist you in being ready to encounter the “controllable” aspects of leadership. This way you can either be prepared for a leadership role, be it at CyberArmy or in the real world, and if you already are in a leadership position, hopefully it can give you some insight to help you in the future.

Section 1: Hiring/Recruiting

By far one of the largest aspects of leadership, is by very definition, leading those below you. For most leaders their success or failure is not only determined by their own success, but also by the success of the unit as a whole, including everyone from the bottom up.

For this reason it is important to build a strong base to work with. When you hire or recruit, it is important to establish what role it is you are trying to fill, and what will be required from that level. As CyberArmy is a volunteer organization, I would like to use a similar setting as an example. We’ll use a food pantry (to those who are unaware, an organization that runs off volunteer work to feed those who are needy).

Now lets say that you are in charge of running the food pantry. You are the chairman/chairwoman who is in charge of overseeing the whole project. Your success is based on the efficiency with which you distribute goods to those who are in need. Your overall goal would be several fold.

* Ensure that a fair and even amount of food be distributed to all
* Ensure that all volunteer labor hours are not wasted by stalemating
* Ensure that if possible the proper amount of exposure is present, be it TV, radio, or newspaper to promote your work, and hopefully in the future draw in more financial, and material support.
* Ensure there is little waste
* Minimize unused funds, by ensuring all is used appropriately

Now, as the Chairperson, you know what is needed of you. Let’s break this down by section to determine the best way to run our “organization”.

Starting at the bottom of the pile, not meaning bottom of importance, but the core of the overall plan. Distribution. This section would require more of your actual hard work, and the majority of your volunteers would fall into this section. You may have the casual participant, or people who are happy with minimal contribution, not that it makes them less integral, but they may have time constraints or other variables that keep them from committing to a more in-depth level of contribution. The mass of your workers would be in this area. For the most part, at the base, it is best to hire attitude and train skill. Granted for CyberArmy this is not always the case, as with those brigades that require coding and things of that nature. However, either way it is the responsibility of the leader to ensure all on task are capable of performing. For this reason, for your base and new recruits it’s best to hire or recruit someone who is willing to do the hard work, and understands their individual importance to the operation as a whole.

Continued next month! Stay tuned!

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