Talent Quest: Job Description Part 1 of 3
Recruiting the right people to become part of an ABCD effort lies in using the ABCD approach. In the case of looking for people to fulfil the roles of Community Connectors, Animators, Guides, Stewards or other roles that support a community’s ABCD efforts we as always rely on using ABCD principles:
- Everyone has assets and gifts. In this approach we seek to help those people who are interested show their gifts and encourage them to share their story.
- People discover each other’s gifts. Conversation is the key tool, during the recruitment event, we work to create opportunities for conversation and association to take place.
- People are here for a reason. Whatever the strengths of a place are, the people of the community will be the closest to understanding it, in our recruitment efforts we are looking for people to join together on a journey of discovery and sharing.
- Individuals connect into a community. People sharing their gifts and assets creates connections, and these connections are a vital asset to the community.
People whose gift is to find and create these connections are called connectors, and for various roles in ABCD efforts, this gift time and again proves vital. It takes time to find out about individuals; this is normally done through building relationships, person by person.
In this 3 part series we are sharing materials based on our ABCD Talent Quest approach that doesn’t aim to use shortcuts or techniques, but instead apply the principles of ABCD to encourage those who wish to join our story become part of our efforts to build stronger community. In this part we share a guide to creating a Job Description, for this series the example role recruited for is Community Builder. However the Talent Quest format isn’t about any one role, it is about applying ABCD principles in your community.
Even though this part is about the Job Description, this blog isn’t going to detail this, attached to this blog is a document to help draft an ABCD Community Builder Job Description. It includes many points we have learned from our experience, however the important advice we seek to share with you isn’t develop a good description of the job. We would never say that such an important role can be distilled down to a few pages, nor can we ever support a view that ABCD roles form static and unchanging sets of tasks and requirements. Please feel to use the document included in this part but keep in mind our advice to you: It’s about knowing your story.
Before anything else read and think about this question:
Why are you recruiting people for this post, what is the vision you are trying to achieve and how will the person or persons recruited become part of that vision?
You must know how integral the applicant is going to be and what it is that you hope they will help you achieve. The role of Community Builder will be discovered by the person doing it, it is a role where trust and building trust are vital; the first step to finding the right person is building a clear portrait of the vision to be achieved. This will help fashion recruitment text that is more than just what is wanted from a person, it will help write an invitation for the right person to step forward and became part of making your vision happen.
Your tasks before planning a recruitment event will be drafting the Job description, Person Specification and writing the Recruitment Text. We will be sharing materials to support the first two of these tasks, but not for the Recruitment Text, this is your story and is for you to tell. However please do read our earlier post ABCD Talent Quest to see how we once invited people to be part of a story we were involved in.
Rashid Mhar