No Resumes, Please (UPDATE: Positions Filled!)
At Global Kids, in our current job hiring process, we’ve replaced that old adage, “It's not what you know, but who you know,” with “It’s now what you know, but how you came to know it.” It’s a radical shift in our practices we felt it was appropriate to say a little about why we took this giant leap.
Four and a half years ago, we hired a job applicant who had the audacity, or foresight, to submit a personal blog entry as his writing sample. Writing samples are requested to assess the writing and analytic abilities of an applicant. Traditional submissions are created through some formalized process, most often a school paper or something produced in a work environment. They represent an example of something assessed within a formalized school or work environment. So what’s a blog entry doing in that context, something personal as opposed to professional, directed towards an informal audience of one’s peers as opposed to the lines of knowledge authority within a formal learning or work system?
We figured this applicant either didn’t understand the purpose of the writing sample OR understood something ahead of the curve, that digital media was redefining what learning looked like, where it happened, and how it could be measured. We decided to gamble that it was the latter. It was one of the best decisions we have ever made.
[UPDATE August 19, 2010: The Position Openings have been filled at this time. Thanks to everyone for your interest!]
Last week was his last day at Global Kids. And to fill the gap left in his wake, our hiring practice has radically changed, further evidence of how ahead of the curve he was. This time around we are not accepting writing samples, resumes or cover letters, at least during the first round. In recent years, they have told us precious little about what we needed to know about applicants. On one hand, the entire process has become so uniform that it’s easy for someone to game. On the other hand, at least for digital media and learning positions at Global Kids, the top applicants tend to either not share their skills and knowledge most pertinent to the position or are unable to articulate them.
In the last year we have hired three interns. They all ended up working on projects related to virtual worlds, games and social networks. These technologies were not peripheral to their work but central, and we had made this clear (or tried to) in the job description. Yet it wasn’t until after the positions were offered that we learned that the first intern had many years of experience running guilds in Worlds of Warcraft and could rattle off a dozen leadership skills she had developed as a result; the second intern ran a hip-hop video series on a YouTube channel and used a variety of social media and networking tools to promote it; and the third intern had spent many years taking game design classes and programming games to teach curricular content. And yet not one of them thought to include these critical experiences in their applications to us, nor raised them in the interview. Especially with the first two, there was a sense that if it didn’t earn a grade or a paycheck, the activity was not to be mentioned.
Well, we’re sick of it. We’re done with pretending the resume/cover letter/writing sample is the only way we can run a job search. Instead, during the first round, we decided to ask people to show us what we REALLY want to know: how and what they learn.
At Global Kids, no one does just one task and those tasks change over time, especially in our work with digital media. We don’t just want someone who knows how to send a tweet, but also understands how to identify emerging social media tools, evaluate their personal and social impact, and suss out their educational potential. The standard application process tells us, out of context, what people know, not how they know it or will learn new things. So this time around we are experimenting with what we call “Personal Learning Maps.”
Personal Learning Maps are a technique we developed working with Global Kids Youth Leaders that we now regularly employ when training adults to think about how digital media is changing the nature of learning. It recognizes that learning is now 24/7 and life-long. It presumes that each person operates within their own learning ecology and is ultimately responsible for curating and navigating it throughout their lives. The Maps are a way to make that ecology visible and share it with others.
This is what we are currently requiring of applicants:
So what have we found so far? While in the past we’ve received upwards of ten times more applicants than we actually hope to receive, and then slog through the material to struggle in identifying the top contenders, we are now receiving a more appropriately modest number of applicants who are, by and large, on target. They are also a blast to review - people have found all sorts of ways to creatively and appropriately insert not just what they know, and how they know it, but who they are. These maps have personality, especially combined with the tour, and they are enjoyable to watch.
More importantly, and this is all that really counts, in 3-5 minutes we can easily identify if an applicant is appropriate for a first round interview. This simple piece of social media is providing us with so much more information about what we want to know about applicants than the traditional process could ever hope to achieve, about what they know, how they learn it, and who they are. Are they in charge of their learning ecology or is it in charge of them? The answer is readily apparent.
Sure, with a handful we have had to go back to a few to ask follow-up questions. But that’s proven much more time efficient for all involved parties than bringing them in for a half hour interview which could have ended after the first minute.
We can’t share yet what we’ve received - because they were sent in confidence and because we haven’t hired someone yet - but we are already marking which one’s we’d like to make public. When the process is over, we will post all who give us permission and introduce to you a wide range of amazing job applicants in the market for digital media and learning positions who I promise will entertain, amaze and perhaps even inspire you, as they have us.
Comments
Marvellous - and this reminds me so much of something I have been wanting to get students in HE to do to help themselves recognise where they need to go through their learning journey, and to be able to remind themselves of who they were at various key stages too.
Posted by: Pat Parslow | June 25, 2010 8:56 AM