Imagine the first day of a new employee 👨💼 You enter your job as a manager 🔝 Your superior is busy with several things at the same time from the very first moment of the day, so the induction into the position is done piecemeal 📎 Before you know who you are working with, you learn that the customer is waiting for the results of your work, literally here and now waiting for your first move ⏳ You are given your team - made up of several people from different areas, who do not know each other, with different experience 👩🏭 👷♂️ 🧝♂️ You have not been fully trained yet, and yet you are asked questions that require immediate answers 💬 After a while, you are presented with another portion of work, true all-hands-on-deck situation 🚨 What should you do?
What competencies do you need to solve all these problems (and many others not mentioned) in four hours? 🕓
Composure ✅
Team management✅
Transparent communication with superiors✅
Priority management✅
Expectation management✅
Work process organization✅
and many more...
After the shift is over, after reporting progress, you hear: "You scouts are amazing, I don't know how we would have managed here without you."
Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego (ZHP) Kraków Region, together with the City of Krakow, is organizing the logistics of donations for flood victims in southern Poland. As it is being done in many places across the country. I could only help on the weekends (the only days off from work), so I got two separate shifts on Saturday and Sunday as shift coordinator. On a daily basis, other volunteer scouts do this. Often much younger than me.
Scouting and guiding education, in practice, by facing responsibility, prepares you to hold many different "real-life" positions. These can be leadership, management, educational positions. The key is common - no matter what is happening, you are ready to undertake an action. You are prepared.
How many 18-, 20-, or twentish-year-olds have the skills I described above, supported by real experience? Such skills are much more common among scouts than across average population - because that is how this educational system works. By taking responsibility. By practice. By doing what is needed.
Therefore, dear employers: do not be afraid to employ scouts. Assess them by their competences, not their age. Because despite their young age, they have already had the opportunity to experience a lot.
Therefore, dear scouts: do not be afraid to include your scouting experience in your CV or LinkedIn profile. What you do in uniform, in a scarf, is invaluable experience, useful in your future work. Those skills really are for lifetime!
I would like to thank all the scouts and guides, with whom I had the pleasure of working during these two days: Krzysztof, Alicja, Teresa, Kuba, Aleks, Bartek, Magda, Ania, Janek, Kamil and many others. Thanks to you, our service, which is hard work, brings joy and well-deserved pride. Thank you all!
And dear Hive community, if any of you is on LinkedIn, then your support with promoting my post is much appreciated!
Standard posts will be back soon, when I will get enough sleep to survive a day without being exhausted at the end of it.
