The most difficult thing to assess in outdoor leadership candidates is their level of directly transferable experience on both Technical Skills (Hard Skills) and Human Skills (Soft Skills) and Meta Skills (Conceptual Skills). Most programs require their recruiters and trainers to develop and refine lenses (often subconscious) to tease out or recognize the experience represented and expressed in cover letters, resumes and interviews. This practice while effective also creates a dependability on those recruiters, and their consistency, yet most programs see high turnover at the field level and supervisory/ recruitment level. There are a few practices that when implemented correctly can alleviate a level of this dependency, and create a higher level of clarity in the initial stages of the hiring practice.
Outdoor Logs: Quickly becoming one of the standard forms of documentation internationally for professional outdoor guides; Outdoor Logs strive to clarify aspects such as: Role, Location, Environment, Sport, Group Size, Length of time, Objective, Participants etc. These records offer more clarity on prior experience and basic level of technical skill exposure and application, but not necessarily the level of competency. Outward Bound has implemented this in their guide application requirements in a standardized format. While wilderness therapy doesn’t traditionally value Technical skills above Human and Meta Skills, they often don’t often directly acknowledge the importance of higher levels of technical skill in guides in building unconscious competence and a reservoir of situational and environmental resiliency that they draw from in times of crisis or while managing a group. For example; the inferred level of awareness of a guide with a background in leading 10 extended backcountry mountaineering trips and ice climbing on a personal recreational level will have a much better understanding of effects, prevention and treatment of exposure related cold injuries as they’re connected to diet, hydration, equipment and environment than someone with a background in working in summer camps teaching backpacking and hiking. While this seems obvious in the example that one is more ideally suited then the other on a technical level, this isn’t always obvious in the hiring process in the documents requested. The Outdoor log serves to capture all outdoor related experience and clarify whether it was personal or professional, and shed light on the situational experience that leads to that leader’s competency across environments, activities, seasons and roles.
Develop & Refine Hiring Practices: Programs typically have consistent application requirements; across the board they usually include; 2-3 letters of recommendation, copies of certifications, resume & cover letter. After combing through for the number of candidates there’s an over the phone/video interview Q&A in both directions. Candidates are then invited to an in person training/interview for a week which also serves as an orientation which includes some compassion training through experiential exposure to what clients experience, and what staff are responsible for. In most programs this isn’t consistently run by the same trainer, but rather cycles through different individuals. This is then followed by a final interview and job offer. While not all programs fit exactly in this mold, it’s fairly standard in OBH programs and wilderness therapy as a whole. In order to refine a process it’s ideal to have as many constants as possible, thus developing and refining each stage of the process so that it can be run with high consistency despite the facilitator is Key. Maintaining documented consistency with regular updating in training materials, intentions, facilitation methods, and approach, allows programs to continue to refine the practices despite turnover and preserve organizational developmental momentum despite turnover. This may sound obvious but the level and depth as well as the energy devoted to the process varies greatly. In the ever changing landscape of prioritization in wilderness therapy it usually gets little consideration. Reflection on what set the tone for longevity when looking at specific generations of hires in an effort of re-creating conditions of favorability for longevity within the recruiting process, rewriting job descriptions and positional responsibilities to most accurately capture the job expectations and assessing through staff performance and evaluation the quality of initial training.
Blunt Honesty: Wilderness Therapy is challenging work, and one of the number one comments and concerns expressed by guides is that there wasn’t enough clarity or awareness of what the position would require of them but more a focus on what they’d get out of the work that was expressed throughout the hiring process. This is often attributed to being one of the top reasons for people exiting the position, an initial erosion to the foundation of trust between the individual and the organization. The lack of clarity whether unintentional or designed is actually a disservice to both the organization and the applicant in that it contributes to “reality shock”. In my own work hiring field staff I often made an effort to explain the field experience as a mixed bag, drawing equally on the challenges and successes, benefits and drawbacks of the work. In the recreational industry it’s often viewed in risk management terms as “inform and warn”. In an effort to empower staff to both make an informed decision and recognize the responsibility they’re going to take on, the demands it will put on them; emotionally, physically, logistically and experientially as well as the benefits they’ll receive; logistically, emotionally, physically and experientially, encouraging them to consider how that would affect the coming years of their life and beyond. The general undercurrent of belief in the field in most programs is that it’s a temporary position, which has created or at the very least reinforced a self fulfilling prophecy.
Frontloading Literature: Many programs have a recommended reading list which has to do with texts that are commonly used in their programing but I have yet to see a program that sends a balanced collection of readings spanning Risk Management, facilitation, working with specific populations, Wilderness Therapy’s History, Camp Craft, Ethics, Local Environment, Judgement and Decision making for their outdoor leaders and managers. Most readings are specific to what the students might be assigned to read, which is valuable in building relationship but not in providing a solid base from which to build in creating a consistent experiential product due to the variability in the field between clients assigned readings. The practice is somewhat left over from earlier days when programs assigned reading as part of their curriculum that wasn’t individually tailored. Skill base, and knowledge base are the two most discussed limitations in the field especially by field staff coming in with limited prior experience in the outdoors, or with similar populations. Frontloading a reading list actually directed towards building a baseline competency (albeit self directed) allows for staff to assume the reigns of their development and skill level coming in prior to their initial training, which overtime works to build a higher level of competency culturally and a decrease in baseline stress.
