Tending the Gate

by Morgan Hite

There is something incongruous about the phrase "hiring practices" when used in reference to the National Outdoor Leadership School. "Hiring practices" implies that people are simply hired to work here, that coming to work for this school might be something done on a whim or during an idle summer. It implies that the people who do the hiring are just another functional facet of the corporation. But that would be entirely untrue to the feel of the actual situation. NOLS is perceived by those who comprise it - as well as those who would like to be a part of it - to be far more than a job. Working for NOLS bears little resemblance to a "job," and a great deal of resemblance to a calling or avocation.

In order to examine how people come to be working at NOLS, we must therefore change our vocabulary, and thereby change our perspective. We are not talking about a school or non-profit corporation; we are talking about a community. It is clearly perceived as such by those who are in it. This is a community of people who sleep side by side, who work together, cook together, eat together, and regularly safeguard each other's lives when there is no one else around. The degree of personal, emotional commitment is high and uniformly crosses within what are normally considered the boundaries of private, personal space. This is not a job for someone who does not want to live their job. It demands a great deal of integrity.

We are therefore not talking about applying for a job; we are talking about seeking acceptance into a community. To submit him- or herself for such consideration is not a small decision on an applicant's part, but rather a major life step. It implies a commitment of time and energy, not to mention money.

Having defined the scope and gravity of this topic, we can now ask how does "Personnel," which is a decidedly mundane name for a group of people who manage the population of the NOLS community, go about the process of evaluating and accepting new individuals?

There is no underestimating the gravity of a tight community deciding to accept or reject a newcomer. Certain workplaces, I will argue, are such tight communities - chosen by their "employees" with more discrimination, examined more for what they stand for and what they mean, than even the towns in which one lives. Deciding whom to grant tenure to at a university, whom to hire in a small business, or whom to admit as a student in an experiential program are all examples of discrimination where the outcome may surpass ordinary significance to the people involved. As a result, the evaluation of applicants in such situations must be carried out through a process which commands the resect of all. It must be thorough, and it must account for the subjective, as well as objective, factors.

The Summer Instructors Course (SIC) is the core evaluative step in what one might call NOLS's "hiring practices." It is a four-and-a-half week backcountry expedition for would-be members of the NOLS community. Applicants pay $2000 to be "students" on this course, assuming they have not received financial aid. The course is run by three or four senior instructors at the school whose judgement regarding the make-up of the community is respected. The SIC instructors bring back detailed written assessments of each student's fitness to instruct for the school, and some unwritten assessments about who is fit for the community.

If this sounds like arrogance on the part of NOLS instructors, one must consider how well the SIC works as a ritual in the process of accepting strangers into the NOLS community. The community is valued by its members because, among other reasons, it is exclusive. So, first, the process of selection must be rigorous. Second, NOLS instructors trust that their community has a high degree of commonality: they can be sent to work with any other instructor and they will find themselves to be a compatible team. So the selection process must involve the detailed impressions of experienced staff, garnered over weeks with the applicants. Finally, the process should be demanding enough that those who "survive" it feel they have really earned entrance to a community. This will satisfy all involved.

No SIC instructor is unaware of the potential hubris in deciding who will enter the community and who will not. It is a humbling task: to be aware of oneself judging, separating those who might be "one of us" from those who are not, and all the time being aware of how much these assessments mean to students (and how important they were once to each of us as SIC students). Nothing qualifies a person to pass such important judgments on the life of another; only the need of the community - the intense need to maintain quality - justifies the execution of this office.

But this points up one of the many ways that admission to a community differs from mere hiring. The weight of "tending the gate," of working an SIC, can be crushing: there is potential for an overwhelming feeling of presumptuousness and inadequacy. For someone to serve in that powerful official capacity and then return to being an ordinary member of the community requires some debriefing (though at NOLS this happens easily and informally). It is something each of us should do at least once, to feel a real investment in the community, and that no on should have to do all the time.

It is crucial to always remember to treat with respect and honor these individual who have submitted themselves for such close scrutiny.

My SIC students are aware that they are being judged, that they are being "evaluated," to use our word. But we have softened the edges of the scenario by pointing out that all can be chosen (though we speak of "passing"), all can succeed (though we speak of being "hired"), and that in fact one of our key evaluation criteria is how much a student assists others on the course in succeeding. "If you really want to impress me, " I tell them, "help someone else." We set the theme of all coming "up" together.

Some will characterize the SIC as a "five-week job interview." In a sense this is quite wrong. It is an educational expedition: our goal is to make each and every one of them into capable instructors. And yet in another sense "five-week job interview" is too mild a characterization: this is in fact a five-week interview to join a community. And it is a community each and every one of them very much does want to join. Perhaps this is why we speak in euphemisms of "passing" and "being hired," unwilling to speak directly in terms of community and acceptance. It is almost to heavy to bear, both for them and for us.

It is another unstated fact on the SIC that, whether we like it or not, whether they like it or not, our evaluations of the students will rely as much upon our informal impressions of them as it will upon our formal evaluations of their teaching, skills and leadership. Conversations with them, their jokes, quips and hellos, all speak to us on an unconscious level. Yet this is not as inappropriate or unprofessional as it may sound. There is a method in the madness: in the back of each of our minds as instructors we know that if we pass and recommend so-and-so, we may wind up working with him someday. If we don't feel we could live so intimately with that person without going crazy, this impression is significant. There is much integrity in the notion of using ourselves as personal sounding boards. Furthermore, if we find a student personable, it says something about his or her ability to do what we do: be responsible twenty-four hours a day for neophytes living outdoors in the mountains.

Students will voice questions about how they are doing. One cannot imagine a job applicant stopping in the middle of a one hour job interview to ask, "How am I doing?"; yet over the course of five weeks this is thoroughly appropriate. And this precipitates something which I believe gives the SIC, NOLS's peculiar five-week ritual of community admission, its special character. Students desire and deserve feedback and critique aimed not only towards their improvement in hard skills, but also in their demeanor and their way of "being" in the community. No other community I know of tries so hard to raise all of its applicants to its standards of inclusion. There develops and undeniably intimate relationship between myself as instructor and my students. They are hungry for advice, particularly about the things that perhaps their best friends would avoid saying to them. They willingly open themselves up to a very deep level for renovation, so great is their desire to enter the community. Naturally, one must treat them carefully and with much respect.

Finally, it is worthy of note that, like the Federal Government, the NOLS community has a number of checks and balances that insure that neither the applicant, the SIC instructors, nor the Personnel department gets complete say in the matter. One example of this frequently occurs when an applicant passes the SIC, but is not highly recommended by the instructors. Such a person may work in support services in town, and thus become a de facto member of the community. Such additional apprenticing time functions to circumvent the biases of SIC instructors, permit other member of the community to know this person (and possibly further recommend them), and to further train him or her in what sort of demeanor/behavior the community expects.

At the end of the SIC, final written evaluations are shared with the students, but if the instructor team has done its job of on-going feedback well there are no surprises. For an SIC late in the summer this moment is in fat almost anti-climactic: there is no work to offer immediately to anyone, and although students who have done well may be ready to get involved, there is nothing for them to do until the following summer.

For students who have not done well, we bear the obligation of telling them precisely what we would need to see before they can work for the school. There is no ducking this question. After such a long relationship with them we cannot simply fail to offer them work and hope they walk away. The degree of commitment they have offered us requires us to return at least some real constructive feedback. It will not do to tell someone whose general insecure demeanor has handicapped them that he or she need more "experience." We must discuss the realities of their insecure demeanor. It is by meeting this uncomfortable and difficult obligation head-on that SIC instructors atone for having ranked and evaluated the students.

It seems I have been asked a number of times by Staffing Directors at other programs how we get such a cohesive and compatible community of people at NOLS. The answer should now be obvious.

First require a ridiculous commitment of time, energy and money. We use $2000 and five weeks of being out of touch with the rest of the world, sleeping on the ground, carrying on regardless of weather, and hefting 60 to 80 pound packs over boulder fields and mountain passes. it is of only secondary significance that this is just like our regular programming. The net effect is that only the truly interested come.

Second, make the applicants plan, create and teach classes to each other (or whatever you typically do on your program) all the time in all weather, under the somewhat dispassionate and objective eye of the instructors. Obviously this allows us to evaluate their abilities, but perhaps more importantly it functions as a general challenge, the overcoming of which creates tight personal bonds between the participants. Indeed, it creates the desire to come back and do it again - which is when we send them out with real students and pay them for their time.

Lastly, have a program (that is, a community) whose reputation is so good that it attracts people with the motivation to jump through all these hoops to join it. No one save perhaps the military knows as well as Outdoor Educators do that the goal which a person works hardest for becomes their greatest triumph, regardless of whatever objective value it may be construed to have. Joining the NOLS community has become a high and remote summit, and those who attain it are kept there to some extent by their pride in having done so.

A workplace is actually viewed by the employees as a community is a mixed blessing for a Personnel department. it results in greater commitment by employees, but them highly committed employees tend to be the most troublesome when it comes to criticizing management. Outsiders will jump as high as you care to ask to get in, but them the community gets criticized for excluding those who cannot jump high enough. A workplace which is truly a community has a terrific spirit, but it is also somewhat closed to the outside world. Nonetheless, this seems to be a hot topic in the business world right now: giving one's company a "community" feel. I'm just waiting until these big corporations discover the kind of shenanigans they have to go through once they do become a community, when they discover that "hiring" is no longer merely hiring.

- I-25 Southbound in Colorado and New Mexico, 2 September, 1991

[background notes on this essay]