One of the very common questions that recruiters and human resources people are taught to ask in interviews is what I call the "what do you want to be when you grow up" question. Usually this is phrased as "where do you see yourself in five (or ten or twenty) years." The reason that recruiters are taught to ask this question is to see if someone has a career plan.
Most of the time, and particularly in my field of work, it's a pretty stupid question.
Now, there are some people, like Chris Hadfield, who had a career plan. They followed it, and they got to where they wanted to go. Chris Hadfield wanted to be an astronaut. There is a pretty common career path to follow if you want to be an astronaut. However, very few people actually get to *be* astronauts. And I'm absolutely certain there are quite a number of people who, like Chris Hadfield, wanted to be an astronaut, and followed the plan, and never did, actually, get into space.
My field is information technology. Information technology changes. New types of technology are discovered, or created. Software is developing all the time. Hardware, possibly in its basics, still mostly follows the von Neumann architecture, as it has for the past seventy years. However, we are now coming into a major change in technology with regard to quantum computing, and so, once again, not only the software, and the means of developing software, but the actual hardware platforms are going to radically change.
In information technology, constant change is here to stay.
When I started to work with computers, I didn't even know that there was a thing called information security. And I have worked for a great many technology companies over the course of my career. Even within information security, I have specialized in different domains at different times. I didn't plan it. I had no idea, for the most part, specifically where my career was going to go. For the past 40 years, I could have described myself as a systems analyst. But the systems, and the type of analysis that I did on them, changed constantly. I suppose that my career plan could best be described as I see the next problem, and I solve it. While it has worked for me, it isn't exactly a plan that allows you to give details of what you are going to do in even five years, let alone twenty.
If I am honest (which I do not feel obliged to be with anyone foolish enough to ask this idiotic type of question) I have never had a career plan. Not in the way that the recruiters seem to see it.
Okay, this is a very long-winded way of leading into the fact that you have to know your volunteers. Yes, as Pfeffer said in "The Human Equation," you have to know your people; both your customers, and your employees; in any business enterprise. You have to know the strengths, and the aspirations, of your employees. You probably don't have to guide them, but you may get better results out of them if you direct the area that they might next want to work in, and ensure that that particular field is something that they are good at, and interested in.
But it is much, *much* more important in volunteer management.
In business management, your employees are there because they want a job. They want to get paid. They want to be in a business, where they can make contacts, for other types of work, and other types of jobs, if they aren't particularly satisfied with the one that they are working in now.
That is not the case with volunteers. You are not paying them. They don't need a job, if they are willing to work for you, for nothing. They don't need the money. They don't necessarily need another job. (If you are a fortunate enough to have young volunteers, who are looking for contacts to get into the job market, then well and good. But realize that those particular volunteers, are, basically, looking to get a job which is going to ensure that they don't have time to work for you.)
Some of your volunteers may have too much time on their hands, and are looking for something to do to fill their hours. However, in the first place, in our fast-paced modern society, those people are extremely rare. In the second place, if that is why they are volunteering for you, they could easily turn around and volunteer for somebody else who *does* pay attention to them.
All of which is by way of saying that you need, really *really* need, to get you to know your volunteers. Get to know why they are working for your particular organization. Is it a really desperate desire to address the need that your organization fulfills? Are they interested in the need that you're organization is devoted to, or are they primarily there for the camaraderie and fellowship of their colleagues who are also working to address that objective? Are they just filling in time? Are they particularly interested in the task that you have them doing? Are they interested in having a regular time of volunteering, every week at the same day and time? Are they interested in doing a variety of jobs, and learning something new all the time? Are they interested in one particular task, and only one particular task, regardless of the needs of the organization? Do they get along with their volunteer colleagues? Is there something that they would rather be doing, and are you just the closest thing to what they actually want to do?
You need to know the answer to all of these questions, and more, to ensure that you can motivate them to help with the tasks that the organization needs to have done.
Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents
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