Earning the Right

I am on the board of a small non-profit organization where I have helped to initiate a social media presence on Facebook and Twitter.  I have also taken on the added responsibility of creating a new monthly e-newsletter to be distributed to our support base.

As those of you in the social media space know, this is a major undertaking, especially for an organization that has no paid employees.  I am blessed to work for a President that supports social media.  He came up with the idea to pay for a virtual intern to assist remotely us as we move forward with our social media and newsletter.

After an initial selection process we narrowed the field to four candidates and asked them two questions:

1. How and why do you see your particular skill set significantly improving an aspect of ChooseAneed.org?  (And, what is that aspect.)
2. What specific goals would you like to accomplish as a ChooseAneed Virtual Intern?

One cadidate’s response was a fairly lengthy critique about how we are approaching social media.  He went into great detail about all the things we are doing wrong and I got the impression he was more interested in “saving” us from ourselves than contributing to the mission of our organization.

As I read through his responses I agreed with some of them.  To be sure we are not perfect in social media.  (I kind of think that it what I like best about social media: It is Imperfect.)  Many of his suggestions were things that we had already discussed prior to receiving his response.

Then I looked back over his resume.  I was stunned.  He graduated from college five months ago and experience in social media management or strategy is not on the resume.  In fact, his work experience doesn’t include any experience in the social media arena.

It is obvious that he has passion for social media and it is obvious that he wants to work with Chooseaneed.  However, he hasn’t earned the right to answer our questions in that manner.

If he was a business major with a computer science minor, had some experience working in the social media space (outside of his own accounts) then he would have a little more permission.  If he was John Saddington, Tony Steward, or Carlos Whittaker then he would have earned that right.

I have learned (yes, the hard way) to temper my comments and wait until I have earned the right to make a critique.  I want to hire him, I see a lot of me in him.  He’s bright, ambitious, willing to challenge the status quo, and eager to participate.  I hope we hire him so I can help channel that energy and teach him some of the “soft-skills” he will need to really make a huge impact in a future organization.

Do you ever offer an opinion before you have earned the right?  Have you ever been on the receiving end?  How does it feel?