Guiding on a CV or personal statement

>>  Sunday, March 29, 2015

If you are an employer or recruiter of some kind and you see Guiding on an application form, I absolutely recommend you get them in for an interview.  I'll tell you why:

Recently it was a Brownies are 100 Birthday event with 1600 brownies attending.  For some of the day I was put with the Senior Section team.  I watched these girls:

Be reliable. Arrive early morning over 2 hours before the event started to put up a gazebo, bunting and huge standards all along a road.

Be self motivated. Hop on buses arriving giving out information packs, arrival instructions, enthusing early morning tired children and leaders with bouncy, motivated voices, smiles and body language.  And run back down the road  many, many times to be there for the next buses because we were short handed.

Spot a job that needed doing and do it.  I saw two girls spot a big drinks queue forming, watched them notice it and go to help serve and reorganise the queue to make it move through faster.

Think on their feet.  I saw a girl talking to a brownie who was looking incredibly tired and faint.  She went off to to the leaders coffee area to find her a bottle of water and then sat with the Brownie for a while until she perked up again.

All these things were in addition to the jobs they were there to do, nobody tells them to do it, they just see for themselves where a gap needs to be plugged and they plug it.

If you ran a cafe or a shop or an office, aren't these the kind of people you want working for you?

After our London trip we needed to do a presentation to a group that had given us a donation to help with travel costs.  The Rangers came to my house the day before, I gave them biscuits and a laptop and left them to it.  They produced a full presentation that would last about 20 minutes with a good amount of photos, often collaged for a better effect and a guide of who was going to say what at which slide.

We arrived at the club to find out (I suppose I should have known or guessed but I didn't) that it was a formal presentation to room of about 40 senior business men.  The girls took it in their stride, they looked great in smart uniform, they stood well, great body language, clear voices, smiles and presented like they had been doing it for years.  Even I was incredibly impressed by them and I know (or thought I did) what they are capable of.

Many of these girls have taken formal leadership qualifications as a part of the volunteering they do with Guiding, they've done DofE and so much more.  Girls that can walk with everything they need on their backs for 3 days including the tent and cooker are not light weights.

They are also trustworthy, I know I could leave my handbag or phone with them and not have to worry.

These are the type of people you want at your university or business.

I think the girls often forget to sell their skills, they aren't the ordinary, run of the mill girls, they have the added extra special ingredient.  They mix with girls like this, they think people are all the same, they aren't and the clever employer recognises it.

These girls are going places let them take your company further too.

3 comments :

BavarianSojourn 10:31 am  

Definitely lots of great life skills there. Resourceful too! :)

Mwa 11:04 am  

I send my kids to Chiro (Christian Scouts-like organisation) for precisely those reasons! (I do prefer that they are mixed. The all girl thing freaks me out a bit. I did eight years of single sex schools and they didn't agree with me.)

A Guiding Life 10:38 pm  

Education and Guiding are very different. The girls only space for a limited time is very good for them, gives them a chance to do things and focus on things that wouldn't happen in a mixed space. I think time mixed is very important and time as girls also has a very important part to play.

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