02-04-2021, 08:30 PM
btfc wrote:
“ Turns out she’s not ready to become an instructor candidate...”
Just curious, if she had checked off some of those other boxes, how would you have ended up evaluating her?
What we look for is evidence of existing instructional or teaching experience. Ideally they would have history in leading structured course content, because that’s what WE have them do. Failing that, I need to at least see where they’ve held company trainings or whatever. That isn’t nearly the same thing as teaching, but it’s a start.
She has some of the latter. The vast majority don’t have much teaching experience because let’s face it, they aren’t teachers. They’re acct managers or facility directors or something else in the industry looking to help get others credentialed.
Next I want to see if they can articulate a plan for whom they would teach, because “our” instructors (i. e. the ones we qualify) are not our employees (they are independent contractors for whomever hires them). In other words they need a clientele even though it’s our reputation at stake. We’re not a job service and can’t find them regular gigs. On this, she has no idea, no real connections, and tellingly, no one from her local Chapter asking for her services.
I told her, it would do her no good to set her up to instruct if she had no next step to do. Both instructor-candidates as well as our company invest both time and money on this, so screening and accepting just a few pays dividends.
I manage nearly a 100 or so who are technically approved. Less than half are active, with maybe half of that number truly active and engaged. Most who approach me don’t make it to a first meeting.