Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

10.25.07 | While virtual worlds like Second Life are gaining increased attention - e.g. its virtual appearance this month within episodes of both television shows Law & Order and CSI - most Americans have yet to learn about virtual worlds, let alone work with one.

In the fall of 2006, Global Kids, which traditionally does work with youth in New York City, received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation which allowed us, for the first time, to run on-going programs within Second Life. The job listing was so innovative that Monster.com, the online job site, saw fit to comment upon it:

“Here’s a job you’ve probably never imagined: Developing and running workshops for teens—in Second Life. But thanks to a New York City organization known as Global Kids, someone has the opportunity to do just that… You can also train and mentor others in Second Life and—as the job offer from Global Kids demonstrates—get paid in real US dollars for it.”

Monster went on to say:

“In the online industry, new kinds of jobs are cropping up all the time that simply didn’t exist just a few years ago—corporate blogger, podcasting consultant, Second Life event planner. Yes, I made that last one up, but it will exist before too long.”

And that time is now. Through a second grant from the MacArthur Foundation, to participate in their Virtual Worlds Initiative, we are now seeking to fill four new positions, one being a project manager who is ostensibly an event planner (albeit not for weddings, but to promote international justice).

Nowadays, listings for new virtual world position are not so novel. There are hundreds of educators using Second Life, for example, and scores of non-profits. However, while we were once one of the few guys on the block, today we have fierce competition, and not just from other educators. We just lost a prime candidate to one of the top Second Life development companies, someone who left the NGO community to enter the for-profit world for the first time. Current conditions differ greatly from the early years of the Web, when the .coms were years ahead of the .orgs; this time we entered the starters box at the same time and are often in competition for the same limited pool of experts.

So how does an educational non-profit compete with a multi million dollar for-profit, whose work promises to be just as cutting-edge (but arguably less socially relevant)?

This concern was brought home by one educator who was sending a number of top-notch candidates our way. She reported they were all “the kind of candidates most organizations would flip for” but had concerns about salary working for a non-profit.  She wrote they all “wanted desperately to figure out a way to afford to work for GK!”

This is not a new recruiting tool for non-profits: speak to people’s passions. You might earn more somewhere else, but we can feed your soul. Work for us and you’ll love waking up in the morning. And indeed, the dozen or so employees (depending on the month; we’re growing so fast) who work at Global Kids all share in common their passion for their work, using digital tools to develop youth leaders around global issues.

At the same time, as this job market continues to expand, we can model the possibilities for what this work can look like for the corporate types, as reflected in the following comment received in response to our latest job listings:

“I am teaching an e-commerce course at my local college.  It would be very good for my students to see that the skills I am trying to impart to them (Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds) do have value that professionals are looking for.”

Choose-Your-Own-Job-Description

When we received our current grant, we realized that there were multiple ways to fill each position and build teams amongst them. We had a rich collection of ingredients but didn’t know which recipe would cook the best meal. We decided to let the best one emerge from the market. But how to add some creative chaos to the job market?

Based on the books we loved as youths, we welcomed applicants to participate in a Choose-Your-Own-Job-Description application process, announcing that:

“We are currently looking to hire three to four people. However, each position contains more than one area of responsibility, all of which can be mixed-and-matched. And who are WE to tell YOU the best combination? Instead, we are looking to YOU to tell US the best combination of responsibilities to meet your strengths and interests. There are eleven possible combinations, each with is own job description.”

By describing three over-arching categories - Second Life Educator, Social Networking Expert, and Second Life Project Manager - we created an opening for potential job applicants to make decisions and drill down towards a final job-description. Do they want to join our staff in New York or work part-time remotely? Do they want to combine the work of two social networking projects or combine one of them with an educational program in Second Life? The decision is theirs to make.

Finally, we decided to leverage resources available to non-profits like ourselves to spread the word - namely by writing this brief “think piece” about the challenges of non-profits filling positions for virtual world employees that you are reading right now. So please help out the underdogs by spreading around this Spotlight entry and then check out our Choose Your Own Job Description.