Personal Experience: One of the Most Significant

¶ … Personal Experience:

One of the most significant experiences that also presented an ethical dilemma in my life was during a time when I was in a leadership position and was required to make a decision regarding recruitment of volunteers for a particular program. This program was for training young people regarding life skills issues at no costs since the participants or volunteers were basically required to be available and committed to the training for the three months period. The organization had a target of approximately 15 individuals though the advertisement for the program was made to a youth group of approximately 200 people.

Initially, the organization did not anticipate a huge turnout of interested people since many young people were skeptical about attending training sessions. The organization's expectation was also based on the fact that many young people had preference for entertaining events rather than training. As a result of the expectation of minimal turnout despite the announcement to a huge group, the organization did not put stringiest recruitment procedures, which was a major gamble.

After the deadline expired, there were 32 people who had expressed their interest for the program more than double the expected number. The huge gamble did not pay off since many individuals had expressed their interest while the organization did not have enough resources to manage more than 15 individuals. First, there was an urgent need to reduce the number by selecting few individuals who could be available and committed to the teachings. Secondly, the organization was faced with a huge dilemma on how to select such people because strict recruitment procedures were not initially established.

This situation turned out to be one of the significant individual experiences that I have faced in my life as I was mandated with the task of selecting these people through reduction of the number from 32 to 15 students. Initially, this was a huge task for me that I did not know how to go about and wanted to turn down the mandate. I was concerned about taking the task because I neither wanted to discriminate any of the applicants nor select people who could end up being unavailable and not committed to the program. The situation was further complicated by the fact that I had only three days to make the decision before the commencement of the training.

Following careful thoughts and critical considerations, I gathered a group of some of the organization's leaders to help me in the decision making. During the meeting, we agreed that the interested parties had to write an application letter for consideration into program in 24 hours failure to which they will not be considered for the training. Since I had their contacts, I communicated this decision to the people as a test of their commitment. This was to be followed by a review of the letters in which the applicants indicated reasons for consideration into the training. The application letter was a means of eliminating the uncommitted individuals and evaluating the main reasons for the person's interest in joining the program.